Young children seem to pick up words quickly, almost effortlessly, through various media in the early years. Studies have shown that storybooks, TV, screen media, and ebooks can all be sources for incidental word learning without formal instruction. Yet, typically, research has investigated learning from a single medium in isolation or in…

It is uncontroversial in psychological research that different schedules of practice, which govern the distribution of practice over time, can promote radically different outcomes in terms of gains in performance and durability of learning. In contrast, in speech-language treatment research, there is a critical need for well-controlled studies…

Language sample analysis (LSA) has been called the "gold standard" for clinical language assessment with children learning more than one language. The research literature discussing this clinical tool with bilingual children has grown substantially in recent years. This article reviews and synthesizes the literature on LSA in order to…

Gainful employment for adults in the United States currently requires high levels of literacy. As challenging as these requirements may be for the workforce at large, for adults who have a hearing loss (HL) and whose first spoken language is not English, the demands are especially problematic. Therefore, it is critical that educators prepare…

This article describes ways in which pragmatic language abilities may play a role in the writing performance of children and adolescents with language learning disabilities. First, a brief overview is presented of how pragmatic language difficulties might negatively influence writing performance. Next, research on the writing performance of…

Learning disabilities (LDs) have long been presumed to be a neurological disorder resulting from a deficit in 1 or more cognitive processes. Although the emphasis on cognitive processing disorders has been included in the definition since the term was coined, and although it arguably represents the key distinguishing characteristic of LDs, it also…

This review examined the status of long-term memory systems in specific language impairment (SLI)--declarative memory and aspects of procedural memory in particular. Studies included in the review were identified following a systematic search of the literature and findings combined using meta-analysis. This review showed that individuals with SLI…

The relation of morphological awareness to reading and spelling skills of dyslexic children and English language learners (ELL) is investigated. The lack of reading and spelling skills is found to be significantly correlated to insensitivity to derivational morphology.

The double-deficit hypothesis (DDH) of developmental dyslexia was investigated in seven to twelve year old Spanish children. It was observed that the double deficit (DD) group had the greatest difficulty with reading.

Prior research has shown that vocabulary instruction can enhance the comprehension of passages when instruction includes definitional and contextual information, provides multiple instructional encounters with the words, and requires learners to engage actively in processing of word meanings (M. F. Graves, 1986; S. A. Stahl & M. M. Fairbanks,…

This article reviews the effectiveness of dose forms and the efficacy of dosage and distribution in morphosyntax intervention for children. Dose forms include the commonly used techniques, procedures, and intervention contexts that constitute teaching episodes; dosage includes the quantitative measures of dose, dose frequency, total intervention…

The conversational timing patterns of three year old children who were at a high familial risk for dyslexia were examined in the course of their interaction with adults. Findings indicated that previously documented differences in speech timing surface as subtle differences in spontaneous child-adult conversation as early as three years of age.

Twenty-six deaf adolescents received instruction in a structured program of cognitive education called "Instrumental Enrichment." The program addresses, among other processes, comparison, classification, logical progression, spatial orientation, analysis and synthesis, and syllogistic thinking. Following training, the subjects showed…