A study investigated whether activities could be designed to elicit seven specific language functions in kindergartners: self-maintaining, directing, reporting, towards logical reasoning, predicting, projecting, and imagining. Language functions were not equally elicited by all activities, but changing activity was effective in varying language…

Tests of two coding processes and language measures were administered to 100 institutionalized moderately retarded adults (mean age 24). Results of correlational analyses showed association between use and understanding of language and successive processing, however, analysis of variance indicated both coding dimensions important for establishing…

The receptive and expressive "wh" interrogative performance of 20 language-delayed children (4.3 to 6.4 years old) was compared to available normative data. These findings suggest that the delayed children develop the same order of acquisition and rules for questioning as normal children, but at a slower rate. (Author/SEW)

Results indicated that Ss were able to accurately repeat sentences which they did not understand as long as imitation was immediate. Delaying imitation three seconds adversely affected imitation of noncomprehended sentences while having no significant effect on comprehended sentences. (Author)

Two approaches to intervention geared to autistic children's characteristics are presented: one stressing speech and the other sign and speech. Some findings relevant to implementation of simultaneous sign and speech are discussed, and due to observed variability in processing and responsiveness to intervention, the need for individual programing…

The instructional utility of employing modeling strategies to promote skill acquisition of exceptional learners in the content areas of arithmetic, spelling, reading, expressive language, and handwriting is presented vis-a-vis descriptions of several basic modeling strategies and teaching procedures in which models are integral components. (Author)

Language comprehension performance on the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language (TACL) was investigated using three modes of test administration with 24 four-year-old children representing various categories of cognitive tempo. Results indicated that all Ss had similar expressive language abilities. (Author/SB)

Referential communication skills of moderately mentally retarded adolescents (20 speaker/listener dyads with a mean age of 15.75 years) were investigated. In Study 1, S performance on referential communication activities (divided into three skill levels) was examined. Degree of idiosyncratic messages communicated was investigated in Study 2.…

Listening was found to be a potential avenue for learning content area material. Further, findings underscore the value of a response format that minimizes involvement of expressive language in severely disabled students with identifiable expressive language difficulties. (Author)

The process by which 55 preschool children acquire the meanings of dimensional and expressive terms was investigated in relation to Eve Clark's semantic feature hypothesis. (Author/MP)

Four speech deficient mentally retarded children (3-5 years old) with Down's Syndrome were taught imitative verbal responses by two methods based on operant conditioning principles. (Author/CL)

This study compared 41 students with severe behavioral disorders (attending either day or residential programs) on language measures. No significant differences were found between groups; both groups showed receptive and expressive language deficits. However, teachers rated students in the day program higher on conversational skills. Also,…

Investigated associations between expressive language and symbolic play in deaf children with deaf parents or with hearing parents, and hearing children with hearing parents. Defined three language level groups. Hearing status was associated with duration of symbolic play. Higher language levels were associated with more canonically sequenced and…

The Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test-Preschool was compared to an author-developed structured task activity in determining the grammatical ability of 20 Spanish-speaking preschoolers. The structured task activity was a better means for obtaining information concerning the preschoolers' productive knowledge of grammatical forms. (CR)

Shows that variation in the composition of the lexicon at token-level between more and less formal oral styles is identical to the variation between written and oral discourse. The article argues that speakers deictically anchor their utterances in a non-linguistic spatio-temporal context and that the degree of context-dependence is reflected in…