State education departments, in discussions with Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Southeast, identified low reading achievement as a critical issue for their students and expressed an interest in identifying effective strategies to promote the foundational skills in young students that might improve reading achievement. The Mississippi…

This study aimed to investigate the relationships between abilities to initiate and respond to joint attention and symptoms of autism that have, and have not, been theoretically linked to joint attention. Participants were 51 boys and five girls with autistic disorder, aged between 2 years and 6 years 5 months. Measures of joint attention…

Using a low-inference observational instrument, the authors empirically described and compared pedagogical behaviors in bilingual and structured English-immersion programs serving Spanish-speaking English language learners in a large urban school district in Southeast Texas. The two programs included both intervention/control of each type during…

This paper addresses several inconsistencies in the phonological deficit theory of dyslexia in relation to children with language impairments. Results from studies in the reading and language literature inform readers of the critical elements of phonemic awareness that predict later reading success. These elements combined with explicit…

This study explored the language skills of children with cochlear implants (CIs) compared to normal hearing (NH) peers. Standardized speech and language measures, including speech articulation, receptive and expressive vocabulary, syntax and morphology, and metalinguistics, were administered to 39 congenitally deaf children, ages 5 to 14, and a…

This longitudinal project identified young children at risk of literacy difficulties and asked why some of these children fail to benefit from phonologically based intervention. Reception class children were screened to identify a group at risk of literacy difficulties and a matched group of children not at risk. Profiles were compiled for each…

Proximal environmental variables illustrate aspects of the environment that are experienced directly and specifically by the child. The current study examined the associations between three proximal environmental variables: (1) quality of the home environment, (2) regularity of family routines and (3) frequency of parenting daily hassles and…

The oral expressive language of 47 aphasic subjects (who had suffered a single unilateral occlusive cerebral vascular accident two to four weeks prior to original testing) was measured on two occasions a year apart. Results found positive changes toward normal language functioning for several variables with type of aphasia affecting outcome on…

Examination of 11 standard vocabulary lists used as sources of vocabulary items for developers of augmentative and alternative communication systems found little overlap between them, small vocabularies, and a tendency toward simple words. Many words in lists of adult nonspeaking users were not on any of the lists. (Author/DB)

Comparison of word fluency with seven high-functioning children with autism (ages 11-15) and controls of similar age and vocabulary level found that both groups performed equally well when generating words in response to familiar category cues, but autistic children performed significantly less well than controls when generating miscellaneous…

Studies are needed to better understand the broad autism phenotype in young siblings of children with autism. Cognitive, adaptive, social, imitation, play, and language abilities were examined in 42 non-autistic siblings and 20 toddlers with no family history of autism, ages 18-27 months. Siblings, as a group, were below average in expressive…

Results of a seven-week sentence stimulation treatment on sentence production in an aphasic adult female with agrammatism indicated that treatment influenced description of test picture sets and that some generalization to other picture sets occurred. (Author/DB)

The relation between physical identity and name identity encoding speed was assessed in 32 mentally retarded adults and nonretarded controls. A difference between retarded and nonretarded subjects in preparation time was apparent; however, this difference did not influence encoding speed. (Author/DB)

The purpose of this cross-sectional study, conducted with a random sample of 166 students with emotional disturbance (ED), was to establish, with attention to age and gender differences, the extent to which students with ED served in public school settings experience language skill deficits. This study also examined particular types of problem…

Purpose: To examine the relationship between phonological processing skills prior to kindergarten entry and reading skills at the end of 1st grade, in children with speech sound disorders (SSD). Method: The participants were 17 children with SSD and poor phonological processing skills (SSD-low PP), 16 children with SSD and good phonological…