The purpose of this manuscript was to describe a community-based program, Language and Play Everyday (LAPE), aimed at evaluating effective practices for enhancing parents' capacity to increase their toddlers' communication skills. LAPE was a parent education program focused on coaching parents to embed naturalistic language-enhancing…

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to examine the concurrent validity and classification accuracy of 3 parent report measures of language development in Spanish-speaking toddlers. Method: Forty-five Spanish-speaking parents and their 2-year-old children participated. Twenty-three children had expressive language delays (ELDs) as…

The relation between preschoolers' phonological awareness and the frequency and quality of parents' book-reading and reminiscing practices were examined in 54 low-income and ethnically diverse families. Children's phonological awareness was assessed at the beginning and end of preschool. Mothers reported the frequency with which they read books…

The goal of this study was to longitudinally examine relationships between early factors (child and mother) that may influence children's phonological awareness and reading skills 3 years later in a group of young children with cochlear implants (N = 16). Mothers and children were videotaped during two storybook interactions, and children's oral…

Background: There are well-replicated findings that link poor development on a range of communication skills with increased behavioural problems. This paper examines this relationship in children with hearing loss. Method: One hundred and twenty children with hearing loss (67 boys, 53 girls) and 63 hearing children (37 boys, 26 girls) with a mean…

The Nova Scotia early intensive behavior intervention model--NS EIBI (Bryson et al., 2007) for children with autistic spectrum disorders was designed to be feasible and sustainable in community settings. It combines parent training and naturalistic one-to-one behavior intervention employing Pivotal Response Treatment--PRT (R. Koegel & Koegel,…

Proximal environmental variables illustrate aspects of the environment that are experienced directly and specifically by the child. The current study examined the associations between three proximal environmental variables: (1) quality of the home environment, (2) regularity of family routines and (3) frequency of parenting daily hassles and…

This report presents an evaluation of the third and final year of Project Speak, funded under Part B of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. Project Speak was initiated to stimulate the language development of preschool handicapped children through direct instruction and parent training. The program provided home-based language…

The study participants were 197 deaf or hard-of-hearing students with mild to profound hearing loss who attended general education classes for 2 or more hours per day. We obtained scores on standardized achievement tests of math, reading, and language/writing, and standardized teacher's ratings of academic competence annually, for 5 years,…

The present study investigated the associations of Korean mothers' attention regulation and referential speech during play with their toddlers' language and play development. The play interaction between mothers (n = 42) and their toddlers aged between 13 and 23 months was videotaped during home visits. Maternal behavior in regulating their…

Most international adoptees (IA) have rapid catch-up of the delays common at arrival. However, it is not known whether development at arrival predicts later abilities or school readiness. Therefore, we comprehensively evaluated language, fine motor, visual reception (VR), executive function (EF), attention (ATT), and sensory skills (SS) in IA…

Book reading has been demonstrated to promote vocabulary. The current study was conducted to examine the added value of an interactive shared book reading format that emphasizes active as opposed to noninteractive participation by the child. Studies that included a dialogic reading intervention group and a reading-as-usual control group, and that…

The exploratory study examined the effectiveness of the Van Dijk method of developing language skills with four deaf-blind infants and their mothers over a two-month period. Findings indicated increased expressive/elocutionary communicative output with concomitant reduction in self-stimulatory, abusive, and tantrum-like behaviors. (DB)

This study investigated the contributions of four variables (children's expressive language scores at 30 months of age, mother's facilitation of child language, mother's education, and group assignment) to the prediction of IQ at age 3, verbal IQ at ages 5 and 8, and reading at age 8 for 571 children of low-birthweight. Four separate multiple…

This study developed and evaluated a model of good practice linking diagnosis and intervention in young children with autism. Ten toddlers with autism underwent an intervention involving home visits, modeling, workshops and written information with parents as 'therapists' in naturally occurring situations. Within 18 months all children made…