This study examined whether the often-reported metalinguistic benefits of childhood bilingualism extend to children whose experience with a second language is considerably more limited, and if so, whether this metalinguistic advantage flows on to reading acquisition. Its purpose was to provide direct evidence of a causal role for metalinguistic awareness in reading acquisition. The study focused on the developing word awareness skills of two groups of preparatory and grade 1 children: one group was strictly monolingual in English; the other, the “marginal bilingual” group, consisted of English monolingual who were participating in a second language program that provided I hour of Italian instruction each week.After only 6 months of instruction in Italian, the marginal bilingual children showed a significantly higher level word awareness than their monolingual counterparts. This advantage weakened across grade 1, as both groups approached ceiling levels of performance. Nonetheless, the initial advantage flows through to the first major step in reading acquisition, with the grade 1 marginal bilinguals showing significantly greater word recognition skill than the monolinguals, thus strengthening the argument for a causal role in reading acquisition for word awareness.

This study explores adults' attitudes toward children with limited linguistic competency. Four groups of adult judges participated in this study: kindergarten teachers, women matched for age and education level with the teachers, undergraduate college students, and speech-language pathologists. The judges listened to audiotaped samples of preschool children's speech. Two triads of children were formed, matched for age, gender, and intelligence, but differing in communication abilities. The adults responded to questionnaire items addressing child attributes (e.g., intelligence, social maturity) and parental attributes (e.g., education level, SES). Systematic biases were revealed toward children with limited communication abilities. The biases are interpreted as reflective of adults' expectations for children's language.It is argued that adults call upon a correlative causal model of language acquisition to interpret individual differences in children's language abilities. Negative social and academic consequences of such misinterpretations are discussed. The visual similarity of the error to the target word was also determined. The RD group at all ages produced significantly fewer phonologically accurate misspellings than the children with normal achievement scores, whether the constrained or the unconstrained scoring system was used. The AD-poor spellers and the RD group produced significantly fewer phonologically constrained, accurate misspellings than the NA group. Using the unconstrained measure, the AD-poor spellers at the youngest age level displayed as much difficulty using rudimentary sound-symbol conversion rules as the RD group, while at the older age levels, they did as well as the NA group. AD-good spellers performed as well as the NA group on both measures at all age levels. Children who were good readers and spellers (Good RS) were compared with children who were poor readers and spellers (Poor RS) and with children who were good readers and poor spellers (Mixed RS). Mixed RS produced significantly more phonologically and visually accurate misspellings than Poor RS. In summary, subtypes of learning-disabled children use spelling strategies that are significantly different from each other. RD children have the most difficulty acquiring the knowledge of soundspelling correspondence rules that are necessary for English spelling skills. The performance of AD children depends on the complexity of the scoring system, age, and spelling ability. Those students whose knowledge of sound-spelling correspondence rules is sufficiently well developed for reading but not for spelling (good readers/poor spellers) develop their phonetic skills more slowly than the good readers/good spellers. The understanding and use of phonological rules varies according to the subtype of learning disability, with children with a reading disability performing the most poorly at all age levels.

This study investigated the hypothesis that children with a reading disability understand and use sound-spelling correspondence rules less frequently in spelling than children with other learning disabilities and normally achieving children. To test this hypothesis, spelling errors of children between the ages of 6 and 16 with a reading disability (RD), an arithmetic disability (AD), and normally achieving children (NA) were examined. Two groups of children with an arithmetic disability were included: those with good spelling skills (AD-good), and those with poor spelling skills (AD-poor). The accuracy of the spelling errors according to sound-spelling correspondence rules (phonological accuracy) of the children was determined using both a constrained system (inclusion of position cues) and an unconstrained system (in which positional cues were irrelevant). The visual similarity of the error to the target word was also determined. The RD group at all ages produced significantly fewer phonologically accurate misspellings than the children with normal achievement scores, whether the constrained or the unconstrained scoring system was used. The AD-poor spellers and the RD group produced significantly fewer phonologically constrained, accurate misspellings than the NA group. Using the unconstrained measure, the AD-poor spellers at the youngest age level displayed as much difficulty using rudimentary sound-symbol conversion rules as the RD group, while at the older age levels, they did as well as the NA group. AD-good spellers performed as well as the NA group on both measures at all age levels. Children who were good readers and spellers (Good RS) were compared with children who were poor readers and spellers (Poor RS) and with children who were good readers and poor spellers (Mixed RS). Mixed RS produced significantly more phonologically and visually accurate misspellings than Poor RS. In summary, subtypes of learning-disabled children use spelling strategies that are significantly different from each other. RD children have the most difficulty acquiring the knowledge of soundspelling correspondence rules that are necessary for English spelling skills. The performance of AD children depends on the complexity of the scoring system, age, and spelling ability. Those students whose knowledge of sound-spelling correspondence rules is sufficiently well developed for reading but not for spelling (good readers/poor spellers) develop their phonetic skills more slowly than the good readers/good spellers. The understanding and use of phonological rules varies according to the subtype of learning disability, with children with a reading disability performing the most poorly at all age levels.

The purpose of this article is to outline the types and frequency of explanatory talk that occur in naturalistic conversations of low-income families of preschoolers. Thirty-one families participated in the study, tape-recording family mealtimes when their children were 3, 4, and 5 years old. A total of 75 transcripts were collected and analyzed for the presence of nine categories of explanatory talk, including intentional, causal, evidential, definitional/descriptive, procedural, and consequential. Explanatory talk consisted of conversation concerning some connection between objects, events, concepts, and/or conclusions that one speaker is pointing out to another. The most frequent type of explanations fell into intentional categories, which accounted for more than half of all segments of explanatory talk.

This study investigated possible developmental asynchrony in children with specific language impairment (SL1). This was accomplished by comparing the development of temporal expressions of past reference in two linguistic domains. Verb tense and temporal adverbs served as representatives of the morphological and lexical domains. A cross-sectional design was used with four groups of subjects (N = 48) from 3 to 5 years old. Three groups had normal language and one group had impaired language. Results indicated that the performances of SLI children were similar to those of their 3-year-old language peers on the verb tasks and similar to the 4-year-olds on the adverb tasks. Such differential delays provide direct experimental evidence for asynchronous language development in SLI children.

This study deals with repentistas: oral poets in the northeast of Brazil, most of whom have had limited schooling. Twenty-four repentistas, 27 non-repentistas from a similar background, and 38 university students were given a rhyme production task. The repentistas produced about three times as many rhymes as the SES-matched non-repentistas and over one-and-a-half times as many as the students. They did not, however, differ significantly from the nonrepentistas or students in regard to auditory memory or phonological segmentation; they were similar to non-repentistas and considerably worse than students on tests of IQ and reading speed. Thus, the rhyming ability of the repentistas appears to be both highly developed and dissociated from certain other language skills.