Many children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder who receive early intervention reap developmental benefits, but little is known about characteristics of early intervention placements in the community that optimize individual growth. The extent to which children hear and use language, in particular, may contribute significantly to…

Program administrators and policy makers have placed a priority on expanding access to inclusive, center-based early care and education (ECE) for low-income children with special needs, a "doubly vulnerable" population characterized by academic and social-emotional achievement gaps at kindergarten entry. Yet, no research has documented…

Evidence suggests preschool age students with disabilities (SWD) benefit from inclusive settings. Inclusive education has positive impacts on students' social-emotional, language, and cognitive skills. Yet, preschool age SWD continue to have limited access to inclusive education, and research suggests numerous reasons, including teacher practice.…

The Nuffield Early Language Intervention is designed to improve the spoken language ability of children during the transition from nursery to primary school. It is targeted at children with relatively poor spoken language skills. Three sessions per week are delivered to groups of two to four children starting in the final term of nursery and…

This brief report focusing on children' s kindergarten readiness i s the third in a series of reports describing data from the 2009 cohort of the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES 2009). Previous FACES 2009 reports described the characteristics of children and their families and programs as they entered Head Start in fall 2009…

Funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), LitTECH Outreach was a 3-year technology-based preschool literacy project conducted by staff at the Center for Best Practices in Early Childhood, a research and development division of the College of Education and Human Services at Western Illinois…

The study examined relationships between symbolic play and language in 10 developmentally delayed preschool children. As predicted, individual subject data revealed instances of correspondence and noncorrespondence between developmental levels of symbolic play and communication forms. Several patterns of play-language relationships are discussed…

Results indicated that the diagnostic questioning strategy using Full Model to Open Questioning was more efficacious for modifying the structure and content of young learners' expressive language repertoires than the reverse, which begins with an open ended question, "tell me about this," and proceeds through more restricted alternatives.…

Analyses of play suggested more sophisticated levels in segregated than integrated settings. There were no differences between the two settings in appropriateness of play, type of interaction, percentage of attending to teacher-directed learning activities, or quality or quantity of their language in the two settings. (Author/CL)

A study investigated the differential effects of psycholinguistic training programs on Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) scores obtained by educable mentally retarded, trainable mentally retarded, and culturally-economically disadvantaged preschool and elementary students. (Author/SW)

The study compared effects of toy play and computer activity on vocalization and social play in dyads consisting of a disabled preschooler and nondisabled peer. Computer activity was as effective or slightly more effective than toy play in stimulating vocalizations and social play. (Author/DB)

Integration of language/communication objectives across the preschool day involves 6 steps: (1) determining language/communication objectives of students, (2) determining most appropriate model for integrating each language/communication objective, (3) determining settings for integration, (4) assigning staff responsibilities, (5) developing and…

The checklist and manual are designed to measure changes in parental skills as a result of both group and individualized programing in a home based prescriptive infant program. Guidelines are also given on setting behavioral goals for parents that can be addressed by program activities. The inventory is divided into seven skill areas: parental…

Two studies compared the relative effectiveness of a developmentally based language facilitation program, a direct language facilitation program, or a combined developmental/direct program for 52 preschool children with disabilities. Both studies indicated that no program was better overall. Differential effects of the interventions could be…

This article describes the Language Interaction Intervention Program (LIIP) used in preschool classes for handicapped children in central New Jersey. Covered are the LIIP curriculum rationale, the LIIP model, the original evaluation study, and a replication study showing the program was effectively replicated with mothers appropriately changing…