This paper reviews the literature on grammatical knowledge in language comprehension in the preschool years from the perspective of sensitivity to structural contrasts. Studies of both direct and indirect evidence of sensitivity to structural contrasts were evaluated and showed that there may be a developmental sequence of increasing sensitivity…

Offers evidence that contradicts the idea of a relatively homogeneous North American dialect area in which vowel systems remain fairly stable. The article examines back vowel fronting in Canadian English and its relationship to the shift affecting the front lax vowels, as well as to the general principles of vowel chain shifting. (29 references)…

Differences between girls who left home early and at a normative age were examined across several domains of behavior and family relationship constructs. Found that those who leave home early, compared to those leaving later, were more likely to have evidenced childhood problem behaviors and discordant family relations in childhood and adjustment…

Used Australian Mathematics Competition to examine performance in mathematics of students young for their grade. The youngest students performed better than the oldest students. There were more males than females in the older group but no gender differences in the younger group. Items ranged from routine to highly sophisticated. (NBI)

Thirteen infants were presented with a moving object under two lighting conditions to investigate the role of vision in early reaching. Infants were tested twice, at 5 and 7.5 months of age. The results suggest that proprioceptive feedback and sight of the target allowed for successful reaching with limited visual information, even in relatively…

Examines the influence of socialization figures (parents, friends), emotion type (anger, sadness, physical pain), age, and gender on 66 second-grade and 71 fifth-grade children's reasons for and methods of affect expression. Found that girls reported using verbal means to communicate emotion, whereas boys cited mildly aggressive methods. (MDM)

Five experiments investigated whether children, ages three to eight, think of pretending as a mental state. Results indicated that most children under six see pretending as primarily physical. Eight-year-olds claimed that execution of pretense did not involve the mind, although the planning aspect of pretense did. (MOK)

Presented a battery of false belief tasks varying in type of belief questioned, target for belief ascription, presentation of reality information, and deception context to Head Start children. Found that performance was better on locations tasks than on contents tasks and with older children compared with younger children and that performance was…

Two experiments showed increased use of orthographic rime correspondence in nonword reading tasks from second to fourth grade, with no further increase from fourth to sixth grade. The use of orthographic rime correspondences in reading ambiguous non-words was more strongly associated with word-level reading skills than was the use of…

Analyzes play discourse participation frameworks in groups of different gender and age compositions, focusing on different ways that children "voice" a pretend play role. Uses a preschool classroom for an observational study. Finds significant differences in voicing used by older and younger play groups. Discusses results with respect to the…

Adaptive behavior was measured over time in 70 children, ages 1 to 12 years, with fragile X syndrome. With a mean of 4.4 assessments per child, adaptive behavior skills increased steadily and gradually over time. Children with less autistic behavior and higher percentages of the fragile X mental retardation gene protein showed better performance…

Assessed age-related changes in 2- to 4-year olds' verbal and nonverbal memory for the same unique event. Found that children's performance on each memory measure increased as a function of age. Children with more advanced language skills reported more during the verbal interview and exhibited superior nonverbal memory relative to children with…

Observed 10-, 26-, and 42-month-olds playing under several distraction conditions to describe development of attention and distractibility. Found that casual attention decreased and focused attention increased with age. Ten-month-olds were more distractible than older children, even during focused attention. Infants were most distracted by the…

Two experiments examined the impact of slow development of processing differences among faces in the spacing among facial features (second-order relations). Computerized tasks involving various face-processing skills were used. Results of experiment with 6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds and with adults indicated that slow development of sensitivity to…

Examined 6-, 9-, and 14-year-olds' imagination of the unknown within a storytelling context. Performed phenomenological analysis of the two youngest groups' drawings and the oldest group's story on the "heffalump" theme. Derived eight categories providing an image-analysis of the concept of the "unknown" structured as "something-otherwise," that…