ABSTRACT
Although syntax was the most prominent aspect of language studied in the mid-60s, it was the contribution of such scholars as Brown, Bruner, Cassirer, Sapir, and Vygotsky to the semantics of language which helped to form the theoretical base for the Verbal Interaction Project's Mother-Child Home Program. Impelled by the school problems of low income children, which tend to perpetuate the cycle of poverty, we began the development and research of the Mother-Child Home Program with a pilot program in 1965 (Levenstein & Sunley, 1968). We believed that an intervention program to tackle the problem should start very early and take place in the home, at the very roots of cognitive socialization. We at the Verbal Interaction Project (VIP) were convinced that the cognitive socialization leading eventually to adequate school performance begins with the exchange of language in the family. Indeed, its probable basis is in the oldest long term human dialogue in the world—the exchange of non-vocal and vocal signals, of labels, and of language symbols between a mother and her young child, within the context of their perhaps equally ancient dyadic participation in interactive play.
