People of ages 4, 6, 8, 10, 20 and 70 years named pictures selected to represent the entire range of lexical consensus among 20-year-olds. Consensus within each group increased with age, up to 20. Data indicate words coding culturally important events are acquired earliest. (CHK)

Examined relationships between early vocabulary composition, early language use, and properties of mothers' child-directed speech at 10 words. Found that, when the effects of the child on the mother at 10 words was controlled, there was a negative correlation between mothers' production of speech illustrating word boundaries and the percentage of…

Examines speech samples of a boy 2;4 to 2;11 to determine the relationship between speech disturbances and language production process development. Disfluencies were randomly distributed during the first half of the observation period, then concentrated in function words and sentence initial words, reflecting an emerging speech component dedicated…

Investigates language acquisition and development in 86 infants of 1-24 months who are native speakers of Arabic. Findings are discussed in terms of the stages of language acquisition and development and differences between males and females in the process. (RJC)

The study investigated the ability of 60 children, age 6-8, to monitor grammaticality in the past progressive, perfect progressive, and perfect verb forms. Children achieved a significantly higher rate of accurate judgments monitoring grammatical forms than ungrammatical forms. Context surrounding ungrammatical verb forms and child's age…

A study was undertaken to test the theory that canonical sentence schemas can sometimes assign argument structure to verbs. The theory has the advantage of explaining errors without postulating the acquisition of erroneous lexical entries that have to be learned, and it can be extended to other kinds of errors in the choice and placement of…

Students--516 male and 475 female 11th and 12th graders in Ottawa (Canada)--completed academic self-concept scales from three different instruments to test the Marsh-Shavelson model that accounts for the separation of math and verbal self-concepts. The two self-concepts are separable and should be considered so in future research. (TJH)

Investigated the effects of biomedical and social-environmental conditions on cognitive and language development in children toddlers. Hypothesized a strong effect of biomedical factors in first two years and a strong environmental influence at three years. Used analysis approach to estimate variables assumed to underlie measurement data. Results…

Examined the language skills of 21 6-year olds selected for linguistic precocity as toddlers, finding that verbal abilities and reading achievement remained high from age 2 through 6. Also found that phonological awareness appeared to emerge as a consequence, rather than a cause, of early reading. (31 references) (MDM)

The development of early vocalizations was investigated with 13 infants who had Down's syndrome and 27 infants developing normally, at bimonthly intervals from 4 to 18 months of age. Both groups demonstrated increased production of mature syllables over time as well as large variations in vocal development, both within and across groups and across…

Examined the role of prior temporal knowledge of 4 1/2- and 6-year-olds through the use of high-rate, interval, and minimal instructions in a fixed-interval training schedule. Determined that the subjects' learning depended on their verbal self-control skills. (BC)

Word comprehension tests were given to 24 infants at 2-month intervals. Parents of 18 of the infants kept a diary of the children's verbal production. Comprehension scores revealed a vocabulary spurt for some children. The presence of a comprehension spurt was associated with a word production spurt. (BC)

Vocal samples were collected from a child with cri du chat syndrome from the age of 8 to 26 months. Analyses indicated that the high vocal fundamental was characteristic of comfort state vocalizations of the child. There was a predominance of falling intonation contours and limited interutterance variation of fundamental frequency, and phonetic…

Tested the cross-linguistic applicability of the dual mechanism model, investigating children's spontaneous performance with past definite and elicited performance with past definite and past participle. Performance profiles with productive and unproductive inflections could not be categorically distinguished. Phonologically transparent…

This article discusses the importance of vocabulary in second language acquisition (SLA), presents an overview of major strands of research on vocabulary acquisition, and discusses five principles for effective second language (L2) vocabulary instruction based on research findings on lexical input processing. These principles emphasize…