The paper reviews research on the pragmatic language skills of language impaired and learning disabled students. Discourse skills are analyzed in terms of communicative intentions, presupposition, social organization of discourse, and context. Narrative skills are examined according to narrative structure, scripts, text cohesion, and audience…

The author asserts that superintendent's leadership behavior, more than any other factor, determines the character and quality of the instructional programs provided for learning and language disabled students. (Author)

Lauretta Bender's experiences as a bright child struggling with specific learning problems and her subsequent work in language disorders are described. Her recognition of the biological nature of a group of learning disorders for which there was no clinical evidence of structural damage to the central nervous system is emphasized. (JDD)

The ability of 10 language learning disabled (LD) children (age 9-12) and 10 sex/age matched normals to judge correctness of linguistic stress and semantic appropriateness was examined. Results indicated more difficulty on the linguistic stress task than the semantic interpretation task for LD children and better performance by normals on both…

Families of language-impaired children (N=76 and mean age 9 years) reported higher rates of first degree relatives with childhood language and/or learning disabilities than did families of matched controls. (Author/DB)

Children's ability to recall information and draw inferences from orally presented narratives was examined in sixteen nine- to ten-year-old language/learning (LLD) disabled children and two groups of normally developing children. The LLD children did not differ significantly from the younger aged control group. (Author/DB)

Fifty-five first- and second-grade learning-disabled (LD) children were subdivided into six perceptual and linguistic subtypes using hierarchical cluster analysis techniques. Three distinctive patterns of learning disabilities were found, representing a specific language disability (27%) and two variations of mixed perceptual and linguistic…

The author discusses the difficulty of noncontent words for children with poor reading skills and advocates a sentence-based program of instruction which has been successfully used to teach noncontent words to learning/language disabled children from 6 to 12 years old. (CL)

The role of memory deficits in learning disabilities (LD) was examined. It is argued that a shift in emphasis is necessary from standardized test results to the processes which underpin performance on such tests. (Author)

Sixteen language learning-disabled adolescents were able to provide fewer correct metaphor interpretations than 16 normally achieving adolescents. For both groups, metaphors were easier to interpret by paraphrase selection than by verbal explanation, and perceptual metaphors were easier to interpret than psychological metaphors. (Author/JDD)

Compares the communicative behaviors of 18 learning disabled/language impaired (LD/LI) children with two matched groups of normally developing children. LD and normal groups were matched up by age and language mates, and observed for evidence of communicative effectiveness and verbal output. Findings of the study are discussed and related to the…

The nature of word-finding deficits among children with learning disabilities is analyzed; research on the relationship between word-finding ability and reading is reviewed; and classroom implications regarding teacher language, student verbal fluency and flexibility, and student social perception are noted. (CL)

The author describes ways in which an organic curriculum--in which students actively plan goals based on their needs--helped an impulsive sixth grader and a language handicapped 20-year-old acquire reading skills, vocabulary, and master phobic reactions. (CL)

The article focuses on the nature of language problems in learning disabled children, including a study of sensory acuity, intelligence, and experience. All symbol systems including oral language, reading, and written language are evaluated to study interrelationships between areas. Nonverbal processes as well as verbal functions are assessed to…

The Pre-Reading-Screening Procedures and the Slingerland Screening Tests for Identifying Children with Specific Language Disability were administered to 1021 grade one to six students. Results indicated that reliability and validity coefficients were acceptable and that educational programing decisions could confidently be based on the test…