The acquisition of two types of anaphora, reflexive and non-reflexive personal pronouns, was investigated. It was hypothesized that the two types of anaphora are acquired at different developmental stages. The three experiments involved Dutch children of age 6 and 7 and adults. Interpretations of sentences containing third person reflexive…

Two stages in the vocabulary development of two-year-olds are reported. In the earlier Receptive stage, the child says many fewer nouns than he understands and says no verbs at all although he understands many. The child then enters a Productive stage in which he says virtually all the nouns he understands plus his first verbs. (Author/DEP)

Three experiments on the comprehension and acquisition of temporal terms are described. Methodological innovations were applied to control for possible methodological effects on children's performance. Each experiment involved 24 children aged 3 to 5. In the first experiment, subjects manipulated toys in response to instructions containing the…

Found no correlations between types of play behavior and speech measures, that identification of objects upon verbal request was not related to any type of play behavior, and that comprehension of verbal requests for functional or representational play was positively correlated with the display of such play. Journal availability: J. B. Lippincott…

Discusses a study that examines which combination of animate and inanimate actors (anyone or anything performing an action) and patients (the thing that is the object of action) two-year-olds view as prototypical. Results suggest that the actor category is usually acquired first for prototypical sentences with animate actors and inanimate…

Examined relationships among word comprehension, word production, and enactive and gestural naming by 136 infants of 12-16 months. Results indicate that infants can use adult speech as an aid in the reproduction of modeled gestures. (RJC)

Two studies were conducted to discover possible patterns in question acquisition. For the production study, questions were collected from 22 children aged two to eleven. In the comprehension study, 100 children, aged three to five, were tested. The test controlled syntax and vocabulary and varied specific "wh-" question-words. (Author/RM)

Describes a study of 40 monolingual Spanish-speaking Peruvian children in which comprehension of six locative phrases was tested. Results are analyzed in terms of developmental sequence, locative acquisition, the effects of intrinsic label on projective locative comprehension, the effects of linguistic form, and the effects of context. (SED)

Describes a study showing that mentally retarded children and mentally normal children do not differ fundamentally in cognitive development within the framework of a particular cognitive training. (Text is in French.) (AM)

Children's understanding of the nature of polar terms and comparative terms between the polar opposites is discussed. (CHK)

Diary observations of two-year-olds' over-extended word use have been interpreted as arising from the word's underlying semantic feature structure. This interpretation was rejected after a study of five children. The need to construct models of early word meaning reflecting certain early language development patterns is discussed. (CHK)

The comprehension ability of 36 children at three stages of telegraphic speech was assessed using active behavioral responses to declarative and imperative sentences. A significant increase in verbal and behavioral appropriateness with age was found for imperative and declarative forms. Results are compared with Shipley, Smith and Gleitman's…

How a child answers questions provides information about how he or she processes input. A child's early responses to questions at age one year, three months, were compared to her responses at one year, seven months, when she was in the two-word stage. (SW)

Studied the development of speech act comprehension in 36 retarded and 36 nonretarded children at the developmental ages of five, seven, and nine years. Retarded and nonretarded individuals followed the answer obviousness rule and used the contextual and linguistic clues available to respond to yes-no interrogative sentences. (RJC)

A severely handicapped four-year-old with Down syndrome received training in comprehension and expressive use of Rebus symbols representing new words and generalization of symbol use to the classroom. Significant increases in comprehension and expression scores and generalized symbol use occurred. Development of verbal expressive skills were also…