Biomedical subjects

W Dobrich

Publications and source records attributed to W Dobrich.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1992

Phonological characteristics of words young children try to say.

To examine the possible persistence of phonological selectional constraints on young children's lexical choices, the words attempted in the conversational speech of a longitudinal sample of 12 normally-developing preschoolers from age 2;0 to 5;0 were scored for syllabic length, presence of consonant clusters, and distribution of constituent phonemes. Except at the youngest ages, few developmental changes in target word characteristics were seen, and the observed differences were largely accounted for by syntactic, lexical, and pragmatic factors. The results suggest that selectional constraints persist only briefly in the course of language acquisition.

Child Language↗

PubMed1991

Preschool literacy experience and later reading achievement.

During their children's preschool years, parents were asked about the frequencies of adult reading, parent-child reading, and children's solitary book activities in the home. Parental responses were compared for three groups of children defined according to the parents' reading skills and the children's reading achievement in Grade 2. The results indicated that the 22 preschoolers who became poorer readers had less frequent early literacy-related experiences than the 34 children who became better readers.

Achievement↗

PubMed1990

Development of children with early language delay.

Four children with early language delays (ELD) were compared to a control group of 12 children with respect to their preschool language abilities from age 2 1/2 to 5 years and their verbal skills at the end of Grade 2. The language-delayed children each initially showed severe and broad impairments in syntactic, phonological, and lexical production. Over time, their deficits became milder and more selective, such that normal or nearly normal speech and language proficiency was exhibited by age 60 months. Nevertheless, when followed up 3 years later, three of the four cases were severely reading disabled. These findings are discussed with respect to prior findings and hypotheses about the sequelae of early language delay and the relationship of language development to reading achievement.

Age Factors↗

PubMed1984

Form and function in early communication: language and pointing gestures.

Pointing gestures of verbally advanced 2-year-olds were contrasted with those of less advanced peers, in order to examine the relationships of gesture to language during the acquisition of each. Hypotheses regarding the replacement of gestural functions by speech as verbal skills improve, regarding developmental correspondences between the two communicative domains, and regarding the independence of language acquisition from nonverbal developments were drawn from evolutionary, structuralist, and nativist viewpoints, respectively. Both formal and functional aspects of each communicative skill were measured, and were shown to be largely unrelated, particularly in the gestural domain. No evidence that language replaced gesture for communication in ontogeny was obtained. Correspondences between gesture and language occurred only between functional aspects of each, and the independence of developing language from gestural advances was suggested by the findings.

Child, Preschool↗