We join other responders in thanking Clahsen and Felser (CF) for pulling together these observations about the development of language processing. We are especially impressed by the generality and inclusiveness of CF's treatment of development in L1 and L2. Because most of their specifics concerned comprehension processes, our contribution will…

The proposal by Clahsen and Felser (CF) has the potential of marking a turning point in second language (L2) acquisition research. Contrary to much L2 research to date, it suggests that some of the differences between native and (advanced) nonnative speakers may be at the level of grammatical processing, rather than grammatical representations.…

Research evidence currently indicates that young children's communication skills for both the speaker and the listener roles are often ineffective. The accuracy of children's communication improves gradually over the elementary school years. Current thinking in the area of metacognition may be very useful in understanding the development of…

Argues that, although Piaget's seminal work on children's use of intention and consequence information to make moral evaluations has spawned a substantial amount of research, progress in this area has been hampered by serious conceptual and methodological problems. Offers some methodological guidelines for conducting research in this area.…

Investigated young children's ability to use narrative contexts to infer the meanings of novel vocabulary terms. Two groups of 15 7-and 8-year-olds participated; children with normally developing reading comprehension skills and children with weak reading comprehension skill. Results are discussed. (Author/VWL)

Visual learning enhances cognitive understanding of abstract concepts. Perception of such ideas as causality is enriched by visual examples. Perceiving should not be separated from thinking. (SK)

Relates an anecdote illustrating the variety of ways people can approach reading and suggests that young readers are frequently much more aware of the reading experience than parents suspect. Offers suggestions for parents to encourage their children's literary response. (HTH)

Explores children's predicting and inferencing strategies for understanding written materials by analyzing an example of one second grader's oral reading. Discusses theory of reading comprehension processes, as well as how teachers can develop student's predicting and inferencing abilities at word, sentence and suprasentential levels. (RH)

Sex differences in school learning are examined with a focus on how the variable of gender affects the teaching, learning, development, and behavior of children. The initial entries in this collection of articles focus on reading: the reading interests of girls and boys, sex bias and stereotyping in reading tests, and the influence of gender,…

This article examines the construct of working memory and its relationship to sentence comprehension difficulties of children with specific language impairment. Some sentence comprehension problems of these children may be related to inefficient management of working memory resources. Techniques for assessing working memory and enhancing the…

Discusses methods of assessing language comprehension in apes. Considers the possible effect of brain physiology on the differences between productive and receptive language skills. Examines the possibility that differences between synaptic transmission and volume transmission, or transmission across extracellular spaces, of neurological impulses…

In its present form, the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale lends itself to the selection of instructional strategies in reading for children with learning problems. The data on cognitive skills obtained provide important insight into cognitive strengths and weaknesses that may be related to academic functioning. (JPS)

If, by looking more closely at word identification, knowledge of word meanings, and reading comprehension, some interesting similarities and differences are found between children and adults who are learning to read, then the approaches that work best with each group can be identified. When children learn to read, fluency of word identification…

Discusses the assessment of children's early language comprehension by the use of (1) parent reports; (2) preferential-looking models; and (3) event-related brain potentials. Examines recent findings on dissociations between language comprehension and production in normal, late-talking, and brain-injured children and considers the implications of…