Language Development

This comprehensive text offers a balanced, in-depth presentation of a variety of information on how children develop language, beginning with the perception and production of speech sounds in infancy and moving through the development of vocabulary, grammar, and communicative competence. Also included are chapters on language in special populations, childhood bilingualism, and the biological bases of language (which covers such topics as evolution, chimps, and aphasia). Written by an author who has a background in both speech pathology and psychology, the text uses theory to motivate and explain the research and to put the research findings in perspective. It is also the most current resource available with many of the latest research developments referenced from 1999 and 2000.

Erika Hoff is Professor of Psychology at Florida Atlantic University. She has taught language development to undergraduate students for the past 15 years at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside and, since 1996, at Florida Atlantic University. Dr. Hoff holds an M.S. in psychology from Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey (1976) and a Ph.D. in psychology from University of Michigan (1981). She conducts research on the process of language development in both typically developing children and children with language impairment, and she has received funding for this research from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Spencer Foundation. She has published her research in Child Development, Developmental Psychology, First Language, The Journal of Applied Psycholinguistics, The Journal of Child Language, and the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. She has contributed chapters to LINGUISTIC DISORDERS AND PATHOLOGIES: AN INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK (1993), THE HANDBOOK OF PARENTING, (2002), THE HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY, and the MIT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMMUNICATION DISORDERS.