Describes a study which examined the relationship between mother's speech and the rate of child syntax growth for 22 two-and-a-half-year-old children. Results suggest that linguistic experience does contribute to syntax development but that the relation between linguistic input and language growth is different for different domains of language and…

Fifteen monozygotic and 22 dizygotic twin pairs, who were found to be lower in verbal ability than matched singletons at age two years, were compared at age nine years. Although twins still showed lower verbal ability, more variance in verbal ability was accounted for by the mothers' education and birth weight than by being a twin. (SLD)

Early socialization within the family and its differential effects on the development of verbal intelligence skills were the subjects of this longitudinal study. Fifteen families with one child between one and three years old and a second child born at the beginning of the investigation took part in a longitudinal study covering a seven-year…

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)

An extension of a project that examined the associations between parental responses to children's emotional upset and children's competence in preschool, this study focuses on gender differences in the socialization of competence. Parents' warmth and responsiveness, firmness and control, and responses to their children's emotional upset were…

A study investigated several questions concerning the amount of viewing and types of programs children and parents watched alone and together and the relation of viewing patterns to children's development. Investigated over a 2-year period were coviewing patterns, differences between younger and older children in their viewing with parents,…

This paper is a technical report of analyses carried out to determine the effects of parents' involvement in a prekindergarten program on their children's cognitive development. The research was part of a longitudinal study of the New York State Experimental Prekindergarten Program. A multiple linear regression approach was used to test hypotheses…

As part of a longitudinal study of the New York State Experimental Prekindergarten Program, the effect of degree of parental involvement in the program on children's cognitive development was examined. Parent involvement included employment in the program, school visits, home visits by school personnel, group meetings, and incidental contacts such…

This report describes an investigation of the acquisition by children of a symbolic system, specifically English nomenclature--that set of nouns that serves the function of naming, denoting, or referring to objects. The five studies involve nine experiments dealing with one or another of the aspects of this problem. Two questions guided these…

This study of final-consonant repetitions in the speech of a young child supports the notion that some speech disfluencies may result from parental attempts to accelerate phonological development. An analysis of 12 half-hour-long observations over a year is presented and discussed in terms of the home environment. (Author/KM)

Examined the role of exposure to speech in children's vocabulary growth. Characterized vocabulary growth rates for children from 14 to 26 months of age. Found a relation between individual differences in vocabulary acquisition and variations in the amount of a mother's speech to her children. (BC)

Examines six major preconditions for literacy that are rooted in the home environment and discusses some of the implications of this home literacy environment for schools. (Author/PCB)

This study of the relation of variables of home environment to differences in children's cognitive development used a sample of 25 pairs of grade five boys in the 10-12 age range matched for general intelligence but discrepant with respect to verbal ability. Home environmental measures were obtained by means of a 70 minute interview with the…

Examined the extent to which maternal linguistic input enabled children to use syntactic bootstrapping. Studied uses of 25 common verbs in speech of 57 mothers to their 1-year olds and 2-year olds. Found that verbs can be used to create informative syntactic frames, syntactic frames can cue appropriate verb class, and multiple syntactic framing…

This paper describes the linguistic development of two hearing sons of deaf parents. Both were exposed to an early language environment different from that of the average hearing child. At the start of the study, the boys were aged 3 years, 9 months, and 1 year, 8 months, respectively. When first observed, the older child performed well below age…