Factor analysis accounts for most of the variance in adult ratings of concepts with adjectives. Affective reactions are present in young infants, but still to be explored is how the stable adult factor structure develops from these reactions. Three questions are investigated in this study: (1) is this factor structure present in 3- and…

The data in this study are taken from an on-going research project investigating the development of the production of intervocalic consonants in Mexican Spanish. The total project includes both longitudinal and cross-sectional studies of forty children and uses both naturalistic observation and experimental methods. The data discussed here is from…

This study proposes that children's phonological behavior at Stage VI of sensorimotor development may show markedly decreased variability compared to children at Stage V. According to Piaget, sensorimotor development during Stage VI is distinguished from preceding stages by the onset of representational ability and ability to form mental…

This paper explores the relation between the communicative and categorical functions of language and the acquisition of language production. Three major factors in language acquisition are communication, ability for representation and the process of categorization. This paper offers evidence that a sudden and dramatic increase in lexical skill…

It is proposed that in studying the development of children's speech, the findings in the data are heavily influenced by what is expected to be found on the basis of our theoretical preconceptions. This phenomenon is actually more widespread than has previously been acknowledged, and our expectations about how children learn language may have to…

Work with verbal autistic children has demonstrated phonological, syntactic, and semantic production defects which are not understandable solely in terms of a developmental lag, but also suggest aspects of atypical linguistic development. This investigation is a preliminary attempt to test not only the production, but also the perception, of…

Several studies have begun to investigate the claim that children can make most phonological discriminations when they begin to speak. This paper investigates how well children aged 2;3 to 2;11 can discriminate between pairs of minimally different real words, and it shows that the results are affected by how well the children know the words. It is…

This paper proposes a broad outline of a variable model of language development and explores several particulars of such a model in the language behavior of four two-year-old children. The process by which information about language is progressively transformed and integrated rather than merely being added together can be seen in the shifting…