A cost-benefit and speed-accuracy analysis of semantic priming in a lexical decision task provided information relevant to the automatic-conscious distinction as well as to the operation of discriminability, criterion bias, and response bias in the facilitation. (Author/MH)

Proposes a top-down procedural model for the dynamic extraction and use of context structure to resolve references. (FL)

An attempt is made to describe second language behavior and language transfer in cybernetic terms. This should make it possible to translate language into machine language and to clarify psycholinguistic explanations of second language performance. (PMJ)

Seeks to determine whether young children use different strategies than do adults in clausal processing. Subjects were 20 three year olds, 30 four year olds, 20 five year olds, and 30 undergraduate students. (MP)

The study involving 56 hearing and 24 deaf children (9-11 years old) sought evidence of language knowledge in deaf children extending beyond formal instruction, and consequently suggestive of a functional generative language system. (Author/SBH)

A neural model in the form of a servo-mechanism is developed to account for certain aspects of language and speech in the human nervous system. Emphasis is placed on encoding processes as well as on-going feedback during production. (SW)

This study explored differences among 10 children with Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD), 10 age-matched peers, and 10 young adults, by examining vocal reaction time when presented with printed one- and two-syllable words. Children with CAPD produced significantly more errors than their peers or adults, specifically for long-delay…

Provides new evidence from Spanish and English self-paced reading experiments on relative clause attachment sites. Suggests that a principle like Late Closure is universally operative in the human parser. Proposes that a second factor is the principle of Predicate Proximity. Discusses the origins and predictions of the theory combining these two…

Examined the relationship between first- and second-language literacy by identifying the skills and processes developed in the first language that were transferred to the second language. Subjects were 40 students from China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Australia. Found that people learning English as a second language transfer their literacy…

This article examines the role of capacity limitations in working memory for children with specific language impairment (SLI). Preliminary findings support the contention that capacity constraints play a role in language disorders and that variations in the presentation rate of linguistic models affect the ability of children with SLI to learn new…

Presents the goals of the Plunkett and Marchman (PM) connectionist model of the acquisition of verb morphology, and responds to related criticisms. Claims that small vocabulary size allows young children to correctly produce both regular and irregular past tense forms, and that non-linearities in vocabulary growth are a contributing factor to the…

Two studies examined 6- to 11-year-olds' gender-related interpretations of occupational titles. Findings indicated that children were sensitive to linguistic forms of job titles, and that these sensitivities differed in relation to participant variables such as attitude. Gender-specific interpretations occurred more frequently for marked…

Focuses on Elman's (1990) statistical analyses of the hidden unit activation patterns in his simple recurrent network on sentence prediction, first to highlight the feasibility of such analyses and then to show how connectionist explanations contribute to the development of effective explanatory theories. Argues for the evolutionary nature of…

Children's phonological processing abilities, reading skills, and vocabulary were assessed annually from kindergarten through grade four. Found that individual differences in phonological awareness were related to subsequent differences in word-level reading, and that individual differences in letter-name knowledge were related to subsequent…

Explores how children negotiated social identities through language used in spontaneous, casual conversation. Examines how audio transcripts of the childrens' conversations exhibit different aspects of their social "selves" and suggests that their talk can be analyzed in relation to the individual self, the immediately situated social actor, and…