To learn a language infants must learn to link arbitrary sounds to their meaning. While words are the clearest example of this link, they are not the only component of language; morphological regularities (e.g., the plural -s suffix in English) carry meaning as well. Comprehensive theories of language acquisition must account for how infants build…

Sixteen 9-18 month normal/superior infants "played" in their home cribs with a two-channel operant "toy" which allowed free choice between alternate audio feedbacks. With more than 300,000 seconds of listening time in the response record, 12 babies successfully discriminated gross differences in auditory complexity, while 10 discriminated fine…

This study, which assessed hypothesis-testing abilities using a discrimination-learning paradigm, found that 16 language-impaired primary-level children solved fewer problems than 16 controls equated on cognitive level, but the 2 groups used similar hypothesis types to solve the problems. Type of verbal feedback (explicit versus nonexplicit) did…

The aim of this report was to provide teachers of preschool and early elementary school children with a brief summary of current psychological research and theory concerned with the development of cognitive skills in young children. Psychological research often provides a basis for procedures teachers use in the classroom. Each chapter of the…

This summary report to the families of the subject children involved in the Pre-School Project outlines in a non-technical manner the methods and category systems used to examine the information gathered and to interpret the findings drawn from the data. The two major interests of the Pre-School Project were: (1) the moment-to-moment experience of…

This is a partial report of a longitudinal investigation designed to assess the psychological effects of an experimentally conducted day care program on children during the first 30 months of life. The experimental subjects were Chinese and Caucasian children from working and middle class families who were cared for at a special group care center…

This volume includes reports of five research projects of the Kansas Center for Research in Early Childhood Education: (1) Individual Differences in Newborn and Young Infants, including research with the Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale and laboratory studies of infant discriminative abilities; (2) Development of Social Competence, including…