This book captures the diversity and richness of writing as it relates to different forms of abilities, skills, competencies, and expertise. Psychologists, educators, researchers, and practitioners in neighboring areas are interested in exploring how writing develops and in what manner this development can be fostered, but they lack a handy,…

The relationship between pre-school teachers and the children in their classrooms directly influences the degree of success the children experience in school and in life. The emphasis on quality pre-K education in the U.S. has resulted in an increased need for highly qualified teachers who are capable of engaging in meaningful interactions with…

Aims: The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) potentially causes a significant encephalopathy and resultant developmental delay in infected children. The aim of this study was to determine whether a home-based intervention programme could have an impact on the neurodevelopmental status of children infected with HIV. Method: A longitudinal,…

When predicting child developmental outcomes, reliance on children's scores on measures of developmental functioning alone might mask more subtle behavioral difficulties, especially in children with developmental risk factors. The current study examined predictors and stability of examiner behavior ratings and their association with concurrent and…

Development and behavior during the first 2 years of life was assessed retrospectively by the parents to 23 adolescents and young adults with Asperger syndrome and 13 typically developing adolescents and young adults. The groups were matched on chronological age and the participants were within the normal range of intelligence. The questionnaire,…

Data from the Cantonese Communicative Development Inventory (CCDI) is used to review the phonological preferences of younger (16-22 months) and older (23-30 month) groups of children in the lexical items they are reported to be able to say. Analogous results to those found for English emerge from the Cantonese data: the younger group display…

Briefly desctibes (1) the abstraction theory of word meaning acquisition and (2) three distinguishable versions of a conceptually based approach to the acquisition of word meaning. (JMB)

Discusses the acquisition of verb meaning based on the premise that there is a fundamental difference between the relational meanings expressed by verbs and the referential meanings expressed by simple nouns. (JMB)

Examination of pretest and posttest data as well as session data revealed a substantial increase in the number of multiword productions for most of the children in the experimental group (using vertical structures) but not for controls. (Author/CL)

Research on the environmental conditions promoting generative language learning is reviewed. Recombinative generalization is introduced as a principle of stimulus control that enables individuals to express and to comprehend novel utterances. Alternative matrix-training procedures should be considered in attempts to optimize the development of…

The paper describes 16 phonological processes which have been identified in the speech of both normal children and children with a deviant pattern of language development. (Author/SB)

The author provides an overview of language variation in humans and comments upon the emergence of the concept of metalinguistics (awareness of using language). She discusses the contribution of metalinguistics to work with dyslexic persons. (CL)

The language acquisition process in the hearing infant is reviewed and its potential as a model for an initial language program for the deaf child is considered. (Author)

Three- to 5-year olds heard two novel labels each applied to the same novel object. About half the children accepted both labels, thereby overriding mutual exclusivity. About half the children honored mutual exclusivity by accepting only one of the labels. (BC)

Responds to Gordon's critique (in this issue) of Bohannon and Stanowicz (1988) by pointing out relevant and irrelevant aspects of discussions of learnability. Rates of feedback found in Bohannon and Stanowicz are shown to be sufficient to spur learning in many species. Evidence against the universality of negative evidence is discounted. (RH)