Purpose: Several studies have reported that "useful speech" at 5 years of age predicts outcomes in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but this skill has been vaguely defined. This study investigates which specific aspects of expressive language in children with ASD best predict adult language and communication outcomes.…

Purpose: Both theoretical models of infant language acquisition and empirical studies posit important roles for attention to speech in early language development. However, deaf infants with cochlear implants (CIs) show reduced attention to speech as compared with their peers with normal hearing (NH; Horn, Davis, Pisoni, & Miyamoto, 2005;…

The unique relation of language use (i.e., output) to language growth was investigated for forty-seven 30-month-old Spanish-English bilingual children (27 girls, 20 boys) whose choices of which language to speak resulted in their levels of English output differing from their levels of English input. English expressive vocabularies and receptive…

Previous studies using direct forms of vocabulary instruction have shown that newly learned words are integrated with existing lexical knowledge only "after" off-line consolidation (as measured by competition between new and existing words during spoken word recognition). However, the bulk of vocabulary acquisition during childhood…

Adaptations of simultaneous and successive processing and language tests were administered to 88 institutionalized moderately mentally retarded adolescents and adults. Results revealed a relationship between language and coding processing and demonstrated the involvement of serial processing in the comprehension of speech flow and language…

Relational knowledge of 21 derivational suffixes was investigated with 120 children (grades 3-8) and 40 adults. Results obtained from a nonsense-word model indicated that suffixes were comprehended with greater accuracy than they were produced, particularly by the children. Children and adults demonstrated greatest accuracy in comprehension and…

This brief paper presents a summary of a study which examined the developmental progression of categorization and its relationship to language development in 12 adults with severe to profound mental retardation and with less than 100 words of expressive language (including manual signs). Subjects were asked to sort physically eight miniature…

Twenty-eight adults with Down's syndrome and 28 adults with retardation of unknown origin responded to a language elicitation test. The adults with Down's syndrome exhibited an almost universal failure in mastering individual elements of the auxiliary verb system. The nature and source of biological constraints on language learning and…

This study evaluated a method of adult mediation with a deaf second grader which involved identification of language needs through transcription and analysis of the child's retellings of weekly basal stories, followed by targeted adult-mediated conversations. Evaluation indicated the student's performance on targeted semantic and syntactic…

This article discusses the potential of applying research based on the principles of stimulus equivalence and related phenomena to the investigation and remediation of language disabilities, particularly with individuals with intellectual disabilities and autism. It describes studies which have applied an equivalence framework to different aspects…

Examined morphosyntax in persons with Williams Syndrome (WS). Analyzed receptive language of English-speaking WS persons and grammatical gender assignment of French-speaking WS persons. Found within-domain dissociations in grammatical gender assignment across several sentence elements and difficulties in understanding embedded sentences, which…

Longitudinal change in syntax comprehension and production skill, measured over six years, was modeled in 31 individuals (ages 5-20) with Down syndrome. The best fitting Hierarchical Linear Modeling model of comprehension uses age and visual and auditory short-term memory as predictors of initial status, and age for growth trajectory. (Contains…

A study was conducted to test the utility of a protocol, consisting of 30 pragmatic parameters of language, to evaluate conversational speech from 157 subjects in six diagnostic groups. Four distinct profiles emerged separating the diagnostic groups within which differences in the distribution of pragmatic deficits were identified. (Author/KM)