Semistructured interviews with 10 deaf and 10 hearing young adults found that instrumental writing occurred as frequently between deaf children and hearing parents as between deaf children and deaf parents. Deaf respondents did less personal or expressive writing than hearing peers. Implications for literacy instruction and further research are…

This research is testing the suggestion that acquisition and representation of formal language knowledge of dysphasic children is qualitatively different from the normal language acquisition/representation processes. In a cohort-sequential design, aspects of language and cognitive development of 120 dysphasic children aged 6-14 are being analyzed…

This study explored effects of training 25 mothers to administer focused intervention to teach specific target words to their toddlers with expressive vocabulary delays. Following treatment, mothers' language input was slower, less complex, and more focused. The children used more target words, more words during play, and had larger vocabularies…

The study compared results of the Preschool Language Scale, administered to 214 rural and 214 suburban children in Nebraska. Both groups scored above age level, but a higher percentage of rural children failed a wide range of verbal ability and auditory comprehension items. The scale did not meet criteria for nonbiased, ecologically valid…

A total of 48 children (aged 4-14) with severe pervasive developmental disturbance, exhibiting mutism, echolalia, or nonecholalic speech, were observed in their communicative behaviors across modalities. Levels of symbolization in gesture, play, and drawing were significantly intercorrelated and were most strongly correlated with the criterion…

This study examined the temporal reliability of four quantitative measurements of linguistic behaviors in 20 preschool children observed in a naturalistic setting. Although inadequate reliability was found for the measure which used total number of words, very high reliability coefficients were obtained for the measures which used number of…

This article describes the EpiSLI diagnostic system for identifying specific language impairment in kindergarten children for the purpose of epidemiological research. The system employs five composite scores representing norm-referenced performance in three domains of language (vocabulary, grammar, and narration) and two modalities (comprehension…

Eighteen preschoolers with language impairments who had participated in a highly effective five-month intervention that focused on expressive grammar received an additional five-month intervention. Although participants improved during Phase 2, improvements generally were not as strong as those noted for Phase l. The costly clinician-administered…

Comparison using paired t-tests of parent and teacher ratings for 16 preschool children on the Receptive-Expressive Emergent Language Scale found no significant differences between parent and teacher ratings of expressive language, but a significant difference on the receptive language subscale. However, interrater reliability was relatively low…

A 6-year-old child's oral and spelled utterances were compared over a 3-month period as he was trained to use facilitated communication (FC). The child's language with FC was significantly better than his oral language. Evidence that he was authoring his own messages included his eventual ability to type messages without physical support.…

This study found that three oral discourse genres (script, picture description, and replica play narration) were able to characterize development in discourse abilities in 6 children (ages 5-7) with brain injury and 43 nondisabled children. Brain-injured children produced shorter discourse performances with more off-task talk but showed…

This study evaluated ease of learning 5 visual symbol sets (photopictorial, rebus, Blissymbolics, orthography, and Premack-type tokens) with 4 autistic students (ages 7-13). A second article describes the development of instructional procedures for the students, noting the contribution of behavioral, cognitive developmental, and information…

This case study of a 5-year-old boy diagnosed with a specific expressive language impairment with verbal apraxia reports on chromosomal, neurological, speech/language, cognitive, and play evaluations. Evaluation found a chromosomal translocation and a severe expressive speech-language deficit but good nonverbal cognitive and communicative skills.…

This study evaluated the validity of language-assessment instruments with Native American children, ages 3 to 5. Results indicated that the Preschool Language Scale-3 provides a valid assessment of the receptive and expressive language skills of 3- and 4-year-old Native-American children. However, use of this scale with 5-year-old Native Americans…

This study examined developmental changes in lexical comprehension in 100 bilingual individuals at five age levels, all of whom had learned Spanish as a first language and English beginning at age 5. Although skills improved in both languages over time, by middle childhood performance was better in English, with this transition occurring earlier…