Examines the effects of chronological age, mental age, and intelligence quotient on verbal imitation of five-year-old children, concluding that transition occurs during the fifth year of life as young five-year-olds emitted more mimical and less conceptual responses than older five-year-olds. (RB)

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…

Spontaneous full passives and related constructions from 234 children, aged 2 to 13, and elicited passives from 262 college students were analyzed. The agentive non-reversible did not appear until after age 9; and until age 11 no child produced both reversible and non-reversible passives. (Author/SW)

Focus is one factor that may account for children's use of single-word utterances after they have acquired the use of multi-word utterances. The possible role that focus may play in children's use of single-word utterances in naturalistic settings, after the acquisition of syntax, was investigated. (SW)

Investigates the development of past tense expressions in the speech of children from 1.6 to 2.6. It is shown that this development depends crucially on the child's cognitive construction of the time dimension, as described by Piaget. (Author/RM)

Many researchers have assumed that adult bilinguals have separate systems for their two languages. Such an assumption raises interesting questions about how the two languages are acquired in the case of a child learning two languages simultaneously. This study attempts to determine whether the two languages are acquired separately right from the…

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)

Two experiments related to the development of verbal self-control in children were conducted. In the first experiment, 36 adults and 36 four year olds were administered a vocal alone, a motor alone, and a combined-reaction-time task. In the second experiment, 54 kindergarten subjects and 60 fifth-grade subjects were each administered a double…

This paper explores the questions of how and why children learn names for things. The acquisition of reference is set within a broader discussion of linguistic representation, which defines language as a system functioning in a three-way relationship among the individual language user, the world of experience, and the social community. It is…

Production data from a longitudinal study of seven children in their first attempts to produce words containing fricatives are presented to illustrate how children use four distinct strategies to approach this relatively difficult class of sounds. The strategies are: (1) favorite sounds--an approach used by a subject who seemed to enjoy playing…

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 an experiment undertaken to delineate more clearly the relationship between the naming process in children and certain aspects of the environment which may play a role in that process. The investigation concerned the effect of manipulation and of object novelty on naming. Sixteen children, ten girls and six boys, ranging in…

This paper describes part of a larger study dealing with syntax and semantics of the child's early speech about motion and location. It suggests that goal, defined as the point at which a motion ends and a resulting locative state begins, is the organizing principle for the semantics of motion and location. The data presented here are from two…

Factor analysis accounts for most of the variance in adult ratings of concepts with adjectives. Affective reactions are present in young infants, but still to be explored is how the stable adult factor structure develops from these reactions. Three questions are investigated in this study: (1) is this factor structure present in 3- and…

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…