Two aspects of elicited imitation procedures, the relationship between imitation and spontaneous performance and the effect of nonlinguistic context, were examined using seven normal preschoolers. Elicited imitation performance did not accurately predict spontaneous speech performance, and the addition of nonlinguistic context cues did not…

Evidence supporting two roles of imitation in language acquisition was found in a single child's speech studied at ages 2.8 and 3.0. Imitation can serve to limit the language environment's complexity, and forms may appear in imitations before appearing in spontaneous speech. Use of "what?" is given as an example. (MSE)

Case studies of a few naturally bilingual children are reported in the context of a larger research project with bilingual children living in Rome. Studies focused on personality traits present from birth and concomitant with bilingual development. Data confirm full psychological normality on the part of bilingual children. (Author/AMH)

Examines children's errors in interpreting 'ask' as 'tell' in the framework of pragmatic development. Results indicate that if the children do not know the information, they relay the question, i.e., 'ask.' If they do know the answer, they supply it, i.e., 'tell.' (EKN)

Existing data on metalinguistic skills are reviewed and then grouped according to the cognitive strategies children appear to employ in resolving metalinguistic tasks. (Author/MP)

Examines trends in reading instruction, suggesting that some approaches are responsible for children's reading difficulties. Looks at research suggesting ways to bridge the gap between reading experiences that take place in the home and those that occur in school. (HTH)

Research results show that it may be possible, within limitations, to facilitate discrimination by infants of inappropriate from appropriate verbal descriptions of a visual event, by emphasizing the agent component in a simple sentence. (Author/JB)

Young children were found to overextend and underextend newly uttered but previously understood words. The data are discussed in terms of differences between children's and adult's word meanings and between comprehension and production. (Author)

Research with young Hebrew-speaking children revealed a development in linguistic control of the system of verb-pattern alternation from nonalternation to near mastery, with the concepts of causativity and distinctions in transitivity being lexicalized earlier than others. (Author)

Examines the linguistic experimentation of children in three different age groups by means of their use of word games. (HTH)

Comprehension and strategy use of 18 autistic children was compared with that of normal 3- and 4-year olds. Subjects were asked to act out certain syntactic and semantic patterns in two experiments. Autistic children performed below the levels of the normal subjects, suggesting that autism is a semantic/cognitive deficit. (PJM)

Results of a study of 38 preschool children observed and videotaped during performance on a jigsaw-puzzle task indicate that puzzle solutions accompanied by a high rate of verbalizations were judged as more proficient, solved with a high rate of puzzle-solving moves, and completed in a shorter period of time. (Author/RH)

Provides evidence that in producing voiceless stops in terms of voice-onset-time values, children first overshoot adult values and then only gradually draw back toward adult values. (Author/RL)

Judgments of utterance appropriateness were examined in three, four, five, and six year olds to examine bases for these judgments in a variety of social contexts. The judgments of the six year olds more closely resembled those of a group of adults, but their judgments were not yet free of some of the factors operative for the younger children.…

Presents examples to substantiate the observation that children experiment with and benefit from writing long before they receive formal instruction, and suggests ways for parents and teachers to avoid obstructing this natural and healthy tendency. (HTH)