In this study we investigated the recovery patterns of language and cognitive functions in patients with post-traumatic language processing deficits and in patients with aphasia following a stroke. The correlation of specific language functions and cognitive functions was analyzed in the acute phase and 6 months later. Significant recovery of the…

The stressing patterns of five preschool language-impaired children were investigated. Analysis of two-word utterances in language samples found that three subjects tended to stress words based on their position in the utterance; one child stressed words based on informativeness; and one of the subjects' preferences was unclear. (JDD)

This study compared verbal disfluency and accessory characteristics of 15 African-American and 15 White male stutterers (ages 8-12). Overall, no significant differences were found in verbal- or visual-disfluency behaviors on either reading or conversation tasks between the two groups. Also, no significant differences were found in attitudes toward…

A study involving 12 hearing sign language users examined the effect of the signing task on temporal features of speech during simultaneous communication (SC). Results indicated longer sentence duration for SC than speech-only conditions, and longer anticipatory duration of the diphthong and interword interval preceding the experimental words.…

A study involving 20 listeners investigated the potential influence of alterations in the temporal structure of speech produced during simultaneous communication on the perception of final consonant voicing. Results found that accurate perception was not impaired by the durational changes accompanying the typically slower speech pattern of…

Sixteen adults with language/learning disabilities (L/LD) and 16 controls participated in a study testing sensitivity to word order cues that signaled grammatical versus ungrammatical word strings belonging to an artificial grammar. Participants with L/LD performed significantly below the comparison group, suggesting that this skill is problematic…

Adolescents with language-based learning disabilities (LBLD) often interpret idioms literally. When idioms are provided in an enriched context, comprehension is compromised further because of the LBLD student's inability to assign multiple meanings to words, assemble and integrate information, and go beyond a local referent to derive a global,…

Specific diphthongs were produced by four individuals from the coastal southern dialect region who were selected from among those who had successfully completed an accent-reduction program. Results showed that diphthongs used in Southern English were shorter and had less noticeable transitional elements than those in Standard American English.…

A study found 36 children (ages 3-5) with specific language impairment (SLI) produced more errors with third person singular pronouns than did age-level peers, but did not make more errors than peers matched for mean length of utterance. Error patterns were similar in children with SLI and their language-level peers. (Contains references.)…

The linguistic home environments of 10 language-delayed children and 10 linguistically normal children were compared using audiorecordings of parent-child dyads. Significant differences were found between the linguistic interactions of parents with a language-disordered child and parents with a linguistically normal child in all areas studied.…

Fourteen children (ages 4-6) with specific language impairment produced sentences containing reduced or unreduced disyllabic proper names. Acoustic analyses revealed a significantly longer duration for verb-onset to name-onset of sentences containing the reduced name, indicating that although segmental material is omitted, an acoustic trace…

A study investigated frequency change and duration of the second formant (F2) transition in speech samples recorded close to stuttering onset in 10 preschoolers who stutter, 10 who recovered from stuttering, and 10 controls. Near stuttering onset, children whose stuttering persisted demonstrated significantly smaller frequency change than the…

Eight preschool children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 30 nonimpaired children were selected on the basis of specified mean length of utterance (MLU) ranges and compared on word class production. The high-MLU and low-MLU groups of SLI children could not be empirically differentiated based on their word class profiles, whereas the…

A phonological investigation of four siblings with autism found persistence of several phonological processes such as labilization, cluster reduction, or final consonant deletion beyond the expected age, evidence of unusual sound changes such as extensive segment coalescence, frication of liquids, and velarization, chronological mismatch, and…

Twenty-four adolescents participated in conversations with a same-sex peer, an opposite-sex peer, or a speech-language pathologist. Significant differences were found in linguistic behaviors between conversations with peers and those with clinicians. Conversations with opposite-sex peers tended to have fewer direct questions, reduced listener eye…