The central hypothesis of this study was that phonological mediation plays a critical role in the early development of reading and spelling in French. Therefore, the phonological structure of items, as opposed to their visual characteristics, was expected to be a significant determinant of performance. This hypothesis was tested in a short-term longitudinal study with a group of first graders (N = 57) who were administered a reading and a spelling task involving pseudowords of different syllabic structures. The first prediction was that there would be better performance on pseudowords with a simple structure (CVCVCV) than on pseudowords with a complex structure (CCVCVC or CVCCVC), and that errors on syllables with a complex structure would involve the deletion of codas or the simplification of complex onsets. We also predicted that errors would be consistent with a sonority hierarchy; for example, we expected more deletions of liquids than obstruents in clusters.

This report describes two studies on memory for rote linguistic sequences and sensitivity to rhyme in young children with and without language impairment. In the first study, 10 low income kindergarteners with specific language impairment (SLI) were compared with age- and income-matched classmates on reciting common nursery rhymes, reciting the alphabet, and rote counting. Children with SLI displayed lower performance on most of the rote linguistic sequence tasks, especially on (heir knowledge of Mother Goose nursery rhymes. The second study examined the learning and retention of nursery rhymes in 8 young children with SLI after 6 weeks of classroom instruction. Low-income, 4- and 5-year-old children with SLI and their age- and income-matched classmates were taught five novel Mother Goose rhymes during a large-group classroom activity. Children were tested before and after the intervention on their ability to recite nursery rhymes and to detect rhyme. When compared with their peers, children with SLI had difficulty repeating the nursery rhymes, despite daily classroom exposure. Although the performance of children with SLI on rhyme recitation and detection tasks was poor, their relative performance was better on a cloze task based on the set of nursery rhymes. The results of this study suggest that children with SLI have difficulty storing and/or retrieving lines of memorized text. Traditional informal techniques for teaching rote linguistic sequences may need to be modified to give children with SLI more opportunities to practice rote sequences.

This Study investigated whether the pseudoword repetition difference between poor and normal readers could be explained by differences in memory for verbal materials or in familiarity with the composition of verbal materials. Dutch second graders and poor readers scoring in the same range on a word-reading test repeated pseudowords that varied in length and wordlikeness. The pseudoword repetition deficit of poor readers reported in the literature was replicated. Although the repetition scores were influenced by pseudoword length and wordlikeness, no interaction with reader group was found, thus indicating that neither variable represented a causal factor in the poor readers' repetition deficit. Statistical correction for reader group differences on a phoneme detection task and an auditory discrimination task made the pseudoword repetition difference disappear. We conclude that the basic problem is unlikely to be with subvocal rehearsal, and that the cause of the repetition deficit is already operative in early, perceptual stages of processing.

This article introduces, illustrates, and discusses a method for measuring the attrition of communicative competence using data from spontaneous, freestyle, multiperson conversations. The illustration is based on speech production data of Spanish L3 subjects' from Ghana. The method involves the creation of a multiple-factor (composite) index using defined temporal variables, frequency counts of selected verbal behaviors, and grammatical information; it can be used to measure either the rate of attrition or its reverse, which, for lack of a better term, is called the “accumulation of competence.”

The case of a 7-year-old boy (Michael) with severe word-finding difficulties is presented. In an attempt to investigate the cause of these difficulties, a series of theoretically motivated questions was used as a framework for psycholinguistic investigation. A range of tasks was administered, including word association, semantic knowledge, auditory discrimination, auditory lexical decision, naming, and real word and nonword repetition. Michael's performance on the tasks was compared with that of controls matched in terms of chronological and vocabulary age. Results revealed significant differences between Michael's performance and that of the control groups. Although he showed no apparent semantic deficit, he did show pervasive deficits in phonological processing.