No description available.

No description available.

In this investigation three groups of ten subjects each, ages seven to nine, were compared on common object picture span identification tasks to determine if the rehearsal strategies of oral labeling, signing, or total communication significantly effected their visual memory. Thethree groups consisted of a good learner/normal hearing (NH) group, a hearing impaired poor speechreader/learning disabled (LD) group, and a hearing impaired good learner/good speechreader total communication (TC) group.Subjects' picture span identification performances with and without rehearsal were compared by a one way ANOVA for difference scores. The F value of 62.026 was significant at the .01 level which demonstrated a significant difference among the groups' difference scores. Statistical results between groups indicated that the signing rehearsal strategy significantly improved the LD group's scores on the rehearsed picture span taskas compared to the oral labeling and total communication rehearsal strategies of the NH and IC groups whose rehearsal had little effect on their performance.In summary, this study showed that poor learners/poor speechreaders greatly benefitted from overt rehearsal strategies on a visual memory picture identification task.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between language development and reading ccmprehension found among thirty-three learning disabled students (LD) and thirty-three students in programs supported by Chapter 1 funds. These sixty-six subjects were in grades three through five in eleven elementary schools in Anderson Community Schools, Anderson, Indiana.The relationships between the language features of syntax and semantics, the language systems of listening and speaking and the levels of reading comprehension were assessed with the Test of Language Development - Intermediate (TOLD-I) and the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests, Level B Form 1. The .05 level of significance was set for acceptance of sixteen null hypotheses.The multivariate analysis of variance, used to determine if an overall difference existed between the groups on the assessment measure, indicated that such a difference did not exist. The two-way analysis of variance between the dependent variables of reading comprehension extended scaled scores and the TOLD-I quotient scores for the LD and Chapter 1 students did not yield significant differences. The Pearson product-moment correlation yielded statistical significance but low correlation coefficients (below .40) for the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test (comprehension subtest) extended scaled scores and the TOLD-I quotients of Speaking, Semantics, Syntax, and Spoken language. All sixteen null hypothese were not rejected.

The purpose of this study was to determine if the 'language listening' of children ages three years and three months (3.3) to three years and nine months (3.9) as measured by their behavioral response is influenced by the word-order of an interrogative sentence when presented in normal word-order, misplaced word-order, and scrambled word-order.'Language listening' for the purpose of this investigation was defined as the interpreted meaning of a young child as measured by the correct behavioral response to verbal stimuli ordered in specific syntactical variations. The verbal stimuli were written in three variations of word order. These patterns were normal word order which was the regular order of an interrogative sentence; misplaced word order was a pattern in which all parts of the verb and noun were interchanged in position; and scrambled sentence were positioned randomly without any set pattern of order.The subjects in this study were selected from the available population of children attending five nursery schools located in the metropolitan area of Muncie, Indiana. Selection of subjects and categorization into groups was based upon the index of the mean length of utterance of each individual member. This index was computed from a language sample containing one hundred utterances that were collected in the Screening Session.'Language listening' was measured by the relevant responses of subjects performance to specific requests to respond with an appropriate toy to the question asked and the directions given. Scripts used in the Data Collection Session combined a series of nine behavioral tasks with three of each of the types of word order--normal, misplaced, and scrambled.One major limitation of this study was the index used to measure the verbal maturity of the subjects in this study. This index is an average of the utterance used by the child and disguises the verbal expansion ability of the child and the sophistication of the child's verbal ability. Another limitation of this study was the selection of the behavioral tasks. It was observed that the subjects' performance in some cases was made from an anticipated response rather than responding from actual understanding of the tasks. It appeared that the behavioral tasks were oversimplified to be used the subjects included in this study.A research design employing the use of a Latin Square was constructed to combine the behavioral tasks with the types of word order. An analysis of variance was used for the analysis of data. The F-ratio, derived from an analysis of variance, was used to test statistical significance of the null hypotheses. The .05 level of significance was designated as the standard of significance.The findings of this investigation revealed that there is no statistical significance between 'language listening' and the type of word order. It was also determined in this study that the type of word order does not differentially affect children with varying verbal maturity. The findings did agree with research in the area in regard to children with a nonfluent level of verbal maturity. Agreement was found to support the research that with children having a nonfluent level of verbal maturity, the type of word order that is used as verbal stimuli does not affect the meaning that they glean from the stimuli.Among the recommendations offered was that further research be conducted with children in the early stages of language listening. It was also recommended that further research be conducted using an index of verbal maturity that is descriptive of the actual verbal ability of the child.

No description available.

No description available.

A basic principle of object individuation--that predicables (or adjectival, verbal, or prepositional expressions) do not individuate--gives rise to a competence theory related to their interpretation. It is that we interpret predicables as sub-kinds of the kinds that type them. Evidence of children's competence in this matter is reviewed. Two experiments are presented, exploring the sensitivity of 20 children, aged 2;11 to 3;11 (mean 3;6), to changes in adjective interpretation across unrelated and related kinds. For instance, children were tested on their understanding that a nonsense adjective picked out sub-kinds of toy bears and balls on the basis of unrelated attributes. They were also tested on their understanding that the opposites "big" and "little" could describe the same individual object when typed by basic level and superordinate level kinds (e.g. that a little bat could be a big toy). Children's responses were near perfect, indicating that the basic logical framework for predicable interpretation used by adults is in place by age three.

No description available.