Cross-national stability in private speech (PS) and short-term memory was investigated in Saudi Arabian (n=63) and British (n=58) 4- to 8-year-olds. Assumed differences in child-adult interaction between the 2 nationality groups led to predictions of Gender ? Nationality interactions in the development of verbal mediation. British boys used more…

The central thesis of this study was that maturational rate, or its physiological correlates, influences the development of the organization of higher cortical functions and is therefore an important determinant of sex differences in verbal and spatial abilities. (Author/SB)

It is evident from this task that preschool children can remember simple pictures as well as their names, that either pictorial or verbal codes can mediate memory of either pictures or words in accordance with task demands, and that same-different judgments tend to be faster to pictures than to words. (Author)

Investigated interactions between stress level of syllables and articulatory difficulty as influences on children's early words. Subjects were 32 two-year olds asked to imitate nonsense words and syllables that varied in articulatory difficulty. Found that both factors had significant effects on aspects of children's imitations. (MOK)

Detailed analysis of the reactions to training and of the verbal regulation of behavior scores of subjects from a remote Indian reserve showed that the low IQ of this group resulted from an underdevelopment of reflective verbal thought, but not from a biologically determined inadequacy. (Authors)

Analytic intelligence was a good predictor of communication scores for boys but not for girls. Verbal ability was no better a predictor for girls than boys. The correlational evidence indicates that conventional intelligence tests predict social perspective taking as well as Piaget's measure of spatial perspective-taking ability. (Authors)

Assessed age-related changes in 2- to 4-year olds' verbal and nonverbal memory for the same unique event. Found that children's performance on each memory measure increased as a function of age. Children with more advanced language skills reported more during the verbal interview and exhibited superior nonverbal memory relative to children with…

Examines genetic influences on language by assessing 158 preschool twins on vocabulary comprehension, semantic knowledge, morphology, syntax, and articulation. Vocabulary comprehension was significantly influenced by heredity, whereas performance skills were influenced by between-family environmental factors. (Author/AS)

A series of possible explanations for learning disabilities (LDS) couched in terms of information processing capabilities was tested by comparing the performance of LDS children on several types of information processing tasks with that of a control group. Subjects were 28 LDS children (10-11 years old) and 24 elementary school students of the…

Investigated whether the content of infant speech productions is better characterized as preserving stressed and final syllables or as preserving a trochaic pattern; used a detailed longitudinal description of one child's syllable omission. Found that the trochaic template hypothesis was not supported by these early productions. (Author/JPB)

Investigated the premise that differences in developmental patterns as recorded on a scored biodata form are related to differences in verbal behavior as evidenced in six protocols derived from responses to the Kent-Rosanoff Word Association Test. Subjects were 110 female college students. (SDH)

Compared 12 right-handed adolescent females with a history of idiopathic precocious puberty to 12 closely pair-matched normal controls of similar maturational status to test the association of physical maturation with cognitive abilities and the mediation of this association by hemispheric specialization. (HOD)

Highly creative children of both sexes tended to be more erratic in their work orientation, more graceful, and more prone to respond aggressively to frustration. Highly creative boys were also found more open, expressive, playful, curious, and, to some degree, more self-confident. (Authors)

The relationship between verbal reasoning ability on the one hand and sex, social class, family size, and ordinal position in the family on the other were examined for a representative sample of 11-year-old Irish children. (Authors)

Positively correlated were verbal fluency scores and scores for strategies expected to distinguish levels of verbal fluency among 64 third-graders and 71 sixth-graders. When a smaller sample of similarly aged students completed expanded versions of tasks, results revealed grade and gender differences in strategy use and level of task performance.…