Five hearing impaired children (2 to 4 years old) were followed longitudinally while using a single channel, vibrotactile aid as a supplement to hearing aids. Standardized language tests (including the Scales of Early Communication Skills for Hearing Impaired Children, the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language, and the Test for Auditory…

A 9-month study of a 1-year-old child's acquisition of the pronunciation of "camera" is presented. The data show that while the child can articulate and perceive all the phonological segments of the adult form, she uses an idiosyncratic child-based form when she spontaneously draws from her lexicon to produce an utterance, systematically modifying…

This booklet for parents provides a brief explanation of how babies and young children learn to communicate with others (through actions and words) and suggests specific ways parents can help their children learn to communicate effectively. (RH)

Communication analysis is a tool for perceptual assessment of existing or projected information complexes, i.e., an established reality perceived by one or many humans. An information complex could be of a physical nature, such as a building, landscape, city street; or of a pure informational nature, such as a film, television program,…

Described is the Modified Language Acquisition Program (MLAP) which used trainable mentally retarded trainers to teach basic language skills to severely and profoundly retarded students in a state hospital. Provided are a flow chart and procedural description to guide the use of the MLAP with attendant-supervised retarded trainers and a second…

This research is testing the suggestion that acquisition and representation of formal language knowledge of dysphasic children is qualitatively different from the normal language acquisition/representation processes. In a cohort-sequential design, aspects of language and cognitive development of 120 dysphasic children aged 6-14 are being analyzed…

Deaf children (N=52) were administered a videotaped presentation of a vocabulary test under one of five conditions: Total Communication (TC) with audio; TC without audio; Manual Communication (MC) with no mouth movement; Oral Communication (OC) with audio; and OC without audio. Modes using MC or TC yielded performances significantly superior to OC…

Native English-speaking advanced French students' ability to match the perceptive performance of native-speaking Francophones was investigated. The results suggest that linguistic competence may be based on perception and production and that biological constraints in adult language learning may be a psychomotor rather than a psycholinguistic…

A multivariate analysis of variance, using three factors obtained from a preschool developmental index (Neale Scales) as the dependent variables, and group membership based on subsequent longitudinal reading performance as the independent variables, resulted in a significant multivariate F for a sample of 204 kindergarten children. (Author/SBH)

This study compared teachers' ratings of the speech intelligibility and receptive communication skills of 15 severely deaf and 15 profoundly deaf students using five methods of communication; and students' scores on tests of these receptive communication methods. Teachers' ratings generally were lower than test scores, with low correlations…

Emphasizes that auditory lexical decision has wide applicability and that the paradigm is currently used to study basic processes in word recognition, the nature of the mental lexicon, effects of word frequency, neighbor effects and various other phenomena of isolated word perception. Article reviews the strengths and weaknesses of this task. (54…

The contributions of receptive vocabulary scores, maternal responsiveness, and maternal directiveness to the prediction of verbal IQ and reading over a 5 1/2-year period were investigated. Receptive vocabulary scores of 543 low-birthweight children at 36 months accounted for the major portion of the variation. Maternal responsiveness added…

A study compared intelligibility and speech rate differences following speaker implementation of 3 strategies (topic, alphabet, and combined topic and alphabet supplementation) and a habitual speech control condition for 5 speakers with severe dysarthria. Combined cues and alphabet cues yielded significantly higher intelligibility scores and…

A study examined the relationship between parent word familiarity and the language development of pediatric cochlear implant users (ages 3- 8). Thirty-two parents rated their familiarity with 150 words. Results indicated a significant relationship between parents' ratings and children's receptive vocabulary and language abilities, as well as their…

The challenges faced by deaf students learning English are very different from those of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students. These differences include the amount of linguistic input, motivation, language attitudes, and the use of a visual-spatial language. (38 references) (Author/CB)