Word learning in 16 children with specific language impairment (SLI) was compared with that of chronological-age controls (CAC) and vocabulary-age controls (VAC), to examine the extent and nature of word-learning deficits in the children with SLI. The children were exposed to novel words in a story and an explicit teaching context. Five tasks assessed how much the children had learned about the words' phonological form and semantic properties after 6 repetitions (Time 1) and again after 12 repetitions (Time 2) of the words in each context. The SLI group performed significantly worse than the CAC group at both Time 1 and Time 2 on all measures of the words presented in both contexts. They performed similarly to the VAC group (who were on average 21/2 years younger) on Time 1 and Time 2 measures from both contexts, except for the Naming task at Time 2, on which their performance was significantly lower. These findings suggest that children with vocabulary deficits have difficulties with both phonological and semantic aspects of word learning.

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A task devised to study comprehension of the words ‘more’ and ‘less’ was given to a group of 15 children aged between 3:5 yr. and 4:1 yr. Another task, designed to assess comprehension of ‘less’ without reference to ‘more’, was given to the same group approximately 6 months later. The main finding (which holds for both occasions) is that only one subject gave consistently correct responses to ‘less’. For the others it seemed that ‘less’ remained largely undifferentiated from ‘more’. The children showed a marked tendency to make the same response, irrespective of which of the two words was used in the instruction. ‘More’ was dominant as the interpretation given to the undifferentiated pair.

This study investigates people's ability to interpret dog behavior. Inability to interpret dog behavior correctly may be a factor contributing to young children's higher likelihood of being bitten by dogs. Children (4-to 10-year-olds) and adults (total n = 550) watched videos of dogs displaying friendly, aggressive, and fearful behavior. They were asked to interpret the dogs' behaviors and to describe which features they had attended to in making their decision. Four-and 6-year-old children were unable to identify fearful dogs, while participants in all age groups were capable of identifying friendly and aggressive behavior (p < 0.001). Misinterpretations of fearful behavior were significantly associated with reports of attending to the dog's face rather than other features ( 2 = 80.2, df = 1, p < 0.001). Four-year-olds were particularly likely to report looking at the dog's face and together with 6-year-olds they focused more on one feature rather than multiple features in order to make their decisions. The results show that younger children are less good at interpreting dog behavior, and that they are particularly poor at recognizing fear in dogs, while aggression is the most readily recognized behavior. Children's lower ability to interpret dog behavior seems to be due to the features they focus on. Younger children appear to focus on the dogs' most salient features and not the features that would allow them to correctly interpret the dogs' behavior. For example, 4-and 6-year-olds tended to report attending to the fearful dog's face rather than its tail and general posture. The results suggest it would be beneficial to include information about how to interpret dog behavior in dog-bite prevention programs.

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