This study investigated a child's development of the concept that a word is a unit used to express meaning. Thirty children, selected at random from grades one through six, were chosen from a school where no exclusive method of teaching reading was used. Each child participated in two tasks. First, a list of nouns was presented in written form and…

Twenty-four children each at the age levels of 6, 9, 12, and 15 years were tested on four types of experimentally determined conceptual clues in a study of concept identification and, therefore, language comprehension. Superordinates, similars, parts, and locations were selected as clue words, and the four clues were combined into all possible…