Production of grammatical and lexical verbs in narratives from 29 individuals with Down syndrome and 29 controls matched on linguistic level was examined. Individuals with Down syndrome produced fewer lexical or grammatical verbs per utterance compared to the control group but produced a greater diversity of lexical verbs. (Author/CR)

Two studies investigated factors affecting children's (n=48) choice of pronouns as referring expressions. Findings indicate the children (ages 2-3) did not use pronouns differentially when the adult model them or they witnessed a target event, but did use pronouns differently depending on the immediately preceding discourse of the experimenter.…

Speaker immersion is a tactic that uses multiple establishing operations to increase speaker behavior for individuals with limited mand and tact repertoires. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the effects of speaker immersion on the number of independent mands, tacts, and autoclitics emitted by young children with verbal delays. In the…

We examined the effects of intensive tact instruction on emission of audience-accurate verbalizations of 2 middle school students using a delayed multiple baseline design across participants. Dependent variables were accurate and inaccurate audience controlled tacts and conversational units during non-instructional times. Following baselines,…

Three experiments on the comprehension and acquisition of temporal terms are described. Methodological innovations were applied to control for possible methodological effects on children's performance. Each experiment involved 24 children aged 3 to 5. In the first experiment, subjects manipulated toys in response to instructions containing the…

The use of imitation as a language learning strategy was explored in a case study of a child in a Mandarin-speaking family. Recordings were made over the course of 3 months, from the ages of 2 years 10 months to 3 years 1 month. It is argued that restrictive criteria regarding identity of form and temporal proximity of utterances have severely…

Confirms previous findings that young children do not have an adequate concept of what constitutes the spoken "word." (RB)

An experiment is reported in which connective recall, as well as noun recall, was obtained in a pair-associate learning, syntactic facilitation paradigm. Results were interpreted as consistent with the hypothesis that experimenter-supplied verb links facilitate noun pair learning by serving an instructional role, indicating to the subject how a…

Reports on a study to determine the origin, development, and use of the comparative in children ages 2-7. The role of adult-child interaction in acquisition is discussed. Tabulated results show that the comparative is used infrequently by young children. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

A major concern in recent research is whether perceptual or functional information is of primary importance in children's early word meanings. In the study described here, artificial objects were used so that form and function could be independently manipulated. There were 57 subjects, ranging in age from 2.5 years to adulthood. The subjects were…

When sound takes on meaning for the first time in the life of a child, a giant and prototypic step in the development of his symbolic capacities has taken place. This step is worthy of careful scientific scrutiny. This paper seeks first to describe the steps by which the author's child discovered the existence of meaning in sound, and second, to…

It is suggested that because of the tendency of psychologists to characterize behavioral phenomena in distinctive ways, it is frequently difficult to determine if the same label is being used to refer to the same phenomenon by different investigators. One strategy to overcome this problem is to determine if similar conclusions are reached when the…

This investigation is part of continuing research to determine the trainability of Group IV personnel and to develop optimal content and methods of marginal training. The Wordsmanship course for training basic written language skills was taught as a part of the Training Methods Development Program experimental curriculum. Data were obtained for…

Analysis of 24 spontaneous speech samples from children at 24 and 30 months revealed a correlated progression in the form, function, and meaning of adjective modifiers used with increased language development. (Author/DEP)