The immediate verbal imitations (IVIs) of a boy (age five) with autism and echolalia were studied, with variables of linguistic familiarity and instructor's style of directiveness being manipulated. The occurrence of IVIs was related to uncertain or informative events, and was significantly greater when lexical stimuli were unknown and presented…

The effects of different patterns of adult social interaction during play on children's exploration of toys and emotional responses was investigated with four preschoolers with moderate developmental delays. Results suggested more positive emotional responses during child-centered play than during the adult-centered condition and the possible…

Professionals and 16 mothers of disabled infants/toddlers completed the Evaluation and Programing System-I and the Parent Form Level I, respectively. Results indicated moderate to high correlations between professionals' assessments and mothers' assessments, though mothers tended to rate children higher. (Author/JDD)

The efficacy of the IBM SpeechViewer's Vowel Accuracy Module for the improvement of vowel productions was evaluated in five preschool children with hearing impairment. Treatment effects were observed for four subjects on one vowel, for two subjects on a second vowel, and for one subject on a third vowel. Difficulties with the equipment were…

Nine comprehensive observations were conducted of 24 preschoolers (8 with disabilities) in free play settings, with social behavior categories based on the work of Strain. Comparison of partial and complete observational records demonstrated that at least five observations were required to represent the children's social behavior adequately.…

Suggests that experimental studies are valuable in analyzing children's language development. Criticizes the scarcity of experimental and naturalistic investigation into preschool language development. Calls for long-term study of continuity and discontinuity in children's school and home learning and between different school stages. Observes that…

State conditions and environmental variables were measured over a 5-hour period for 25 students (ages 3-21) with profound and multiple handicaps. Results showed the presence of state sequence patterns, short state change periods, and a relatively small amount of association between specific behavior states and environmental factors and events.…

This paper highlights the need for effective social skills interventions for preschool children with disabilities, reviews available intervention procedures and packages, discusses factors affecting the impact of social skills interventions in early childhood special education, and reviews research efforts to increase the impact of these…

Comparison of 2 methods of presenting novel words, either preceded by a pause or in normal prosody, on initial word comprehension of 20 5-year-old children with language impairments (and 2 control groups matched for either age or mean length of utterance) found no effect for presentation method. (Author/DB)

The Walker/Severson Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders measure was revised for use with preschool children. The revision consists of three hierarchical stages of increasingly time-consuming methodologies: (1) teacher rankings, (2) teacher ratings, and (3) direct behavioral observations. Testing with 121 children demonstrated significant…

The combined effects of double-prompting and booster session procedures on the social behavior of four socially withdrawn preschool children were investigated. Results indicated that the intervention procedures increased subjects' initiations in organizing play, sharing, and assisting and that there were collateral increases in subjects'…

This study examined the interrelations of speech skills and letter knowledge to the phonological awareness and early reading skills of 99 preschool children. Findings indicated that phoneme awareness, but not rhyme awareness, correlated with early reading measures and that phoneme manipulation was closely associated with letter knowledge and with…

The study reported in this paper intended to trace what Chinese children think about life and identify their naive theories. Fifty-eight 5-year-old children in Taiwan from 39 kindergartens were interviewed using a semi-structured instrument. Results indicate that preschool children have preconceptions about the concept of life even before entering…

The relationship between preschool children's level of gender understanding and their ability to identify gender-linked attributes was examined. Participants were 26 3-year-old and 30 4-year-old children who were administered a single-cue gender labelling task, Slaby and Frey's (1975) gender constancy test, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test.…

The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale-Revised and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) were compared using a sample of 26 developmentally disabled children, aged 32 to 73 months. The focus of the study was to determine the feasibility of the K-ABC both for assessment and for planning more effective remediation programs for this…