This study examined abstract syntactic categorization in infants, using the case of grammatical gender. Ninety-six French-learning 14-, 17-, 20-, and 30-month-olds completed the study. In a preferential looking procedure infants were tested on their generalized knowledge of grammatical gender involving pseudonouns and gender-marking determiners.…

Results from these two studies show that fast mapping--gaining information about a word from how it is used in a sentence, what words it is contrasted with, and other factors--can be used successfully by children two to four years old to form quick and rough hypotheses about the meaning of a word. (PCB)

Three experiments investigated whether preschoolers attend to actions or object when learning a novel verb. Findings showed that children learning nouns in the context of novel, moving objects attended exclusively to appearances of objects. Children learning verbs attended equally to appearances and motions. With familiar objects, children…

Three experiments tested 3-year-olds' subordinate classification. The first experiment found that novel noun presentation hindered classification. The second and third experiments found that provision of information for the purpose of distinguishing relevant subclasses, and introduction of novel nouns in conjunction with familiar basic level…

Research suggests that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have processing limitations; however, the mechanisms involved have not been well defined or investigated in a theory-guided manner. The theory of constructive operators was used as a framework to explore processes underlying limited processing capacity in children with SLI.…

Investigates the metalinguistic ability of monolingual or bilingual children between five and nine years of age on two language tasks (grammaticality judgment and correction). (HOD)

Examined the use by children of the Novel Name-Nameless Category principle, under the framework that lexical principles are acquired in a developmental sequence. Results indicated that the particular principle was not available at the start of lexical acquisition but that exhaustive categorization ability and a vocabulary spurt occur…