Attempts to overcome methodological problems in studies of vocabulary size. Problems occur when trying to answer the following three questions: (1) how do we decide what to count as words; (2) how do we choose what words to test; and (3) how do we test the chosen words? (31 references) (Author/VWL)

The study found that, compared to normally achieving students, 24 students (age 10 and 12) with learning disabilities were less able in vocabulary production tasks and comparable in ability to use pictorial responses to demonstrate vocabulary knowledge. When equated in reading achievement, learning-disabled 10 year olds were poorer in composite…

Five children with severe educational retardation, aged 5-12, were involved in sign training in which the spoken words corresponding to signs were receptively known to participants. Whether signs were taught concurrently or in a serial fashion, signs taught by total communication were acquired faster than those taught by sign-alone training.…

The language development of 12 premature and 12 full-term Mexican American infants was compared at age 22 months. The Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development-Revised revealed that premature infants may acquire language at a slower rate than full-term infants, with expressive language more affected than receptive language skills.…

This study examined the language skills of 30 students (ages 9-16) with mild or moderate behavior disorders (BD). Results revealed that BD students fell a minimum of one standard deviation below the normative mean on all but one measure used. Further analysis indicated the students were having difficulty with both receptive and expressive…

This study compared 20 children (ages 8-14) with either autism or receptive developmental language disorder (RDLD) to 10 controls in their ability to detect frequent and infrequent randomly presented auditory stimuli. Only the children with autism demonstrated an abnormally small amplitude of the P3b, a component of the event-related brain…

A study compared family and professional assessment of the communication skills of 34 preschool males with Fragile X syndrome. Moderate agreement was found for expressive communication ratings, whereas agreement for receptive communication ratings was low to moderate. Parents rated their children significantly higher than did professionals for…

Examination of the influence of verbal working memory on sentence comprehension in 12 children with specific language impairment suggested that: (1) these children have less functional verbal working memory capacity than chronological age peers and (2) have greater difficulty managing working memory and general processing abilities than both age…

Comparison of 13 children with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss but normal language skills and 12 children with normal hearing and development found no significant group differences on three verbal metaphor tasks (comprehension, preference, and completion), and one visual metaphor task. (Author/DB)

This research examined the relative contributions of two aspects of executive function--inhibitory control and planning ability--to theory of mind in 49 3- and 4-year-olds. Children were given two standard theory of mind measures (Appearance-Reality and False Belief), three inhibitory control tasks (Bear/Dragon, Whisper, and Gift Delay), three…

In 118 children followed from age 2 to 5 (59 with autism, 24 with PDD-NOS and 35 with non-spectrum developmental disabilities), age 2 and age 3 scores of non-verbal ability, receptive communication, expressive communication and socialization were compared as predictors of receptive and expressive language at age 5. Non-verbal cognitive ability at…

This study used a copying task to examine spelling acquisition in French and Spanish from a perception and action perspective. Experiment 1 compared French and Spanish-speaking monolingual children's performance. Experiment 2 analysed the behaviour of bilingual children when copying words in French and Spanish. Gaze lift analysis showed that in…

In this study 149 kindergarten children were assessed for knowledge of letter names and letter sounds, phonological awareness, and cognitive abilities. Through this it examined child and letter characteristics influencing the acquisition of alphabetic knowledge in a naturalistic context, the relationship between letter-sound knowledge and…

In examining reading comprehension in a second language (L2), I have demonstrated that the prevailing metaphor of transfer of skills is misleading, and that what happens is access to an already existing general cognitive skill. There is evidence in first language (L1) and in L2 that accessing this skill when reading in an alphabetic language…

The present work investigated cognitive, linguistic and narrative abilities in a group of children suffering from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, an allelic X-linked recessive disorder caused by mutations in the gene encoding dystrophin. The patients showed mildly reduced IQ with lower Verbal than Performance Intelligence Quotient and were mildly…