This study aims to examine the relationship between school maturity levels and speech and language development of children receiving preschool education. The correlational survey models was used to determine these relationships. The sample of the study consists of 44 boys and 58 girls who are studying in public schools in Meram district of Konya…

The Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) is an intervention program recommended for pre-schoolers with autism ages 12-48 months. The rationale for this recommendation is the potential for intervention to affect developmental trajectories during early sensitive periods. We investigated outcomes of 32 children aged 18-48 months and 28 children aged…

The Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale was administered to 54 children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) before age 2, and a matching group of 18 toddlers with developmental delay (DD). The group with ASD was more impaired on all scales of the Vineland than DD peers. When 18 ASD/DD pairs very closely matched on age, verbal and nonverbal…

Purpose: The primary goal of this study was to document the progression of the microstructural elements of written language in children at 4 grade levels. The secondary purpose was to ascertain whether the variables selected for examination could be classified into valid categories that reflect the multidimensional nature of writing. Method:…

Investigates developmental change in inter- and intrahemispheric transfer of tactile information in two experiments with 74 and 77 subjects aged 4, 6, 10, and 20 years. Results indicate a developmental improvement in inter- and intrahemispheric transfer of tactile information. (RJC)

Developmental changes in the expression of superordinates in children's word definitions were studied with 96 elementary school students. Superordination increased significantly and changed qualitatively with age, although across grades children produced more superordinates for nouns than for adjectives or verbs. (SLD)

Studied 150 Italian children aged five to eight years to determine whether a significant relation existed between referential communication and comparison performance. Results indicated that the ability to compare in noncommunicative tasks was significantly related to communication effectiveness in referential tasks. (RJC)

Research was conducted to compare evidence of implicit processing in children and adults. Implicit processing was defined as inductive cognitive activities which enable people to abstract complex knowledge from the environment. The knowledge acquired is tacit; it guides subjects' behavior in various situations without the subjects necessarily…

Discusses a longitudinal study of young children's acquisition of complex sentences for expressing their beliefs about causally related events, in the transition in language development from simple to complex syntax. While most of the children's statements expressed subjective meaning overall, the acquisition of syntactic connectives was…

Two experiments used the preferential looking task to assess early word comprehension in 12- to 24-month olds. Results indicated that when target stimuli were named, 12-month olds displayed an increase in target looking for typical--but not atypical--targets, whereas 18- and 24-month olds displayed increases for both. (Author/KB)

Reports on two studies that examined the natural process of word learning in children 4-11 years old. The children hear the new words in a conversation, a story, and paired with a definition. Results indicate that children at all ages could acquire a partial semantic representation from a single exposure. (SED)

Presents the results of an investigation of age trends in the development of ideational fluency among 7-to-12 year-olds in which verbal, figural, and Draw-a-Man tests were administered to school children in five groups at 1-year intervals between the ages of 7 and 12. A 13-item reference list is included. (Author/JL)

Describes a study to determine: (1) the relationship between age and mean length of utterance measured in morphemes (MLU) in a group of normally developing two- and three-year-old chidren; (2) the standard error of MLU; (3) the relationship between MLU and age; and, (4) the ability of MLU to predict children's grammatical development. (SED)

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…

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)