The present experiments explored various measures of English and Spanish language ability and compared monolingual and bilingual subjects on tests of cognitive skill. Language ability was assessed in Experiment 1. These measures were found to be highly correlated with each other, with at least two factors needed to describe the associations among the tests in each language. In Experiment 2, subjects were given tests of cognitive skill. To be included in this study, all subjects were required to show adequate understanding of English and were divided into monolingual and bilingual groups on the basis of their Spanish abilities. Monolinguals scored higher than bilinguals on most of the measures of cognitive skill, but subsequent comparisons of the monolinguals with high and low bilingual subgroups suggested that the differences were attributable to those subjects characterized as low bilinguals.

The study examines factors underlying cross-language transfer in bilingual children; the main focus is on a measure of metaphor interpretation. Subjects were Spanish-English children ranging in age from 7 to 12 years. Measures were obtained for nonverbal mental capacity, metaphor interpretation, verbal-conceptual repertoire, and linguistic proficiency in English and Spanish. Using a previously validated procedure, subjects' metaphor interpretations were scored for cognitive complexity. In both languages, metaphor score was higher in older than in younger children. Correlational analyses indicated that level of metaphor interpretation was most strongly related to cognitive-developmental variables that are interdependent across languages, that is, nonverbal mental capacity and verbal-conceptual repertoire. Variables that measure specific proficiency in a language were less strongly related to level of metaphor interpretation, and did not exhibit cross-language correlations. This pattern was clearly seen in results of exploratory factor analyses. The role of cognitive versus linguistic factors in metaphor development is discussed, as is the issue of interdependence versus independence across first and second languages.

Theories of language learnability have focused on “normal” language development, but there is a group of children, termed “specifically language-impaired,” for whom these theories are also appropriate. These children present an interesting learnability problem because they develop language slowly, the intermediate points in their development differ in certain respects from the usual developmental stages, and they do not always achieve the adult level of language functioning. In this article, specifically language-impaired children are treated as normal learners dealing with an input that is distorted in principled ways. When the children are viewed from this perspective, Pinker's (1984) theory can account for many of the features of their language.

A test of pseudoword repetition was developed and administered to a group of 24 learning-disabled children. Twenty nondisabled children were also assessed. The major objective was to investigate associations between learning-disabled children's ability to repeat pseudowords and their performances on other measures of phonological processing, as well as on measures of academic achievement. Results revealed that the repetition procedure had good psychometric characteristics, including the ability to distinguish disabled and nondisabled groups independent of IQ. Within the learning-disabled sample, repetition ability was more closely related to reading and spelling skills than to math achievement. Measures of phonological skill were moderately associated with one another. Findings suggest that the repetition task may be useful in identifying one important correlate of childhood learning disabilities. Results justify further research on the mechanisms responsible for repetition difficulties and on the significance of these difficulties for reading and spelling acquisition.

Implicit in much work on literate discourse and its consequences is the question of what relation exists between forms of discourse and cognitive organization. The focus of this article is the relation between specific features of literate discourse and paradigmatic organization in children's thought. Nineteen parent–child dyads were videotaped during bookreading when the child was 2½ years old. Three levels of object labels and reference to propositional attitudes were coded in parents' talk during bookreading episodes with their children. Three measures of paradigmatic organization in the child's thought were obtained at age 3½. The features of parents' talk were then correlated with measures of the child's thought. A significant correlation was found between superordinate level labels in parents' talk and all three measures of children's paradigmatic organization, but basic and subordinate level labels were not correlated. Parents' use of cognitive verbs and verbs referring to labeling and interpretation were also correlated with children's paradigmatic organization. The results are interpreted as indicating situation-specific organizational preferences in talk and thought.