This study employs a lexical-decision task to investigate second- and fourth-grade children's use of semantic context in word recognition. Results showed that younger and poorer readers benefit at least as much from semantic context in word recognition as do older and better readers. (Author/JMB)

In three experiments, three- and four-and-a-half-year-old preschool children were tested on free and cued recall tasks in which semantic and contextual cues were manipulated. When context and target items were integrated experimentally at presentation, unrelated context cues improved recall. A developmental increase in the effectiveness of…

Analysis indicates that both 5 and 7-year-old children are capable of distinguishing between anomalous and meaningful sentences although 7-year-olds demonstrate greater awareness of selection restriction rules. (Authors)

Two studies of toddlers and children with autism, mentally handicapped children, and normal toddlers examined whether autistic toddlers used Speaker's Direction of Gaze (SDG) strategy or less powerful Listener's Direction of Gaze (LDG) strategy to learn a word for a novel object. Results suggest autistic toddlers are insensitive to speaker's gaze…

Two experiments examine use of defining, characteristic, category, and identical semantic features of word concept information in cued recall. College adults and 7- to 11-year-old children were shown word triplets in which context words were related or unrelated to final target word. Results suggest meaning features differ in providing medium for…