Examines requests and responses of first-grade children in peer reading groups and concludes that children differ in the variety and complexity of their requests. (FL)

The relationship of object permanence and classification skills to receptive and expressive language development was investigated in infants. Object permanence, classification, and parent-child verbal interaction ratings were about equally related to language comprehension functioning, while permanence was more strongly related to language…

Research results indicated that children were able to use information from a number of sources in interpreting commands in which the relational terms were replaced by nonsense. Linguistic and nonlinguistic context and prior repetition presented constraints to children's responses. (Author/JB)

Discusses the constructs of decentration and reading achievement; summarizes related research findings. Reports a study of the relationship between children's abilities to use decentered spoken language and reading achievement. Found significant correlations between egocentric spoken language and reading achievement scores for children in grades 2…

Presents study designed to investigate production of certain structures in French by native-speaking French Canadian children using the Bilingual Syntax Measure. Data show no difference in production for structures studied across ages; however, significant difference was found in extent to which structures were produced correctly. (Author/BK)

Results suggest that children can use the rules of conversational sequencing to evaluate the need for an inference to the speaker's intent when speakers deliberately violate a rule. This ability is acquired by six or seven years of age, but children do not correctly infer the speaker's intent until they are eight or nine years old. (Author/RH)

Outlining a study of 53 children (grades K-1), this report notes the difficulties children have in communicating information by retelling a story. Typical errors made by the children are cited. Children's inability to judge the clarity of others' stories and to describe the storyteller's role are also discussed. (Author/SJL)

Presents a system for coding and analyzing dialogue involving preschool age children. Each participant assumes roles of initiator and responder and is evaluated according to different scales. Illustrates the system through recorded dialogue between mothers and their three-year-old daughters. (Author/BK)

Ostensive definitions of words are ambiguities as to their referent. In a study of infant-mother dyads engaged in looking at picture books, 95 percent of ostensive definitions referred to the whole object depicted rather than parts, attributes, or actions. When parts were named, ambiguity was avoided by naming the part and the whole. (PJM)

Reports results of a longitudinal study testing the acquisition of restrictions of the use of pronouns in children, first as 9 year olds and later as 11 year olds. (AM)

The role of a strategy of reduplication in phonological acquisition and behavior was examined in terms of: (1) the relationship between adoption of this strategy and failure to produce nonreduplicated multisyllabic forms and final consonants, and (2) the role of reduplication in production constraints. (Author/AM)

Thirty children with a mean length of utterance ranging from 1.00 to 4 and an age range of 1.7 to 5.5 were tested for comprehension of two-noun possessive phrases. Three types of possessive relationships were used to uncover children's knowledge of the semantics and syntax of English possession. (Author/AM)

Discusses information theory and the notions of uncertainty and semantic choice in child language. (AM)

This article discusses a study designed to ascertain the comprehension of the role of "because" in a sentence in children between the ages of 5;8 and 10;11. (CFM)

Discusses children's concepts about stories, by examining interview responses. (AA)