Takes issue with the Bullock Report recommendation that the concept of home visiting must be expanded at the preschool level in England. (RB)

Two experiments involving four and seven normal children four- to eight-years-old examined processes responsible for generative language acquisition and conditions likely to facilitate recombinative generalization. All children learned new syntactic rules to generate three word utterances, regardless of the orderings of agent, action, and object…

The study investigated receptive and expressive language skills in 11 preschool gifted children. It was concluded that as a group the gifted Ss did not have a better selection of deep structure and transformation rules than normal Ss. (SB)

The case study of a language handicapped 4-year-old presents a framework for assessing and managing a child who displayed a marked deficit in his verbal requests for objects, actions, and information. (Author/SW)

Preschoolers interpreted mental verbs with respect to their mental state in contrast to external state. These children were nontheless ignorant of definitive distinctions between the mental verbs, completely confusing cases of remembering, knowing, and guessing. (Author/RH)

Compares older and newer methods of studying language acquisition in younger and older toddlers in an attempt to explain discrepancies in the literature concerning whether girls are more advanced than boys in language acquisition. (SS)

Examines the acquisition of Japanese numeral classifiers in Japanese preschool children, with a primary emphasis on developing comprehension ability. Argues that different techniques and stimulus contrast sets reveal a much greater sensitivity to semantic relations in young children than was previously considered possible. (Author/VWL)

Two studies investigated linguistic representations underlying English-speaking 2.5-year-olds' production of transitive utterances. Findings indicated that children trained with pronouns and nouns could produce a transitive utterance creatively with a novel verb. Results suggest that English-speaking children build many of their early linguistic…

An experimental study was conducted comparing the effects of dual language, or two-way immersion (TWI) and monolingual English immersion (EI) preschool education programs on children's learning. Three-and four-year old children were randomly assigned by lottery to either a newly established TWI Spanish/English program or a monolingual English…

This study examined children's acquisition of language by means of correlating spoken words and observed objects and actions. The common sense view of word learning via observation applies easily to learning nouns for objects, but becomes problematic in the process of learning verbs. When they encounter novel verbs applied to observed situations,…

A study examined two questions: What are the common functions and features of literacy as evidenced in children's spontaneous play within a preschool setting, and how frequently do they occur across different groups of preschoolers? Trained observers recorded the play behavior of each of 50 children (the average age was 4 years) during four…

Reading readiness activities should lead to awareness and skills that will bring a child to a point on the reading acquisition continuum where he or she will be ready to benefit from more rigorous and formally structured activities in the classroom. Children's awareness of the following five aspects of language and literacy are helpful, if not…

The study compared the effectiveness of two commonly used questioning sequences with four preschool developmentally delayed male children, aged 3 to 5 years, and their four adult trainers. The Full Model to Open Question sequence began with presenting the child with a model of the correct answer and then proceeded to increasingly less restricted…

Comparison of the fast mapping skills of language-impaired four- and five-year-olds (N=11) and nondisabled peers (N=11) revealed no differences in ability to infer a connection between a novel word and referent, to comprehend a novel word after a single exposure, and to recall nonlinguistic information associated with the referent. (Author/CB)

A study of 16 autistic children (mean age 54.5 months) found functional and symbolic play skills associated with language ability and certain nonverbal skills (such as the ability to use gestures to coordinate attention between social partners) also correlated with language ability, but not with play variables. (Author/DB)