Studies of American Sign language including functional magnetic resonance imaging of deaf signers confirms the importance of left hemisphere structures in signed language, but also the contributions of right hemisphere regions to sign language processing. A case study involving cortical stimulation mapping in a deaf signer provides evidence for…

This study compared 41 students with severe behavioral disorders (attending either day or residential programs) on language measures. No significant differences were found between groups; both groups showed receptive and expressive language deficits. However, teachers rated students in the day program higher on conversational skills. Also,…

This paper reports on a 15-year follow-up of the linguistic and cognitive profile of a woman with standard trisomy 21 (Down syndrome). The follow-up found recent rapid deterioration in receptive and productive language skills. However, basic phonological and morphosyntactic skills are preserved. Her changing profile mirrors that found in aging…

Four developmentally delayed preschoolers were taught action-object responses in receptive and expressive language modalities, using matrix-training procedures. Acquisition of a word combination rule was facilitated by the use of familiar lexical items, whereas subsequent acquisition of new lexical knowledge was enhanced by couching training in a…

Spontaneous speech samples from 10 Swedish children were analyzed grammatically. The five subjects (age five) with specific language impairment (SLI) differed from controls in their more restricted usage of word order patterns and number of grammatical errors. Their speech also showed frequent omissions of grammatical morphemes. Results suggest…

This study evaluated the "missing-item" language intervention with two moderately to severely retarded students (ages five and six) in a special class setting. The missing-item format produced effects in requests for targeted snack items and, after generalization training, a requesting repertoire that was durable and generalized across…

The prelinguistic intentional communicative behaviors of 10 noninstitutionalized children (ages 6-13) with profound mental retardation were analyzed according to communicative rate, communicative function, discourse structure, communicative means, and syllable shape. Findings are compared to data from children without mental retardation and…

This review looks at the impact of word finding deficits, psycholinguistic considerations in naming (including relevant intrinsic and extrinsic variables), behaviors indicative of word finding difficulty, screening for word finding disorders in the classroom, direct assessment (both formal and informal), individual differences, and word retrieval…

This study compared the object naming, object recognition, reading, and spelling abilities of 22 adults, half with written language difficulties and half without. Significant positive relationships were obtained between object naming ability and reading ability, object naming and spelling, and reading and spelling performance. Results suggest that…

The communicative abilities of six sets of same-sex, preschool dizygotic twins were examined. In each dyad, one sibling had a strong history of recurrent otitis media (ROM) but the other twin did not. History of ROM was associated with lowered receptive vocabulary, with no consistent effects detected in expressive speech and language tasks.…

Selected discourse behaviors of 10 elementary school children with specific language impairment (SLI) presenting expressive or combined expressive-receptive deficits were compared to each other and to two groups of controls. The two SLI subgroups varied from each other on specific measures of turn taking and cohesion. Research implications are…

Thirty-two subjects (5 Broca's, 7 conduction, and 10 anomic aphasics and 10 normal controls) performed story retell and procedural discourse tasks containing familiar and unfamiliar topics, with familiar and unfamiliar listeners. Results indicated that topic familiarity significantly influenced verbal output in both normal and aphasic subjects.…

This study attempted to quantify diagnostic characteristics related to consonant production of developmental verbal dyspraxia (DVD) in 11 Dutch children (ages 6 and 7). The study was able to quantify diagnostic characteristics but found very few qualitative differences in error patterns between children with DVD and 11 age-matched children with…

This study examined the effect of emotional content on the verbal pragmatic aspects of discourse production in right-brain-damaged (RBD), left-brain-damaged (LBD), and normal control adults. In the nonemotional conditions, LBDs were particularly impaired in pragmatics, whereas in the emotional condition, RBDs demonstrated pragmatic deficits.…

This study used a performance-based model to investigate the impact of discourse demands on the pattern of morphosyntactic deficits exhibited by 10 children with specific language impairments (SLI). Findings suggest distinct deficit profiles for subgroups of children with SLI differing in receptive language abilities, not evident when syntactic…