We tested the effects of an intensive tact instruction procedure on the emission of verbal operants in non-instructional settings by three preschool students with developmental delays. The participants were selected because they emitted low numbers pure verbal operants in non-instructional settings throughout the school day. Specifically, we…

This curriculum guide, devised in the Speech and Language Development Project in the Milwaukee public schools, lists activities in decoding, memory, association, and encoding, and outlines four study units to stimulate language development. It also contains references to instructional aids (books, filmstrips, instructo flannel materials, records,…

Explores the importance of encouraging children to play with language, to use it as an art medium, to experiment with sounds and words, and to extend meanings. (Author/AJ)

The creation of a structure for oral communication in the lower schools and the universities is discussed. (CK)

A review of the literature on development of verbal language by sighted and blind children is followed by report of a study showing no gross differences in the language of intellectually normal sighted and blind adolescents. (CL)

Among 128 girls attending a private day school in Australia, it was found that changes in semantic aspects of language which occur at the formal operational stage appear to be related to whether a child is classified at the formal operational level on a pendulum problem. (RH)

Examines phonetic variation in multisyllable babbling of infants from 7 to 11 months of age. The investigation was to verify assumptions that, in infant vocal development, there is a systematic increase in the phonetic variation of these babbles, and separate stages of repetitive and nonrepetitive babbling are posited. (22 references) (GLR)

Critiques an earlier article by M. Frauenglass and R. Diaz reporting their study on the interaction between private speech and cognition. Argues that their interpretation fails to regard how private speech is seen to regulate cognitive activity within Vygotskian psycholinguistic theory. (HOD)

Reports a study that indicates many functional speech defects at the first grade level are manifestations of slow development and should not be subject to therapy. (MH)

Reports two studies in which preschool and elementary school children's preference for certain strategies in copying a compound figure were interpreted in terms of a simple phrase structure. The phrase structure involved movements controlled with minimal degrees of freedom. (Author/JMB)

The spelling of words in English is governed in part by the morphemes that make them up. This study examines the strength of children's knowledge of the role of root morphemes in spelling, specifically focusing on whether it can withstand interference by phonological changes. A total of 75 children between seven and nine years of age were given…

Research in psychology and in linguistics has converged to suggest that the syntactic frames in which verbs appear carry meanings of their own, apart from the meaning of the verbs themselves. To date, however, a gap has existed between these two lines of research: Research in psychology has inferred the meanings of frames only indirectly; research…