THIS PAPER IS A STUDY OF A CHILD'S EARLIEST PRETRANSFORMATIONAL LANGUAGE ACQUISITION PROCESSES. A MODEL IS CONSTRUCTED BASED ON THE ASSUMPTIONS (1) THAT SYNTACTIC ACQUISITION OCCURS THROUGH THE TESTING OF HYPOTHESES REFLECTING THE INITIAL STRUCTURE OF THE ACQUISITION MECHANISM AND THE LANGUAGE DATA TO WHICH THE CHILD IS EXPOSED, AND (2) THAT…

Genetic involvement in specific verbal and spatial abilities and memory and perceptual speed was assessed using 163 adopted and 142 non-adopted 7-year-olds and their biological, adoptive, and non-adoptive parents. Results imply the existence of some genetic continuity from the early school years to adulthood for verbal and spatial abilities. (TJH)

This study examines the contribution of children's linguistic ability and mothers' use of mental-state language to young children's understanding of false belief and their subsequent ability to make belief-based emotion attributions. In Experiment 1, children (N = 51) were given three belief-based emotion-attribution tasks. A standard task in…

The project evaluated the effectiveness of using Total Communication (simultaneous use of sign language and speech) with six infants with Down syndrome as a means of fostering communication while verbal skills and articulatory proficiency develop. Each child was seen within the home environment every second week through 24 months of age and once a…

This longitudinal study examined the experiences of out-of-home preschool child care to performance and adjustment in elementary school. Subjects were 145 children in Goteborg, Sweden, who were on average 16 months of age when they were enrolled in this study. Within 4 weeks of enrollment in the study, 54 children began center-based day care, 36…

This book is the second to present the results on a study of how children's practice of speech, as shaped by family interaction, affects learning to talk. Participating in the study were 42 diverse families with young children. Each month for 2.5 years the interactions between 42 one- to two-year-olds and their parents were recorded as the…

This study assesses the feasibility of predicting children's verbal attainment scores by examining mothers' education and parenting styles and children's experience of preschool. Data are derived from a group of 5,362 children born in England, Wales, and Scotland in March of 1946. The parenting styles have been studied from the time the parents'…

Overview: A recent evaluation of children who had participated in the Parent-Child Home Program (PCHP) as toddlers found that at kindergarten age, these children were performing at levels expected for their age, despite the fact that they had multiple factors putting them at risk for school failure. The Study: In the winter and spring of 2002, 135…