The present study aims to examine the Executive Function (EF) skills of preschool-aged children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH), and explore the variables related to their EF skills. Thirty preschoolers who were DHH and an additional 35 preschoolers with typical hearing were recruited. All DHH use spoken language as their communication…

RESEARCH PROJECTS IN PROGRESS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN'S CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGE BEHAVIOR ARE OUTLINED IN THIS REPORT. EACH PROJECT DESCRIPTION INCLUDES A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE PURPOSES, SCOPE, AND DESIGN OF THE RESEARCH, AS WELL AS AN ACCOUNT OF THE WORK ACTUALLY UNDERWAY. THE NAMES OF THE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS ARE ALSO…

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…

Examined three-year-old children's ability to generalize novel words to new instances. Suggested that children's similarity judgments and feature selection in name generalization are guided by nonstrategic attentional processes that are minimally influenced by new conceptual information. Proposed that these findings may explain the extraordinary…

French-speaking children and adults heard silent comic-strip stories that differed by frame display mode, explicitness of the links between depicted events, and whether the topic changed on the last frame. Subjects' use of referents for the last frame indicated that manipulation of context was a good means of assessing speakers' acquisition of…

This paper reports on two aspects of dyadic communication skills: verbal imitation, and response to questions and commands, as they relate to the development of semantic functions in three English-speaking children. The children, aged 16, 21 and 22 months, were unobtrusively videotaped during weekly free play sessions with their mothers. The…

A. R. Luria, in his conception of the verbal control of behavior, regards four fundamental and distinctive functional attributes of the human speech system as making up a signaling system that humans alone possess: (1) the nominative role of language, (2) the generalizing or semantic role, (3) the communicative role, and (4) the role of…

Used observations and home visits to examine sex differences in language ability of 54 disadvantaged children at risk for poor language outcomes. Found that language difficulties increased over time, boys were at a constant disadvantage to girls in language development, and sex difference in language ability appeared even when families had similar…

The 19 papers in this collection cover diversified topics in the general area of psychology and second language learning. No single method of language teaching emerges, but the complexity of second language behavior and the importance of psychology in the field are underlined. Several trends seem to be most prevalent. There is a new focus on the…

This collection of articles concerns various aspects of a cognitive approach to second language learning. The discussion of such an approach involves current ideas in linguistics, psychology, and sociology. The 13 chapters represent the work of 14 authors and include the following titles: "Toward a Cognitive Approach,""Teaching English to Speakers…

A study is described of heuristic devices useful in learning both native and second languages. The study concerns particularly the means used by very young students (second and third graders) in vocabulary acquisition and in the establishment of semantic relationships. It was of concern to verify if (1) the children would use their knowledge of…