The proposed International Conference on Phonological Development will bring together researchers from different disciplines and different countries for """"""""state-of-the-art"""""""" assessment and discussion of theory and practice in the study of the processes of children's normal acquisition of the sound system of their mother tongue. It is a successor to the NICHHD-sponsored Conference on Child Phonology, Bethesda 1978, and the resultant book, Child Phonology, (Yeni-Komshian, Kavanagh & Ferguson 1980). The proposed Conference will consolidate the research gains made since the Bethesda conference, evaluate new lines of research, and discuss newly proposed alternative theoretical models. It will identify findings from normal phonological development appropriate for application to atypical individuals and populations, to the processes of learning to read, and to the learning of a second language. Although the Conference will keep in view the field of phonological development as a whole, it will concentrate on three key topics on which recent research is forcing changes in widely held views: 1) the relation of perception to production, (2) the transition from babbling to speech, and (3) cross-language differences in development.
