The Recognition & Response (R&R) model was developed and is being validated by a research team at the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. R&R has generated widespread attention in the early childhood field as a promising RTI model for pre-k (see entire issue of NHSA Dialog, Volume 12[3],…

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether there are systematic differences in literacy skills among children from less-advantaged households, using latent profile analysis. Early reading skills were measured using the Early Arithmetic, Reading, and Learning Indicators (EARLI; DiPerna, Morgan, & Lei, 2007) literacy tasks.…

The purpose of this study was to examine the hypothesis that helping preschoolers learn words through categorization may enhance their ability to retain words and their conceptual properties, acting as a bootstrap for self-learning. We examined this hypothesis by investigating the effects of the World of Words instructional program, a supplemental…

The purpose of this design experiment was to research, test, and iteratively derive principles of word learning and word organization that could help to theoretically advance our understanding of vocabulary development for low-income preschoolers. Six Head Start teachers in morning and afternoon programs and their children (N = 89) were selected…

This study addressed two aims: First, to examine the quality of adult shared book-reading behaviors for teachers and caregivers of children with communication impairments (CI) and, second, to compare the level of child literacy engagement during the teacher-led (group) and caregiver-led (one-on-one) shared book-reading sessions. Sixteen children…

Purpose: The intent of this study was to examine the longitudinal morpho-syntactic progression of children with Speech Sound Disorders (SSD) grouped according to Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) scores. Methods: Thirty-seven children separated into four clusters were assessed in their pre-kindergarten and Grade 1 years. Cluster 1 were children with…

Merging the literatures of how to enhance young children's vocabulary development and how to improve learning through play, this study tested two vocabulary teaching protocols on at-risk preschool children: Explicit Instructional Vocabulary Protocol (EIVP) and shortened EIVP and a play session (EIVP + Play). From a group of 118 lowest-performing…

The study compared several discourse characteristics of six linguistically normal and six language-disordered kindergarten children. While neither the linguistically normal nor the language-disordered groups had achieved an adult level of competence, normal children were much more aware of the interactive nature of discourse than…

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.…

A simultaneous treatments design was used to compare effects of modeling and corrected practice on generative language acquisition of six preschoolers. New syntactic forms used to describe agent-action-object stimuli were taught concurrently. All six children learned both new syntactic forms. Corrected practice produced a faster rate of learning.…

The study investigated receptive and expressive language skills in 11 preschool gifted children. It was concluded that as a group the gifted Ss did not have a better selection of deep structure and transformation rules than normal Ss. (SB)

The article discusses several linguistic and nonlinguistic teaching strategies to foster language acquisition and increase spontaneous language in preschool children with language delays. Techniques include having the child complete unfinished sentences and intentionally violating an expected routine to elicit the child's language. (DB)

Topic continuing and nontopic continuing utterances produced by three productively language-disordered preschoolers were analyzed. Results suggested that Ss produced a proportion of adjacent utterances comparable to proportions previously reported for children with normal production language skills and that they relied on an imitation strategy to…

As a group, the language impaired children demonstrated deficits in comprehension when compared to the normal language children. However, both groups scored near the ceiling on several tests, and on most tests that did differentiate the two groups, the mean scores of both groups were above the norms. (Author)

Ten Down's Syndrome children (all 3-4 years old) and four nonhandicapped children and their mothers participated in a study of children's ability to respond to questions. Interactions of each of the 14 mother-child dyads were recorded on videotape and mother-child vocalizations transcribed. The number of appropriate, inappropriate, and…