Seeks to determine (1) whether 11- and 13-month-old infants directed their eye fixations to the referent of an object word said by the mother, and (2) whether there was a developmental shift in responding to object words at these two ages. Controls were set for response bias, stimulus preference, and maternal cuing. (Author/RH)

Compares the effectiveness of a visual only approach (mouthing and signing) with a simultaneous visual and auditory approach (signing and speaking) in teaching autistic-like children to communicate. Results suggest the simultaneous approach may be superior. In addition, receptive abilities precede expressive. Implications of therapeutic…

In a series of five experiments, young children (two- and three-year-olds) were presented with novel objects in which perceptual and functional features varied independently. Results indicate that early conceptualizations and word meanings are perceptually based when perceptual and functional features are independently available. (Author/RH)

Describes a research project intended to develop a description, within a generative model, of British Sign Language grammar, with particular focus on time expressions. (AM)

A study showing that lexically equivalent words in two languages have different affective meanings, that affective intensity of dominant language words is greater than for second language equivalents, and that the difference is greatest for words with high affective meaning demonstrates that affective meaning is an important component of…

Tells how children's spelling strategies offer a glimpse of their knowledge about words; describes a study indicating that children's knowledge about words develops sequentially and systematically over an extended period of time. Discusses implications of the study for spelling instruction. (GT)

A model of the structure of complex words based on an organization of the internal lexicon by shared-meaning content is proposed. Results of traditional linguistic experiments testing the hypothesis show that meaning content is a more salient basis for judgments of similarity and difference than is meaning structure. (PMJ)

The results of three experiments investigating where native speakers have a morpheme boundary between stems and word-final English derivational suffixes are reported. The way speakers organize phonological data is demonstrated. The results challenge the generative phonological hypothesis of maximal generalization and assumptions concerning…

Major controversies which have arisen from linguists' research into Black English and implications of this research for education of dialect-speaking students are discussed. (JD)

Indicates that native and nonnative speakers alike can make use of intonation if they explicitly listen for it, although prosodic features are generally ignored when other cues (semantic and pragmatic) are available. (Author/RL)

Compares two language intervention methods on effectiveness at improving syntactic structures of language-delayed preschool children. The interactive approach optimized syntax improvement for children with high pretraining scores, whereas the programed approach resulted in superior syntax performance for low-scoring children. (Author/BK)

Describes two experiments to evaluate acquisition of /r/ and /l/ involving native Japanese children and adults residing in the United States. The first required subjects to produce and discriminate English /r/ and /l/ in listening and speaking. Children's performance was better than adults'. In the second, the subject received programed training.…

The developmental nature of the reflective concept of "word" in young children was investigated and the degree to which these developmental aspects of metalinguistic awareness correspond to levels of cognitive development as described by Piaget was studied. (HOD)

Two investigations, one longitudinal/cross-sectional and naturalistic, and the other quasi-experimental, demonstrated that preschool-age children have the capacity for hypothetical reference but that this capacity operates within certain constraints. (Author/AM)

Reports on four experiments exploring the relationship between decision difficulty and subsequent retention. (Author/AM)