Types of utterances (with locative action utterances specifically differentiated) were evaluated in a language-impaired child tracked between one year, six months and three years of age. Comparison with utterances in other children suggests the importance of such a fine-grained analysis in detecting semantic properties of child language…

This article reviews methods for assessing vocabulary of young children with hearing impairments including naturalistic observation, parent report measures, and standardized vocabulary tests. It also describes procedures to assess word-learning processes. Cautions on the use of assessment tools with this population are reviewed and suggestions are…

This article reviews the literature on the importance of phonological awareness within the context of language/literacy learning and discusses the developmental continuum of phoneme awareness skills. Specific techniques are suggested to guide the speech-language pathologist in the assessment of phonological awareness skills. (Author/DB)

This longitudinal study examined the effectiveness of two different assessment methodologies, low structured observation and structured elicitation tasks, to obtain communicative intents from 35 normal children at the sensorimotor stage of development (9-24 months). The two approaches appeared to vary depending on the age of the child and the…

The taxonomy developed by J. Klecan-Aker et al. to investigate the use of various speech acts in response to questions during a structured picture-description task was evaluated. Results indicated that the taxonomy was sufficient to handle the responses of a group of 12 language-impaired children, aged 7-11. (JDD)

Clarifies and defines quantitative research as it is applied to the study of language acquisition. Trends in the use of quantitative and nonquantitative methods in applied linguistics are reported, and suggestions are made concerning useful paradigms and procedures for further research in language acquisition. (Author/CB)

This paper analyzes Piagetian theory on the relative development of cognition and language, the local homology model which claims there are specific language-cognition relationships at specific points in time, normal development and local homology, and development in language-impaired children. Implications for clinical decision making are…

This paper describes the strategies used by an expert in communication as he analyzed conversations between an eight-year-old hearing-impaired girl and her teacher. Protocol analysis is used to identify a pattern in the analysis, beginning with social conventions and proceeding to discourse genre, sentences, and finally, individual words. (DB)

This article identifies sources of information about syntactic ability of school-age children and adolescents from language samples (spoken and written) and standardized language tests. Language samples yield information on sentence length, clause density, and use of higher level discourse-motivated structures. Syntactic subtests from three…

Evaluation activities conducted by the Hawaii State Department of Education in the Honolulu School District are described. These activities met all the requirements of the Title I Evaluation and Reporting System (TIERS). The Comprehensive Language Improvement Program (CLIP) was implemented to assist disadvantaged children. CLIP had four components…

This article discusses word definitions within the context of language development in school-age children and adolescents. It explains the importance of the ability to define words, reviews the growth of word definition during school years, describes standardized tests, and offers suggestions for expanding the normative database for word…

This article describes the Colorado Phonetic/Phonologic Assessment of Hearing-Impaired Infants and Toddlers (PHONE) and the speech of 91 hearing-impaired infants and toddlers, examining number of vowels, consonants, elements per utterance, and utterances; differences by age and by hearing loss for each vowel and consonant; and relationship to…

This investigation compared the performances of 24 African American children (mean age 6) with language impairments (LI) to typically developing African American peers on five traditional informal language assessment measures. Performances of the LI children were significantly lower on all measures than typically developing peers. Implications for…

This study examined the temporal reliability of four quantitative measurements of linguistic behaviors in 20 preschool children observed in a naturalistic setting. Although inadequate reliability was found for the measure which used total number of words, very high reliability coefficients were obtained for the measures which used number of…

This introduction to the special issue summarizes issues raised in the nine subsequent contributed papers, which discuss research findings on communication and language development in persons with mental retardation or developmental disabilities. The paper stresses the direct relevance of the research for prevention, assessment, intervention, and…