Five children, aged 3 years 5 months to 4 years 11 months, who were speaking only in single word utterances and who exhibited a wide discrepancy between their language comprehension and production, were placed in a 12 week parent assisted environmental language intervention program using a sensorimotor approach to language training. (Author)

Analysis of language samples from four children with blindness, four children with low vision, and four sighted children (ages 4-5) revealed that the sighted group had greater complexity of utterances, lower frequency of inappropriate pronoun use, more variation in sentence types, and more instances of experiential narrative and imaginative play.…

This study of the educational progress of four normal peers integrated for one year into a preschool class with five children with autism found that the normal peers, who had functioned at or above age level at the time of admission, made substantial progress in their developmental rate. (Author/JDD)

The paper presents data obtained in a preliminary study of teacher (N=2) responsiveness to communicative initiation attempts of preschool children (N=4) with developmental delays. Teacher contingent responsiveness was low for both child- and teacher-directed activities but was lowest for the teacher-directed activities. (Author/DB)

A study of five autistic children in a segregated preschool, five mainstreamed autistic children, and four nonhandicapped, integrated peers found that all of the groups made better than normative progress in language development. There were no significant differences in changes in language ability between segregated and mainstreamed autistic…

This paper describes the development and application of individualized intervention procedures in a classroom for preschool language-impaired children. Language development principles utilized in the program focus on determining the setting, timing, interactive participants, purpose, and content. Resulting changes in language comprehension and…

Available evidence suggests that early language intervention is effective when designed to meet the needs of the individual child. Intervention should begin when risk or predisposing factors so indicate or when significant delays are present. Intervention should respect the child's developmental level in relevant areas and should address…

Three young children with borderline to moderate mental retardation were taught the action-object form using milieu language intervention. Subjects learned to generatively produce action-object combinations in nonobligatory conversational situations as requests for objects/actions and as declaratives, and also began to respond correctly to probe…

Conversational samples were elicited from three-, four-, and five-year-old normal-speaking children and speech rates were measured by the traditional overall method and by the articulatory rate method which uses only fluent sequences. The clinical utility of normative rates is discussed with regard to fluency assessment and intervention.…

The use of deictic words from 5 classes by 4 preschool teachers and 12 children with hearing losses was examined. Teachers used a total of 648 deictic words versus the children's 172 examples. Personal pronouns were the most frequently used class, followed by demonstrative pronouns, adverbs of location, shifting reference verbs, and adverbs of…

Analysis of young children's comprehension of common idioms revealed a significant linear trend for children to make more literal responses with increasing age. Children did not find the story contexts helpful in interpreting the idioms. A range of comprehension scores was found among the individual idioms, but semantic transparency was not…

This study investigated the effects of script-based and nonscript-based treatment on the language comprehension of four preschool children with mental retardation. The script-based treatment was more effective than the nonscript treatment in facilitating comprehension of the targeted semantic constructions in three of the four subjects. (Author/DB)

Compares the effects of language intervention over a one-year period on two groups of young children with delayed language: one group with cognitive skills markedly above their language level, and the other group with similar delays in cognitive and language skills. (28 references) (GLR)

This article reviews recent research on phonological development and characteristics associated with different forms of delay. Language-delayed students are considered categorizable at 24 months as either "late talkers" with no major deviations from patterns of normal acquisition or disordered students whose developmental patterns are markedly…

Talking World is a speech and phonological-awareness training project for 3- to 5-year-old disadvantaged children. Participating children gained preparation for a structured school setting, but lack of consistent attendance made continuity of lessons difficult. (SK)