Four children, aged 26-41 months, with localized, perinatal brain lesions, were compared to 4 matched controls. With the exception of phonological development, subjects scored below controls on all formal language measures; however, subjects often scored at or above test norms. No score differences were found between right- and left-brain-damaged…

This study of 2.5 and 3.5 year olds indicated that children of this age do not know many names for solid substances but can be taught names for them; that children represent the names as mass nouns and possibly adjectives; and that there is development of children's nonlinguistic knowledge of substances between the ages of 2.5 and 3 years. (TJQ)

This study examined initial preferences for verb interpretation by 15 5-year-old children with specific language impairment, 15 language-matched children, and 15 age-matched children. Children indicated preferred interpretations of novel verbs from videotapes of motion and change-of-state activity scenes. Findings suggested that children's verb…

This study of four young children with developmental delay involved building verbal routines through repeated interaction with the same picture book, followed by generalization sessions. The intervention increased generalized mean length of utterance in children in the first stage of language development more than in children in a later language…

The purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between language and interactive strategies used by children with peers in a shared activity. The subjects were 20 middle-class Italian children, 10 male and 10 female, between the ages of 4 and 5, who were in their last year of preschool. (CFM)

Sixty-six preschoolers were asked to explain eight metaphors presented orally. Results indicated that older preschoolers gave significantly more metaphoric correct and metaphoric incorrect responses than did younger preschoolers; boys gave more metaphoric correct responses than girls; and girls gave significantly more consequential responses than…

Found a relationship between enriched sociodramatic play experiences and increases in children's language performance in the year before the children entered kindergarten. (BC)

Finds that students in prekindergarten classes who received sign instruction tested significantly higher on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test than students in prekindergarten classes who did not receive sign instruction. Suggests that simultaneously presenting words visually, kinesically, and orally enhances a child's vocabulary development. (SR)

Narrative attainment was assessed in 76 four-year-old children at risk for brain injury because of histories of early corrective heart surgery. Despite considerable heterogeneity in narrative performance, children with early corrective heart surgery produced fewer narrative components than typically developing children. Implications for clinical…

This study examined abilities and problems of 36 Korean preschool children temporarily in the United States and attending English speaking preschools. Three case studies of three children with high verbal abilities, unusual understanding, memory, and communication skills are analyzed. Five principles for fostering bilingualism in such children are…

Two tasks of word identification were proposed to children in their last year of upper preschool classes. The results show that identification is not based on an holistic processing but on an analytic one: some letters are enough, especially the first ones. Moreover, their order does not matter. During this period where reading is visuo-semantic…

A major challenge facing the prekindergarten-12 education system in the United States is the fact that as the population changes, the particular needs of children change with it. One of the largest demographic shifts over the last ten years is the sharp increase in the number of students in public schools who speak English as their second language…

A study examined the association between specific features of the preschool language context and the development of children's literacy-related language skills. Teachers were interviewed about the frequency with which they read to student groups during the school day; their preferences about literature; and the nature of their curriculum. Teachers…

Two studies investigated how flexible children are when asked to switch from one semantic interpretation to another. Three distinctly different standards for the adjectives "big" and "little" were examined: normative, perceptual, and functional. The first study looked at whether some standards are harder than others to represent and whether…

Two hypotheses related to the emergence of multiword speech were explored: (1) that multiword speech follows developments in children's ability to map communicative intents to single-word expressions; and (2) that the acquisition of these mapping principles paves the way for the emergence of syntax. The developments consist of an increase in the…