Examined the language skills of 21 6-year olds selected for linguistic precocity as toddlers, finding that verbal abilities and reading achievement remained high from age 2 through 6. Also found that phonological awareness appeared to emerge as a consequence, rather than a cause, of early reading. (31 references) (MDM)

The development of early vocalizations was investigated with 13 infants who had Down's syndrome and 27 infants developing normally, at bimonthly intervals from 4 to 18 months of age. Both groups demonstrated increased production of mature syllables over time as well as large variations in vocal development, both within and across groups and across…

Word comprehension tests were given to 24 infants at 2-month intervals. Parents of 18 of the infants kept a diary of the children's verbal production. Comprehension scores revealed a vocabulary spurt for some children. The presence of a comprehension spurt was associated with a word production spurt. (BC)

Tested the cross-linguistic applicability of the dual mechanism model, investigating children's spontaneous performance with past definite and elicited performance with past definite and past participle. Performance profiles with productive and unproductive inflections could not be categorically distinguished. Phonologically transparent…

Extensive longitudinal data were gathered on a child's entry into the symbolically mediated modal world by examining changes in the semantics and pragmatics of her uses of modal auxiliary verbs. The data are 53 transcripts of natural conversations between a girl, Nina, and her mother recorded periodically from her 23rd month to her 39th month. The…

The development of relative clauses in child speech was investigated using an elicited production task instead of spontaneous speech samples. In an elicited production task, the context is manipulated so that a complex sentence must be used for communication. Thirty-six English speaking children from 3 to 5 years old were provided with contexts…

Two investigations of the acquisition of the meaning of "always" and "never," and "always,""never,""usually,""seldom," and "sometimes" are discussed. Results demonstrate that the acquisition sequence of meanings of related words may vary among children at the beginning, but become consistent in later acquisition. (CHK)

The results obtained by researchers interested in the speech-time relationship indicate that the sequential organization through time of speech sounds necessary for communication requires a universal "grammar" consisting of vowel and consonant sequences and an awareness of the duration experienced in that process, as well as the memory…

THE WORD ASSOCIATIONS OF URBAN SLUM CHILDREN, BOTH NEGRO AND WHITE, WERE STUDIED TO DETERMINE WHAT IMPACT EXTREME SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS DIFFERENCES HAVE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT. THIS STUDY OF CHILDREN FROM THE LOWEST EXTREME OF THE SOCIOECONOMIC SCALE WAS MADE AS A FOLLOWUP TO AN EARLIER STUDY OF CHILDREN REPRESENTING VARIOUS CULTURAL AND…

Recent studies have documented the importance of a variety of contextualization cues such as intonation, voice quality, volume, and pitch in conversation. The appropriate use of and response to them presupposes that one has certain kinds of linguistic and sociocultural knowledge. There remains, however, the question of how children acquire this…

In Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior, three categories of environmental control over instances of verbal behavior appear to be relevant to the study of infant vocal development: the mand, the tact, and the echoic categories. Procedures used in the remediation of language deficiencies and procedures found in work in the area of language…

A research project was aimed at measuring the relationship between infant vocalizations and linguistic development and determining the feasibility of using infant vocalizations as a predictor of later psychological and intellectual status. However, a method was needed to analyze the vocalizations of infants. This report describes a method used to…

This chapter, to be included in "Carmichael's Manual of Child Psychology," edited by P.A. Mussen, deals with the connection between the acquisition of language and the growth of intellect, and the connection between both of these and the process of maturation. The author feels that various theories of development cannot account for the child's…

This study examined the social labels which are first used by infants, social differentiation on the basis of labeling behavior, and overgeneralization of social labels. Subjects were 81 infants from 9 to 36 months of age. The 9- to 24-month-olds were shown slides of themselves, their mothers, their fathers, and unfamiliar children, babies, and…

The three basic language learning models are the rote-memory model (prescriptive), the abilities model (behavioristic), and the critical age model. If this last model, a deterministic one based on observable facts about the human condition, becomes as popular in American schools as it is in British schools, language will become an important aspect…