This article describes a new construct for coding the social communicative performance of school-aged children as they interact with peers and teachers in the classroom. The Social Communication Coding System (SCCS) allows clinicians a way of describing how children actually spend their time during the school day by observing ongoing behaviors…

Language is the common thread underlying speaking, listening, reading, and writing. For children who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), a solid foundation in language and communication is essential to active literacy learning across grades. This article examines the language and literacy relationship for children who use AAC. It…

Speech-language pathologists face many service delivery challenges in school-based settings. Traditionally operating from a disorder model, the school speech-language pathologist rarely takes advantage of the opportunity to work with students who may benefit from enhanced communication skills training. The Communication Lab approach is an 8-week…

Communication prostheses are critical components of the nonvocal child's communication process, but are only one component. This article focuses on the steps involved in communicative interaction processes and the potential barriers to the development of effective interaction and analysis of nonvocal communicative interactions. A discussion of the…

In two original articles from the inaugural issue of "Topics in Language Disorders", Berlin, Blank, and Rose proposed a model of dialogue complexity on the basis of a continuum of abstractness defined as perceptual-language distance; Carlson, Gruenewald, and Nyberg proposed a triadic model of academic concepts, student language, and…