Responds to W. Frawley's and J. Lantolf's comments on the Frauenglass and Diaz study concerning the interaction between private speech and cognition. Argues that Vygotsky's theory predicts a positive effect on children's problem solving activity. (HOD)

Experiments with groups of 30 children (aged 3 through 6) and 32 children (aged 5 through 8) showed that (1) children use linguistic form-class information with familiar discrete objects, (2) children do not use linguistic form-class information with familiar food, and (3) children use only object category information with unfamiliar items.…

Children (ages 9-13) with language-learning disabilities were administered 5 types of verbal analogies: synonyms, antonyms, linear order, category membership, and functional relationship. Subjects performed worse than mental age-matched children on all types of analogies and performed worse than language age-matched children on all types except…

Second, fourth, and sixth graders were given passage of text whose material could be represented as four-level class inclusion hierarchy. Students were asked to construct external representation of passage and answer questions that required them to reason about contents of passage. Quality of representation and performance on question tasks were…

Two experiments examined preschoolers' and adults' relative reliance on visual and verbal information in identification of animals and machines. Findings include both children and adults can use either visual or verbal cues in categorization, and a stricter definition is used in identifying animals. Results suggest that a perceptual to conceptual…

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…