Examined overregularization of irregular verb forms in children's language learning. Found that overregularization errors are relatively rare; occur at a constant rate; and are not correlated with the proportion of regular verbs in parents' or children's speech. Also found that a period of correct performance precedes the child's first error. (BC)

Discusses research on cognitive styles and strategies. Groups labels into two principle styles. Describes the wholist-analytic style, examining whether an individual tends to process information in wholes or parts, and the verbalizer-imager style considering whether an individual is inclined to represent information during thinking verbally or in…

A 7-month longitudinal study of 20 2- and 3-year-old children shows that children at an early age already know that counting words each refer to a distinct numerosity, although they do not know to which numerosity. It takes children a long time to learn the latter. (SLD)

How verbal information is processed and recalled appears to be influenced by the structure of the information presented (e.g., unrelated sentences vs. narratives) and the processes the listener uses to encode the information (e.g., verbatim encoding vs. gist extraction). Twenty adults, half with a history of learning disabilities (HLD) and half…

Cross-national stability in private speech (PS) and short-term memory was investigated in Saudi Arabian (n=63) and British (n=58) 4- to 8-year-olds. Assumed differences in child-adult interaction between the 2 nationality groups led to predictions of Gender ? Nationality interactions in the development of verbal mediation. British boys used more…

In three studies, the effects of visual and phonological distinctness on the visual-verbal paired associate learning of dyslexic and normal readers at the age of 10-12 were examined. We hypothesized that both groups would be equally affected by the visual distinctness of the pictures, whereas the learning performance of the dyslexic children would…

Different effects of instructional strategies on recall and comprehension of terms frequently used in formal analysis of art were examined. The study looked at a synthesis of three theoretical positions: dual-coding theory, schema theory, and elaboration theory. Two-hundred and fifty sixth-grade students were randomly assigned to three groups:…

A study examined use of passive and antipassive constructions in the spontaneous utterances and picture comprehension responses of young speakers of Quiche Mayan, aged 1-5. This usage was compared with use of similar constructions in English-speaking children. Quiche-speakers' usage was found to be precocious in comparison with English-speakers'…

Focusing on language development--from beginning speech to literacy--with particular attention paid to growth in writing, this paper identifies and describes: (1) links between speech and writing; and (2) features of children's written and spoken texts that indicate growth. The process of constructing "texts" is presented as the fabric…

This paper reports on an investigation of children's ability to accept contrary-to-fact premises as though they were factual and to reason accordingly. A variety of questions requiring this skill were presented in semi-structured interview form to 10 to 12 subjects from each of six age groups ranging from 5 to 9 years, and to a control group of…

A question of both theoretical and practical importance for the study of phonological development is whether there is a difference in the status of productions rendered spontaneously by the child and those repeated by the child after either an adult model or his own production. The relevant theoretical questions are: (1) Are all the child's…

A TWO-YEAR SEMINAR IN LEARNING THEORY AND THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF EDUCATION WAS CONDUCTED FOR A FACULTY GROUP OF A SMALL PRIVATE LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE. EIGHT VISITING RESEARCHERS IN PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION PRESENTED THEIR WORK AND DISCUSSED ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH RESPECT TO THE DISCIPLINES REPRESENTED BY 22 FACULTY…

Investigated was the relative effectiveness of sign language and verbal language training in teaching 12 nonverbal hearing retarded children (4-9 years old) to communicate. Ss were randomly assigned to one of three groups: speech training (based on the Bricker, Dennison, Watson, and Vincent-Smith program), sign language training (adapted from the…

Currently, the reliance on intelligence tests as the primary criterion for the placement of children in school programs has been challenged. Much of the controversy focuses on the insensitivity of these instruments to individual cognitive styles for different subgroups of children. While the issue of whether intelligence tests measure skill…

To obtain an a priori estimate of natural language mediators (NLM's) 320 pairs of words with the consonant-vowel-consonant-pattern (CVC's) were broken into four series of 90 pairs and presented to 240 male and female undergraduates. Pairs were shown for 15 seconds while the subjects wrote down any associative device or NLM they could generate that…