RESEARCH PROJECTS IN PROGRESS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN'S CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE BEHAVIOR ARE OUTLINED IN THIS REPORT. EACH PROJECT DESCRIPTION INCLUDES A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE PURPOSES, SCOPE, AND DESIGN OF THE RESEARCH, AS WELL AS AN ACCOUNT OF THE WORK ACTUALLY UNDERWAY. THE NAMES OF THE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS ARE ALSO…

This report examines the interrelations among several verbalization indexes on a sample of 27-month-old children and the relation of this data to vocalization scores obtained in the first year. Subjects, 67 girls and 75 boys, were firstborn Caucasian children observed at 4, 8, 13, and 27 months. Parent education varied from incomplete high school…

Behaviors often regarded as diseases are in fact, normal events. Growth, both physical and mental is discussed, including a list of learning modes ranging from ontogenic to verbal transaction. Autistic children are considered. Causes, effects and characteristics such as: (1) irregularities in sleep, (2) irregularities in the environment, (3)…

Focusing on the teaching of reading, chapters in this book (written in French, but with brief English and German translations of chapter resumes) consist of lectures delivered at an international symposium on the teaching of reading held in Switzerland in September of 1971. The contents include: an introduction: opening statements delivered at the…

To determine whether children possess representations and concepts of space before they acquire verbal descriptions of these, children's formation of symbolic representations of space and their acquisition of verbal referents for them were observed. It was found for subjects in the study that conceptual representations of space relations were…

The following are sketched in outline form: (1) functional antecedents and their implications for language--assimilation, accommodation, circular reactions/ feedback processes, classification, discrimination, functional equivalence, representation, transformation, communications; (2) semantic antecedents and their implications for language--human…

These papers were presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of the Speech Communication Association in San Francisco, December 27-30, 1971. "Perspectives on Research in Speech and Cognitive Processes" was presented to a panel session on "Speech Communication Research of the '70s: Six Priority Areas," sponsored by the Research Board of SCA. It reviews…

The experiment employed Sternberg's procedure to investigate the effects of presentation and test modalities (auditory or visual), and number of presentations on the processing rate of monosyllabic words of varying graphemic and phonemic length. Twenty college students and 20 sixth graders served as Ss. Each S received all conditions and lists in…

Examines whether novelty produces more or less attention than familiarity and incongruity, and whether children's learning behavior is related to these differences in attention. Subjects were 43 three- to five-year-old children. (BD)

Vocalizations of two female infants, recorded over a five-week period after the first emergence of cooing were studied. It was found that the features of the more primitive sound types regrouped themselves in comfort sounds. The implications for theories of prespeech development are discussed. (EJS)

The development of plurals in two German-speaking children was analyzed, based on observational data. It was argued that the children were learning plurals by rote, conditioned by morphological complexity which cannot be subsumed under any general rule. (Author/NCR)

This article discusses the popular belief that girls are more advanced in language development than boys. (Author/NCR)

Spontaneous full passives and related constructions from 234 children, aged 2 to 13, and elicited passives from 262 college students were analyzed. The agentive non-reversible did not appear until after age 9; and until age 11 no child produced both reversible and non-reversible passives. (Author/SW)

Focus is one factor that may account for children's use of single-word utterances after they have acquired the use of multi-word utterances. The possible role that focus may play in children's use of single-word utterances in naturalistic settings, after the acquisition of syntax, was investigated. (SW)

Twelve 21/2-year-old children received adult verbal intervention selectively directed toward acquisition of either question forms or verb forms. Findings showed that children who received verb intervention acquired new verb structures while children who received question intervention acquired new forms of questions. (Author/JMB)