All children possess a motive to 'master' the various tasks and problems that they face. Without mastery motivation, it is doubtful whether children would make progress in cognitive, social communicative and other domains. Although all children possess this motivation, it will vary according to inherited dispositions and to environmental experiences. This makes mastery motivation a key factor in understanding later developmental and educational achievement.

Concentrating on pre-school children, this volume, originally published in 1993, brought together current research work and...

The book identifies and assesses the importance of a range of influences on child language acquisition and development, paying particular attention to situational influences. Key issues are highlighted and recent research is succinctly presented. There are five sections: the deployment of speech during early development; linguistic interaction and family background: encoding the situation; multidimentional aspects of language development; and constraints on language development. There are twelve chapters on these themes contributed by leading researchers in this area.