Pacifier use during childhood has been hypothesized to interfere with language processing, but, to date, there is limited evidence revealing detrimental effects of prolonged pacifier use on infant vocabulary learning. In the present study, parents of 12- and 24-month-old infants were recruited in Oslo (Norway). The sample included 1187 monolingual…

Aims: Although IDS is typically described as slower than adult-directed speech (ADS), potential impacts of slower speech on language development have not been examined. We explored whether IDS speech rates in 42 mother-infant dyads at four time periods predicted children's language outcomes at two years. Method: We correlated IDS speech rate with…

In the period between sole use of single words and majority use of multiword utterances, children draw from their existing productive capability and conversational input to facilitate the eventual outcome of majority use of multiword utterances. During this period, children use word combinations that are not yet mature multiword utterances, termed…

This study examines the acquisition of the English laryngeal system by native speakers of (Belgian) Dutch. Both languages have a two-way laryngeal system, but while Dutch contrasts prevoiced with short-lag stops, English has a contrast between short-lag and long-lag stops. The primary aim of the article is to test two hypotheses on the acquisition…

The study examined the possibility that children who omit word-final stops as a clinical entity may preserve the voicing contrast of those omitted stops by differential durations of the preceding vowel. (Author)

Approximately 47,200 spontaneous utterances of four nonstuttering children were analyzed for the occurrence of developmental disfluency from the time of one word utterances through the emergence of beginning syntax. Variations were found among the children's profiles with systematic changes in disfluency at each succeeding mean length of utterance…

Poor English speakers should learn proper English but not at the expense of denigrating their dialects. Author feels parents could help by participating in program. Bibliography. (AF)

Twelve primary grade children who inconsistently misarticulated "r" participated in training programs for specific allophones of "r." Training steps included production of syllables, nouns, noun phrases, and simple sentences. Generalizing to untrained allophones occurred for all children. (Author)

Longitudinal studies of the application of a paraphrasing model to 18- to 28-month-olds indicated that mean length of utterance was significantly correlated with realized and paraphrased frequencies of several linguistic items in the subjects' corpora. The model was productive for examining children's corpora of speech and the linguistic…

The paper--half of which consists of appended charts, data, and the like--reports on two studies investigating the listening preferences of normal and Down's syndrome infants for recordings of adult speech to a normal 18 month old in contrast to adult speech to another adult. In the first study, Ss in both groups were 12, 15, and 18 months of age.…

THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN AGREED THAT THE BASIC LANGUAGE GOAL FOR DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN SHOULD BE LITERACY IN STANDARD ENGLISH SO THAT THEY WILL BECOME EMPLOYABLE. THEY ALSO FELT THAT ATTENTION SHOULD BE GIVEN TO HOW LIMITED LANGUAGE USAGE CONSTRAINS THE CHILDREN'S INTELLECTUAL…