Describes a study which sought to determine the developmental stage at which children begin to differentiate specific and neutral contingent queries. The study manipulated the familiarity of the adult listener by having each of the 22 children interact both with the mother and with an unfamiliar adult experimenter. (SED)

Examines the conversational behavior of eight-year-old Hawaiian boys and girls of either Caucasian or Japanese descent in same ethnic and same-gender pairs or in mixed-ethnic and/or mixed-gender pairs. Results suggest that temporal speech patterns are stable characteristics of children's vocal behavior, and that these conversational rhythms vary…

Discusses the differences between the English native and nonnative speaker's creation and use of nominal compounds. A comparison between English speakers and Japanese native speakers indicates that not only must nonnative speakers acquire rules in order to effectively compound words in English, but that rules must indeed exist, indicating that…

Discusses a study of the relationship between context and a mother's speech to her prelinguistic infant and a second phase which involved 48 mothers and their infants. Results are discussed in relation to a hypothesis that assumes that mothers' speech is determined by particular interactive rules operating in the mother-infant dyad. (Author/SED)

Presents data from a literacy study of bilingual classrooms demonstrating that teachers have strong expectations and assumptions about literacy instruction, and that certain literacy methods, materials, and assumptions can also make literacy more difficult for the limited-English-speaking child. (HTH)

Describes an investigation of the notion that sentence perception involves holding single clauses or propositions in a temporary buffer. Concludes that this notion is false and that, instead, more recently presented or important material may become more accessible in memory as presentation of the sentence proceeds. (Author/SED)

Describes a paired-associate learning experiment in which American Sign Language signs of high and low translucency and high and low cheremic similarity were presented to sign-naive subjects. One hypothesis, that translucency would facilitate learning, was confirmed; a second, that cheremic similarity would retard sign learning, was not.…

Describes a study of preschool children's utterances and their context, intended to provide evidence of children's argumentative capacities. Shows how children, though perhaps not consciously, use language to intervene upon reality in order to modify a state of things by sensibly arguing their case. (SED)

Explores the development of language teaching in light of Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolution and briefly defines the positivist tradition in language teaching. Argues that the current emphasis on communication does not mark the emergence of a new paradigm, as it still operates in the positivist tradition, but rather a paradigm shift.…

Reviews the results of research in language acquisition, interactional analysis, pragmatics, repair, error, and social and affective factors. Extracts four language teaching principles relating to acquisition activities in the classroom, the importance of affective factors, the communicative capacity of learners, and the nature and treatment of…

Emphasizes the importance of psycholinguistic research in enabling us to discover phenomena which will later be seen to have representations in the brain. In addition, the different ways a second language is learned and used, as well as the differences in the actual language structures themselves, will participate in determining brain organization…

Three levels of metacommunication knowledge and five factors that influence the understanding of speaker meaning in oral language were identified in pilot interviews with children and adolescents. (HOD)

In order to compare the foregrounding strategies of native speakers of English and advanced learners of English as a second language, 15 native speakers and 35 advanced learners produced play-by-play descriptions of the unfolding action in an animated videotape. Results show that the two groups use different strategies of foregrounding. (SED)

Focuses on the narrative function to show how children can build on another speaker's turns in conversation and can build on their own utterances as they speak. Analyzes children's dialogs and narratives to highlight the primacy of the oral language arts as they are enacted in daily conversation and play. (HTH)

Results of five experiments in which adults and children were exposed to two study strategies for vocabulary learning: (1) repetition of words with meanings and (2) associative elaboration (the keyword method). Subjects were asked to choose one of the two study methods for learning a 24-item list of new vocabulary words. (SL)