This volume sheds empirical light on Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) by providing five sets of analyses of two longitudinal, interactional datasets, involving two dyads exchanging emails over one academic semester. The collective study on CDST is the first of its kind, in that it delves into multiple subsystems of learner language,…

The chapters in this volume, all written by experts in the field, present an array of new research on second language acquisition (SLA) that touches on several current theoretical debates in the field and present a rich range of new empirical data and a number of innovative findings. The studies address questions relating to ultimate attainment,…

The FG syndrome is characterized by unusual facies; sudden infant death; developmental delay; and abnormalities of the cardiac, gastrointestinal, and central nervous systems. Serial evaluations of one case with isolated agenesis of the corpus callosum found consistent patterns over time in specific language impairments in syntactic and…

The technique developed in this research paper for analyzing the information in charts and graphs is designed to reveal design flaws in the display that may prevent them from conveying information effectively. This analytic scheme requires isolating four types of constituents in a display and specifying their structure and interrelations at the…

Linguistic performance of 7 children (mean age=68 months) with spina bifida, hydrocephalus, and average intelligence was evaluated. Subjects dealt with the semantic-pragmatic requirements of linguistically posed problems in an age-appropriate manner. Performance declined as task demands increased but no more than performance of nondisabled…

Forty children (ages 5-18) with mild to severe hearing losses were administered a battery of speech and language tasks. Misarticulation, syntactic, and pragmatic errors indicated a consistent pattern of oral communication behavior that reflects the reduction of acoustic input such children experience. (Author/DB)

Comparison of the language development profiles of five children exposed prenatally to cocaine and associated risk factors with those of a matched nonexposed control group found that major differences between the two groups were in discourse-pragmatics, with less marked differences in syntactic development. (Author/DB)

This monograph supplement to "The Journal of the Academy of Rehabilitative Audiology" contains eight papers on issues and strategies for communication assessment of hearing-impaired children, not only in the area of interpersonal communication, but in classroom and print discourse as well. Titles and authors of the papers are as follows:…

A study of five adult males with autism investigated which combination of input/output modalities (typed or spoken) enhanced the syntactic, semantic, and/or pragmatic performance of individuals with autism when engaging in conversations with a normal language adult. Results found that typed communications facilitated the use of longer utterances.…