The study investigated the prevalence and associated problems of ankyloglossia, characterized by restricted movement of the tongue usually due to the adhesion of the tongue to the frenum, among a preschool Head Start population (N=1,440). Ss were screened for six primary characteristics of the condition and of the 78 children who exhibited the…

Although Mandarin Chinese is a topic-prominent language, it is shown that young children acquiring Chinese as their first language access the concept of grammatical subject as well as that of topic. A total of 95 children aged 2-5 years acquiring Mandarin Chinese as their first language were tested on sentences involving equi-constructions. It was…

The transition from pre-linguistic to linguistic communication was investigated in the acquisition of pronouns in American Sign Language (ASL). Data were obtained from a congenitally deaf child learning ASL as a first language from deaf parents. Longitudinal data from the age of 6 months to 2 years and pronoun elicitation task data were analyzed.…

The progression through the developmental stages of the acquisition of interrogatives was analyzed. Data on use of the "what" interrogative were collected during play sessions from eight children at six-month intervals from the ages of 1;6 to 3 years. More than 2,400 children's interrogatives were recorded. It was demonstrated that…

The present study compares the attributions of young children 5 to 6.5 years of age with those of adult subjects 20 to 30 years of age, who were engaged in the same competitive situation. It was hypothesized that sex differences would occur in the sample of adults but not in the sample of children. Believing outcomes to be determined by either…

To provide a differentiated characterization of autistic children's logical deficits, a non-verbal, microanalytic method designed for infants and young children was used. Subjects were 12 autistic children ranging in age from 5 to 7 years and a control group of 12 normal children ranging in age from 23 to 30 months. Subjects were given two…

Between their second and fifth years, young children learn approximately 15 new words a day. For every word the child hears, he or she must choose the correct referent out of an infinite set of candidates. An important problem for developmental psychologists is to understand the principles that limit the child's hypotheses about word meanings. A…

Three Downs Syndrome children (1 to 4 years old) and their mothers and four graduate student clinicians participated in a study of adult-child interaction and child comprehension. Mothers were asked to assess their child's comprehension in informal preliminary interviews, children were tested for early-developing linguistic comprehension, and both…

Tasks based on the function concept (y = f(x)) were used in a study charting the development of anticipation in children from 5 through 7 years of age. In each task a desired outcome was a function of a combination of specific, rule-constrained, antecedent conditions. Subjects' behavior was scored according to criteria differentiating six levels…

Examined in three studies were the influence of perceptual organization on children's memory and the relationship between operational thought and memory performance. In the first study, 72 children at 5, 7, and 9 years of age were given a series of Piagetian tasks and a memory task. Subjects were presented with 10 color-shape pairs depicted in…

Discussed are data concerning a simple visuomotor tracking task, especially the expectations and cognitive representations involved in performing such a task. The task consisted in tracking the horizontal displacement of a target spot on the screen by appropriate forearm rotations. Each subject participated in two sessions: first, at a .8 Hz…

Twelve hearing impaired children (aged 2-5 years) were trained to use a novel interactive microcomputer system with a special interface word keyboard which builds in perceptual salience, individualized vocabulary, animation, and color graphics in a two-person-plus computer communication system. Ss were taught to press keys with words and short…

Described is Rhode Island's method of screening the preschool population for possible handicaps (Child Find). The system is seen to include casefinding (every child over 2.5 years not yet in school) using locally tailored public awareness campaigns, large scale screening (a quick survey of medical, sensory, motor, social, emotional, cognitive,…

To investigate the development of children's knowledge of the intension and extension of four natural concepts (cup, scissors, money, and musical instrument), three questions were explored in an experiment involving one-hundred-and-twenty 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old children (40 children for each age group). Extension was measured in a verbal labeling…

This study investigates different methods of increasing children's use of active rehearsal in recall, and the extent to which this active rehearsal improves their recall. Seven groups of second grade children and one group of adults were asked to memorize a list of everyday words in four study-test trials. Two of the groups of children were given…