This longitudinal study evaluated grammatical judgments of "well formedness" of children (N=21) with specific language impairment (SLI). Comparison with two control groups found that children with SLI rejected morphosyntactic errors they didn't commit but accepted errors they were likely to make. Findings support the extended optional infinitive…

This study investigated the influence of peer support and leading or misleading questions on reports of a neutral event by 48 children (ages 5 to 10). Younger children made significantly more errors in response to directly misleading questions than to indirectly misleading questions. Peer support did not influence children's prompted recall…

This response to Fey (EC 604 058) presents arguments and examples in support of using concepts of phonological processes and constructs in assessing and treating phonological disorders in children. The paper disagrees with Fey's contention that using the term "process" for "rule" leads to confusion. (Author/DB)

Analysis of the phonological patterns of two physically normal boys, aged 5 and 8 years, with fragile X syndrome, an X-chromosomal abnormality usually connected with severe to moderate mental retardation, found language features similar to those found in other studies of fragile X speech. Some of these language features are: repetition of initial…

This study evaluated an experimental articulation testing instrument for differentiating child speakers (N=21, ages 5:0 to 6:6) of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) with atypical and typical phonologies. Significant group differences were observed, suggesting that the measure can differentiate typical and atypical development in this…

Evaluates the efficacy of two training procedures for eliminating selective stimulus control observed with three trainable mentally retarded children. In another experiment, improvements in stimulus control were not a function of varying degrees of difficulty between stimulus sets or of a prior history of discrimination training with the less…