Relevant replies to questions: Answers versus evasions

A taxonomy was developed that accounts for all relevant partner responses to questions in the natural discourse of nursery school dyads. Evasive replies as well as answers must be included in such a scheme. Evasive replies are discoursally linked to questions, whereas answers are grammatically linked to questions. Nursery school children in this sample tended to inspect the nature of the relevance of a reply to a question and, at least on some occasions, to acknowledge replies to questions (explicitly or implicitly) and to respond differently to evasive replies than replies in general.This work was supported by a grant from the Spencer Foundation to the second author.     

Listening Comprehension, Oral Expression, Reading Comprehension, and Written Expression: Related Yet Unique Language Systems in Grades 1, 3, 5, and 7

Age-normed tests of Listening Comprehension, Oral Expression, Reading Comprehension, and Written Expression were administered in grades 1 (n=128), 3, and 5 or 3 (n=113), 5, and 7. Confirmatory factor analyses compared one- and four- factor models at each grade level and supported a four- factor model of Language by Ear, Mouth, Eye, and Hand. Multiple regressions identified which of the three other language skills explained unique variance in each of the four language skill outcomes and provided additional evidence that language is not a single skill. Individuals' ipsative scores (amount that the standard score for age on each language measure deviated from individual's mean for all four measures) showed that 25% to 30% of individuals showed relative strengths or weaknesses (+ or - 1 SD) in specific language skills, but only 7% were stable across grades 3 and 5. Findings are discussed in reference to (a) theoretical implications for idea comprehension and expression via language by ear, mouth, eye, and hand, and (b) educational applications of observed developmental and individual differences for general, special, and gifted education.