The Special Issue is themed on intervention programs which set educational and clinical goals and use explicit language instruction to achieve them. This introduction to the Special Issue explores the non-obvious relationship between intervention, metalinguistics and the study of developmental psycholinguistics. Intervention is typically designed to remedy and accelerate processes that are assumed to be naturally occurring under optimal circumstances. Beyond employing intervention to test hypotheses in developmental cognitive science, most intervention studies are explicitly constructed to improve impaired or non-optimal language skills. The introduction reviews the two major themes of this issue: the problematic yet uniquely efficacious role of intervention studies in gauging the variables that can be modified to improve language and literacy skills; and the origins and nature of metalinguistic awareness in development. The five papers appearing in this Special Issue each highlight a different facet of the relationship between intervention and metalanguage.
Aram, D. & Biron, S. (2004). Intervention programs among low SES Israeli preschoolers: The benefits of joint storybook reading and joint writing to early literacy . Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 19, 588-610.
2.
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3.
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4.
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5.
DeKeyser, R. (1998). Beyond focus on form: Cognitive perspectives on learning and practicing second language grammar. In C. Doughty & J. Williams (Eds), Focus on form in classroom language acquisition (pp. 42-63). New York: Cambridge University Press.
6.
Doherty, M.J. (2000). Children's understanding of homonymy: Metalinguistic awareness and false belief. Journal of Child Language, 27, 367-392.
7.
Doherty, M.J. & Perner, J. (1998). Metalinguistic awareness and theory of mind: Just two words for the same thing? Cognitive Development, 13, 279-305.
8.
Edwards, H.T. & Kirkpatrick, A.G. (1999). Metalinguistic awareness in children. A developmental progression. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28, 313-329.
9.
Farrar, M.J., Ashwell, S. & Maag, L. (2005). The emergence of phonological awareness: Connections to language and theory of mind development. First Language , 25, 157-172.
Goswami, U. (2000). Phonological representations, reading development and dyslexia: Towards a cross-linguistic theoretical framework. Dyslexia, 6, 133-151.
12.
Hall, D.G., Waxman, S.R., Brédart, S. & Nicolay, A.-C. (2003). Preschoolers' use of form class cues to learn descriptive proper names. Child Development , 74, 1547-1560.
13.
Hickmann, M. & Schneider, P. (1993). Children's ability to restore the referential cohesion of stories. First Language, 13, 169-202.
14.
Homer, B. & Olson, D.R. (1999). Literacy and children's conception of words. Written Language and Literacy, 2, 113-140.
15.
Hora, A. (in progress). The child as a psycholinguist: Little linguists' theories of linguistic knowledge, acquisition and development. Tel Aviv University doctoral dissertation.
16.
Joanisse, M.F., Manis, F.R., Keating, P. & Seidenberg, M.S. (2000). Language deficits in dyslexic children: Speech perception, phonology and morphology. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 77, 30-60.
17.
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18.
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1992). Beyond modularity: A developmental perspective on cognitive science. London: MIT Press.
19.
Kurvers, J. & Uri, H. (2006). Metalexical awareness: Development, methodology or written language? A cross-linguistic comparison. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 35, 353-367.
20.
Levin, I. (2006, 19 March). Intervention studies in literacy research. Keynote address, SCRIPT Literacy Meeting in honor of IrisLevin, Tel Aviv University.
21.
Leonard, L. (2000). Children with specific language impairment. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
22.
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23.
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24.
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25.
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26.
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27.
Plaza, M. (2001). The interaction between phonological processing, syntactic awareness and reading: A longitudinal study from Kindergarten to Grade 1. First Language, 21, 3-24.
28.
Ravid, D. & Malenky, D. (2001). Awareness of linear and nonlinear morphology in Hebrew: A developmental study. First Language, 21, 25-56.
29.
Ravid, D. & Tolchinsky, L. (2002). Developing linguistic literacy: A comprehensive model. Journal of Child Language , 29, 419-448.
30.
Rice, M. (1990). Preschooler's QUIL: Quick incidental learning of words. In G. Conti-Ramsden and C. E. Snow (Eds), Children's language, Vol. 7 (pp. 171-195). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
31.
Yuill, N. (1998). Reading and riddling: The role of riddle appreciation in understanding and improving poor text comprehension in children. Current Psychology of Cognition, 17, 313-342 (Special issue: `Language play in children').
32.
Waxman, S.R. & Braun, I. (2005). Consistent (but not variable) names as invitations to form object categories: New evidence from 12-month-old infants. Cognition, 95, B59-B68.
