Seneca elder Sandy Dowdy and her granddaughter Autumn Crouse direct a language nest school for children aged two to five years in a small longhouse-shaped building, "Ganöhsesge:kha:' Hë:nödeyë:sta'":, or the Faithkeepers School, on the Seneca Allegany Territory in upstate New York. They practice immersion teaching and use forms of…

In recent years, the intersection of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and neuroscience with regard to deaf individuals has received increasing attention from a variety of academic and educational audiences. Both research and pedagogy have addressed questions about whether deaf children learn in the same ways that hearing children…

This study investigated novel word acquisition by 18- and 24-month-old children in the context of adult referential behavior independent of variations in salience. Findings suggest that 24-month olds use referential intent of the speaker to learn new words, but when learning, they may have a less secure grasp on the meaning of speakers'…

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…

This study compared verbal comprehension, verbal production, and gesture production in 40 children (ages 10-49 months) with Down Syndrome (DS) and 40 normally developing children (ages 8-17 months). DS children showed a dissociation between verbal comprehension and production but synchronous development between vocal lexical comprehension and…

A longitudinal study of four 17- to 33-month-olds revealed that their linguistic selection at the one-word stage was governed by principles of informativeness, while the two-word stage was characterized by new, or a combination of new and old, information. (Author/CB)

Two studies examined children's perceptual biases in extracting or identifying words from the stream of speech. In one study, evidence for the salience of stressed and final syllables was found. Young children less frequently omitted those syllables from their productions and produced unstressed and nonfinal syllables less accurately. A second…

Intended for parents and others caring for young children, this viewer's guide and videotape leads adults along the path of child's language acquisition and demonstrates how to use a language-rich environment to communicate with infants, toddlers, and preschool children in ways to foster language development. The first half of the guide presents…

A study examined use of passive and antipassive constructions in the spontaneous utterances and picture comprehension responses of young speakers of Quiche Mayan, aged 1-5. This usage was compared with use of similar constructions in English-speaking children. Quiche-speakers' usage was found to be precocious in comparison with English-speakers'…

This paper discusses why and how parents of children with hearing impairments participate in the auditory-verbal approach. The components of therapy sessions are outlined, and techniques are described for developing listening skills, speech production, language, and communication in infants and toddlers. Effective teaching strategies are reviewed…

Noting that young children learn to talk at different ages but within certain developmental boundaries, this document presents two charts to help parents facilitate their toddler's speech. The first chart lists characteristics to look for in a growing, healthy baby at various ages between 3 months and 24 months, and suggestions for when to talk to…

Discusses pre-linguistic and linguistic stages of language acquisition that are part of a continuum of receptivity and communication every child experiences in the first 3 years of life. Suggests parents assist language development by being sympathetic to each developmental turning point, providing the right emotional climate for expression, and…