The present study employed a concept comparison method to investigate the memory representation of concept interrelationships produced by reading an O. Henry short story. Readers rated all pairings of characters and locations from the story on the basis of how closely the text elements were interpreted as being connected. The interrelationships among the characters and locations were generated by multidimensional scaling. The scaling solution contained the temporal dimension of the story as well as groupings of characters and locations very similar to the groupings in the story. In the first experiment instructional set was found to affect specific interrelationships among the plot elements rather than the overall pattern. In the second experiment a 21-day retention interval produced an effect on the overall structure of the interrelationships.

New analytical techniques were developed for the identification of subject groups based on within-subject patterns of cooccurrences of responses. These “response coincidence analyses” provided an empirical basis for conjectures about stages or strategies in terms of the rules which characterize group performances. The nature of the operative rules was inferred from an analysis of item response similarities within the subject groups. These techniques were applied to a data set originally obtained by Innes (1974) from 120 children (20 at each age from 2 to 7 years), for a study of the acquisition of the English inflectional morphology for pluralization. The results show quite clearly how the pluralization system is acquired and indicate how such data can be used to develop the specification of rules sensitive to psycholinguistic evidence.

This study investigates the use of phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules assumed to underlie phonetic spelling errors. Fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds and adult literacy students did two spelling tasks employing real words and nonwords respectively. Good and poor readers were compared in their ability to produce graphemic representations for four specific phonemes. Two of these were relatively “ambiguous” and the real-word task investigated the effect of ambiguity as a function of reading skill. While good readers were significantly better than poor readers at representing the critical phonemes, ambiguity had a similar effect on good and poor readers. Nonword results indicate that poor readers can employ phoneme-grapheme correspondences more than is expected from their real-word spelling error patterns.

This research was designed to examine the possibility that beginning readers who lack phonemic segmentation ability but read words by sight resort to a “grapheme” strategy in a phoneme tapping task, tapping once for each letter in a word. While this strategy would result in correct responses to words containing as many letters as phonemes, it would lead to “overshoot” errors on words containing digraphs. However, this difference in performance should only occur with real words, since, by definition, pseudowords have not been seen before. Consistent with the hypothesis, a three-way interaction between word type, digraph type, and grade (kindergarten vs. first grade) was obtained. Further analysis revealed that some beginning readers employed a spelling strategy in performing the task.

This study examines the communicative functions served by the lexical usage of normal and language impaired children whose speech was limited to single-word utterances. The two groups were similar in the frequency with which they produced utterances serving most of the functions. However, naming was more frequent in the normal children's speech, while answering was more frequent in the speech of the language impaired children. The two groups were indistinguishable in terms of the number of different lexical items they used in the service of each of the communicative functions.

Two studies investigated use of an elicited imitation task to encourage the production of semantic relations by 20- to 28-month-old children. In both studies, a model repeated sentences containing target semantic relations several times, accompanied by three-dimensional props to aid the children's memory and to provide context for their language. Results suggested that even the youngest children could be motivated to imitate, and that the elicited imitation technique was particularly successful in increasing the frequency of certain semantic relations that tended to be infrequent in spontaneous speech. Elicited imitation may thus be advantageous over spontaneous speech sampling because it allows greater experimenter control over contextual variables than is possible in most naturalistic settings.

This inquiry examined strategies used by young children when receiver feedback indicated that their gestural communicative attempts were not understood. The children were grouped according to their vocabulary sizes and number of coding rules for two-word utterances. The results indicated that the children, although capable of semantically equivalent verbal behavior, tended to persist in the use of a gesture when experiencing communicative failure. The gestural persistance was not found to be related to the children's lexical or syntactic abilities. It was concluded that the children may not have realized that a verbal behavior can serve as a replacement or an adjunct to a gestural communication.

This paper examines the voicing contrast for word-initial obstruents in a child whose functional misarticulation initially was characterized by a severe lack of contrasts normally used in the English language. Specifically, auditory analysis indicated that the child represented a large number of both voiced and voiceless obstruents with [d]. Acoustic analysis demonstrated, however, that the child was producing an obstruent voicing distinction, albeit one that was not generally perceptible to listeners. Following a therapy program, the child produced an acceptable voicing distinction, at least for stops. The importance of these findings is that 1) they seem to indicate that the child is attaining articulation skills in a delayed, and not deviant fashion, and 2) they illustrate the utility of acoustic analyses in refining phonological descriptions.

The acquisition of a second language phonology is examined with reference to two hypotheses: (1) the developmental position that second language phonology acquisition parallels first language acquisition versus (2) the transfer position that the learner’s phonological knowledge in the first language directly influences acquisition of a second language phonology. These two hypotheses are evaluated in light of data from a six-year-old Icelandic child learning English in a naturalistic setting, with particular emphasis on fricatives and affricates. This child’s phonological acquisition is best accounted for as a systematic interaction between transfer from the first language and developmental processes. Transfer best predicts the relative difficulty of particular segments, while the developmental hypothesis best predicts which sounds will be substituted for those difficult segments.

Notwithstanding the predictive value of foreign language aptitude measures, the underlying ability or abilities tapped by them and their relationship to measures of intelligence are not well understood. This study provides a partial characterization of the nature of language aptitude through correlations and factor analyses of the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT) and the Primary Mental Abilities Test (PMA). The subjects of the study were 793 English-speaking Canadian public servants at various stages of intensive French language training. The results revealed substantial redundancy among the subtests of the MLAT and PMA batteries and a Kaiser's Little Jiffy factor analysis yielded a one-factor solution at the second-order level. A principal factors solution, however, identified three interpretable second-order factors, characterized respectively as first language verbal knowledge, abstract reasoning ability, and ability to learn new language elements and associations. A unitary third-order factor was also identified, probably approximating Spearman's g. Taken together, the findings of the study are compatible with the conceptualization of language aptitude according to a hierarchical model which subsumes specific abilities of importance in the language classroom under a more encompassing general ability, or general intelligence.

This study examines the relationship between the production and perception of English /r/ and /l/ by native Japanese adults learning English in the United States. For some subjects, production of the contrast was more accurate than their perception of it, replicating and extending a previous finding reported by Goto (1971) in Japan. The difficulty in perception of the liquid contrast varied with its position in the word. Prevocalic /r/ and /l/ in consonant clusters yielded the greatest perceptual errors, while word-final liquids were accurately perceived. This pattern of errors is not predictable on the basis of contrastive phonological analysis, but might be the result of acoustic-phonetic factors. Implications for second language pedagogy are discussed.

Many bilinguals, who are fluent second language users in normal commmunicative situations, nevertheless read more slowly in that language. The present study examines whether this performance difference is specific to reading or whether its occurrence is accompanied by similar differences in the auditory modality. Fluent English and French bilinguals were required to adjust the delivery rate of spoken first and second language texts so as to maximize speed of delivery while maintaining full comprehension. The results showed that the pattern of listening rates for the second language relative to the first mirrored the pattern of reading rates. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for second language reading research.

Comprehension of six dimensional adjectives was found to be intact in groups of left hemisphere-damaged, right hemisphere-damaged and neurologically normal patients. Phrases with those adjectives were interpreted quite differently by left hemisphere-damaged patients than by the other two groups, and a subgroup of left-damaged patients appeared to be responsible for that group's deviant responses to phrases such as slightly bigger. All patients in the left-damaged group had some difficulty with negative phrases such as not big, however. Patients with right hemisphere-damage had difficulty interpreting only negative phrases with small. Results are interpreted with reference to Luria's discussion of semantic aphasia, and with regard to recent findings concerning the role of the right hemisphere in language comprehension.

The avoidance of inflectional markers, a kind of “macrodevelopment” in the acquisition of morphology, is described in this analysis of the strategies displayed by a bilingual child simultaneously exposed to Estonian and to English. A whole-word approach was manifested in: the acquisition of postpositions before case endings; the learning of pronominal case and other suppletive or irregular forms before regular markers were used; the borrowing of the analytic English construction with have into Estonian; and the preference for did + verb for the expression of the English past tense. In interpreting these data the factor of bilingualism per se is weighed against the possible existence of a whole-word approach to language in general as a manifestation of a particular cognitive style.

Cognitive, academic, first language, and second language abilities of language impaired children attending French immersion programs were assessed in kindergarten and in grade 1. After two years of instruction in a second language the linguistic and cognitive skills of these children were similar to a comparable group of language impaired children who were educated in their first language. The language impaired children were also acquiring proficiency in second language skills, although not to the same levels of proficiency as French immersion children with normal first language abilities. The results are discussed in light of current theories of optimal language of instruction.

Deaf adults' access to English word structure was tested in a task requiring letter report for fingerspelled words, orthographically regular nonsense words (pseudowords), and orthographically irregular nonsense words (nonwords). Deaf subjects, like hearing subjects, were sensitive to orthographic structure as indicated by accuracy of letter report: Letters of words were reported most accurately, while letters of pseudowords were reported more accurately than letters of nonwords. Analysis of errors on letter reports revealed that deaf subjects tended to produce orthographically regular responses. These results provide clear evidence that deaf adults are able to make use of orthographic structure.

Naming disorders of aphasic patients have generally been considered as resulting from an impairment of the ‘peripheral’ mechanisms connecting the central semantic system with the cortical structures subsuming perceptual and motor operations.

In recent years, however, some investigators have suggested that semantic-lexical disorders of aphasic patients may be due to a disruption of the semantic system itself. The results of some personal investigations supporting this last view are reported and two alternative (or complementary) interpretations are advanced to explain the central semantic disorder of aphasic patients. These interpretations assume: (a) a disruption of the information stored in each semantic representation; (b) a disorganization of the mechanisms subsuming semantic storage and semantic retrieval.

This paper examines various rendering techniques and emphasizes the unique contribution that computer technology offers to transcription. First, the basic manual transcription procedure and its grounds are discussed. Next, three methods of generating transcripts are considered separately: (a) completely manual preparation; (b) a combination of manual and computer procedures; and (c) the on-line processing/monitoring by computer. Finally, the relative advantages and limitations of these techniques are discussed in terms of a trade-off between several factors which include initial investment in equipment, person hours, cost of copying and modifying transcripts, and reduction of errors in transcribing data.