David W. Carroll

Language Development: The State of the Art

Reviews the book, Blackwell Handbook of Language Development edited by Erika Hoff and Marilyn Shatz (see record 2007-00509-000). The book contains five sections. In “Basic Foundations” and “Theoretical Approaches to Language Development”, seven chapters explore different models of language development. The next three sections examine language in infancy, early childhood, and after early childhood, respectively. A final section consists of three chapters on atypical language development, with chapters on specific language impairment, autism, and reading disorders. The editors and authors discuss the values of the Chomskyan approach, but also indicate that it is time to move on to new approaches as well. The reviewer believes it is an outstanding book and would be especially valuable to researchers interested in particular facets of language development. The reviewer discusses several of these facets in detail, including innate mechanisms, the autonomy assumption and domain specificity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)