The study examined the use of primary sentence stress by seven preschool autistic children with mean length of utterance (MLU) scores between 1.9 and 4.1 morphemes with normal and aphasic subjects serving as controls. Differences were seen in the number of correct responses and in the pattern of stress misassignment. (Author/DB)

This study examined speech disfluency clusters in the speech of 60 3- to 6-year-old children, half of whom stuttered. Results indicated that the children who stuttered produced significantly more "stuttering-stuttering" clusters and significantly more "stuttering-repair" clusters, whereas nonstutterers never produced "stuttering-stuttering"…

The phonological competence of 4 children, ages 5-7 years old, with a diagnosis of developmental apraxia of speech (DAS), was contrasted to that of 4 normal children. The DAS children revealed a severe deficit in rhyming ability. Results suggest that DAS is a fundamental disorder of the segmental phonological level of language. (Author/DB)

This study examined how five normally developing two-year-old children manage the relationship between phonetic production and production of word combinations in their spontaneous speech. Results revealed tradeoffs between complexity of word combinations and both accuracy of consonant production and phonetic complexity of individual lexical items.…

Investigation into age-related differences in production of fricative-vowel syllables with 10 adults and 30 children (ages 3, 5, and 7) found that age-related differences in vocal-tract geometry didn't explain age-related differences in vowel effects on fricative noise; children master intersyllabic gestural organization prior to intrasyllabic…

This study found that the scores of younger normal subjects (n=60) on tasks involving the sequential recall of words from five categories were equal to scores of older children (n=34) with language and speech impairments. Word category scores predicted language and speech scores, but prediction was stronger in children having impaired language or…

Eighteen cases of disintegrative psychosis (DP) were compared with 52 cases of infantile autism (IA) with speech loss and 145 IA cases without speech loss. DP cases showed clearer regression after more satisfactory development than the IA cases with speech loss, and by age seven were more severely retarded but similar in autistic symptomatology to…

This study found that naturalistic conversation training improved the spontaneous speech production of two children (ages three and four) with speech production disabilities. (Author/DB)