No abstract

Maternal directiveness, assessed by the mother's use of prescriptives, is correlated with slow vocabulary development. As prescriptives are most often used to redirect a child's attention to a different object or activity, it is hypothesized that attentional regulation underlies this negative relationship. In the present study, twelve mothers were videotaped interacting with their children aged 1;1, and 100 maternal utterances were coded for pragmatic intent. Prescriptives were coded as either changing (LEADING) or FOLLOWING the child's focus of attention. Only the frequency of mothers' FOLLOW-prescriptives correlated significantly with a productive vocabulary measure taken at 1;10. This correlation was high and positive, indicating that, given joint focus, directing a 13-month-old's behaviour can have beneficial effects on subsequent vocabulary development.

Recent research indicates that toddlers can monitor others' conversations, raising the possibility that they can acquire vocabulary in this way. Three studies examined 2-year-olds' (N = 88) ability to learn novel words when overhearing these words used by others. Children aged 2,6 were equally good at learning novel words-both object labels and action verbs-when they were overhearers as when they were directly addressed. For younger 2-year-olds (2,1), this was true for object labels, but the results were less clear for verbs. The findings demonstrate that 2-year-olds can acquire novel words from overheard speech, and highlight the active role played by toddlers in vocabulary acquisition.

Recent studies indicate that young English-speaking children do not have a general understanding of the significance of SVO order in reversible sentences; that is, they seem to rely on verb-specific formulas (e.g. NPpusher – form of the verb PUSH – NPpushee) to interpret such sentences (Akhtar & Tomasello, 1997). This finding raises the possibility that young children may be open to learning non-SVO structures with novel transitive verbs. To test this hypothesis, 12 children in each of three age groups (two-year-olds, three-year-olds, and four-year-olds) were taught novel verbs, one in each of three sentence positions: medial (SVO), final (SOV), and initial (VSO). The younger age groups were equally likely to use the novel (non-English) orders spontaneously as to correct them to SVO order, whereas the oldest children consistently corrected these structures to SVO order. These results suggest that English-speaking children's acquisition of a truly general understanding of SVO order may be a gradual process involving generalization (learning) from examples. The findings are discussed in terms of recent data-driven learning accounts of grammar acquisition.

Progress in psychological science can be limited by a number of factors, not least of which are the starting assumptions of scientists themselves. We believe that some influential accounts of autism rest on a questionable assumption that many of its behavioral characteristics indicate a lack of social interest-an assumption that is flatly contradicted by the testimony of many autistic people themselves. In this paper, we challenge this assumption by describing alternative explanations for four such behaviors: (a) low levels of eye contact, (b) infrequent pointing, (c) motor stereotypies, and (d) echolalia. The assumption that autistic people's unusual behaviors indicate diminished social motivation has had profound and often negative effects on the ways they are studied and treated. We argue that understanding and supporting autistic individuals will require interrogating this assumption, taking autistic testimony seriously, considering alternative explanations for unusual behaviors, and investigating unconventional-even idiosyncratic-ways that autistic individuals may express their social interest. These steps are crucial, we believe, for creating a more accurate, humane, and useful science of autism.