Presents a developmental study of children's understanding and appreciation of figurative language. Results replicated previous findings that kindergarten children are capable of interpreting figurative language whereas appreciation appears to require increased cognitive sophistication. (JMB)

The development of children's comprehension of cause and effect relationships was studied in 68 kindergarten, first grade, and second grade children. (BRT)

Examines the development of metaphor by using structure-mapping theory to make distinctions among kinds of metaphors. Proposes that children can understand metaphors based on shared object attributes before those based on shared relational structure. Results indicate a developmental shift toward focus on relational structure in metaphor…

This study provides a cross-sectional and longitudinal examination of the narrative language skills of reading-disabled and normally achieving children. The investigation was made to illuminate language processes involved in these skills and to assess how these processes relate to reading achievement over time. (Author/RH)

Both 4- and 7-year-old children readily reformulated their initial messages when explicitly requested to do so by the listener, and both failed to reformulate when confronted only with nonverbal, facial expressions of listener noncomprehension. (Authors)

Study offers some evidence which bears on the amount of influence of the environment upon linguistic capacity. (Author)

Findings, confirming the results of an earlier study using a less deprived population, indicated that young black children do not benefit from having the Binet administered in Negro Dialect. (Author)

Investigated relationships among socioeconomic status, family constellation, parental practices, and preschool-age children's awareness of and rationales for rules and conventions. Children's knowledge of rules and conventions was related to social class variables. Parental behaviors were found to be better predictors of the level of children's…

Hypothesizes that young children respond incorrectly in interpreting ambiguous communications in referential tasks because they respond to the elocutionary performative force rather than the locutionary content of the communications. Results of two experiments tended to confirm the hypothesis. (Author/RH)

Questions whether children's use of language indicates they (1) understand temporal sequence, (2) distinguish goal-oriented from nongoal-oriented activities, and (3) prefer discussing the aspect of events prior to the time of events. Also investigates whether findings for past and future conditions are parallel. (Author/DB)

Subjects ranging in age from 7 to 12 years selected correct story completion alternatives significantly more often when these alternatives were similes than when they were semantically equivalent metaphors, and when alternatives specifically denoted the referent of the metaphorical comparison than when the identity of the referent had to be…

Investigates increased use of metacognition (i.e., monitoring comprehension, developing expectations, learning information sampling strategies) as reading ability develops among sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade pupils and high school students. (Author/RH)

Results indicate that children who witness teachers' appraisal actions interpret some of them differently at different ages. Participants were 136 first through sixth graders who were assessed on measures of perceptions of target children and perceptions of teacher's opinions of target children. (RH)

This research investigated 4- through 7-year-olds' and adults' (n=64) concepts about the emotional consequences of desire fulfillment versus desire inhibition in situations where people's desires conflict with prohibitive rules. Results revealed developmental increases in attributing positive or mixed emotions to story characters that make…