Purpose: Verbal short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) skills predict speech and language outcomes in children with cochlear implants (CIs) even after conventional demographic, device, and medical factors are taken into account. However, prior research has focused on single end point outcomes as opposed to the longitudinal process of…

Discusses a longitudinal study of young children's acquisition of complex sentences for expressing their beliefs about causally related events, in the transition in language development from simple to complex syntax. While most of the children's statements expressed subjective meaning overall, the acquisition of syntactic connectives was…

In this longitudinal investigation of the emerging grammar of seven children, differences in linguistic acquisition were observed. Analyses revealed two distinct styles of syntactic acquisition that appeared to be sex- and speed-related with specific ties to particular utterance types and grammatical-relational specification. (Author/RM)

The discourse interaction between adult and child was examined in terms of the content of their utterances, and the linguistic and contextual relations between their messages, in order to investigate how children use the information from adults' input sentences to form contingent responses. (Author/BW)

Examined the language skills of 21 6-year olds selected for linguistic precocity as toddlers, finding that verbal abilities and reading achievement remained high from age 2 through 6. Also found that phonological awareness appeared to emerge as a consequence, rather than a cause, of early reading. (31 references) (MDM)

The development of early vocalizations was investigated with 13 infants who had Down's syndrome and 27 infants developing normally, at bimonthly intervals from 4 to 18 months of age. Both groups demonstrated increased production of mature syllables over time as well as large variations in vocal development, both within and across groups and across…

Word comprehension tests were given to 24 infants at 2-month intervals. Parents of 18 of the infants kept a diary of the children's verbal production. Comprehension scores revealed a vocabulary spurt for some children. The presence of a comprehension spurt was associated with a word production spurt. (BC)

A longitudinal study examining the role of imitation on children's lexical acquisition is discussed here. Findings did not support the view that imitation may enable new lexical items to be acquired, and it is noted that other functions of imitation in language acquisition should be explored. (CHK)

Study examined speech complexity among 22 sets of parents and their school-age children during two time periods approximately one year apart. Parents and children were videotaped while completing a block design task and their conversations were transcribed. Speech patterns were found to differ at the two times. (Author/BN)

Examined the relationship between infants' early verbal imitation, when the ability to copy behaviors first emerges, and their lexical development during the second year of life. Twenty infants were examined longitudinally at ages 10, 13, 17, and 21 months. Suggests that infants' early imitation of words not in their repertoires predicts and may…

Investigated developmental change in symbolic representational ability by examining infants' imitation of vocalizations, words, visible motor actions, and nonvisible motor behaviors at ages 10, 13, 17, and 21 months. Results revealed a pattern of increasing imitation, supporting the view that a domain-independent representational capacity develops…

Studied across a 16-month period, young children of deaf parents showed accelerated early language development, on the average producing their first recognizable sign at 8.5 months, their tenth sign at 13.2 months, and their first sign combination at 17.0 months. Findings are inconsistent with previously reported patterns of synchrony between…

Mothers' utterances were measured during interactions with their 13-month-old infants and correlated with measures of infants' productive lexical development at 13 and 24 months. Correlations between maternal measures and infants' lexical development were lower for employed mothers than for mothers who were full-time caregivers. (BC)

Tested a normally developing child several times between 16 and 27 months of age for his ability to derive the relations between stimuli. Found that the child derived "mutual entailment" relations and showed "nonverbal exclusion" as early as 17 months. "Combinatorial entailment" relations and "verbal…

This study investigated whether mothers' responses to their infants' gestures play a role in their infants' vocabulary development. Eight infants were observed interacting at home with their mothers on 2 occasions, when the infants were 10 to 12 months old, and 16 to 18 months old. Videotapes of the observations were transcribed and coded for…