This paper reviews the literature on grammatical knowledge in language comprehension in the preschool years from the perspective of sensitivity to structural contrasts. Studies of both direct and indirect evidence of sensitivity to structural contrasts were evaluated and showed that there may be a developmental sequence of increasing sensitivity…

This review focuses on methods used to identify language impairment in 72 published research studies from 1983-88. Test data were most frequently used, and expressive and receptive language were routinely assessed. Research problems included the lack of clarity regarding the specific number and identity of tests used and use of incomplete tests.…

Post structural reader theories--i.e., theories that focus on the reader/viewer rather than the text as the creator of meaning--are considered in this paper in terms of their application to educational media research. Some key concepts of reader theories are defined as follows: (1) reading is the process of creating meaning while viewing an…

This review describes the theory behind two new measures of spoken word recognition for children with sensory aids, the Lexical and the Multisyllabic Lexical Neighborhood Tests. It then summarizes data concerning the tests' word familiarity, interlist equivalency, and test-retest reliability. Results indicate that deaf children with cochlear…