The release-from-proactive-inhibition technique was used to assess the effects of mode of presentation and presentation rate on the development of elementary school children's ability to use the evaluative dimension of the Semantic Differential as an encoding device in short-term memory. (Author/JMB)

This study examined the ability of 4-year-old children to understand the propositional components (presuppositions and assertions) of semantically complex propositions and to deduce what such components together imply. (BRT)

Examined five possible rules that children might use to interpret the terms "big" and "little." Increasing consistency in rule usage appeared to be the most significant developmental progression for children between the ages of three and five with respect to these terms. (Author/RH)

Abilities of 2-, 5-, and 7-year-old children to interpret, judge acceptability of, and produce class extensions were assessed. It was concluded that increasing ability to deal appropriately with class extensions is primarily due to general advances in language acquisition rather than to any development unique to the class-extension word-formation…

Reports two studies which found a relationship between awareness of word order in sentences and reading readiness and achievement for children in kindergarten through third grade. Suggests this type of metalinguistic awareness may be important to early reading because it helps children to detect meaningful relationships between words. (Author/CB)

Tests the hypothesis that semantic memory changes with age such that concepts become more strongly associated with their superordinate classes than with their exemplars. The Stroop color-naming technique was employed with 48 children 8 through 12 years of age to measure the degree of semantic activation between concepts in memory. (Author)

Examines the understanding of the pragmatic function of mental terms ("think,""know,""guess") to express the relative certainty of 69 children aged 3-11. Results showed an improvement with age for the "know-think" and "know-guess" contrasts, but no improvement with age for the…

Results of four experiments suggest that two-year-olds may be capable of forming inclusion relations when they hear a novel word for an object that already has a familiar name. (PCB)

Preschool children were tested for their understanding of the use of definite and indefinite articles in 2 kinds of story-telling tasks. (ST)

Examines preschool children's comprehension of the differing implications of the verbs "think" and "know". Results indicated that 4-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, understood the differences between the terms. (JMB)

Third- and sixth-grade readers were asked to label sets of pictures printed with distracting words (either nouns, adjectives, or functors) and nonsense syllables. (Author/JMB)

Compares sentence interpretation in American and Italian children between the ages of two and five. Results indicated that Italian children relied primarily on semantic cues, whereas American children relied on word order. (Author/CI)

Findings suggest that semantic knowledge for concrete objects is represented and organized in similar ways in autistic, retarded, and normal children. Previous findings on cognitive deficits in autistic children are more likely related to their inability to use cognitive representations in an appropriate and flexible manner. (Author/RH)