The pragmatic competence of 33 learning disabled (LD) children (grades 2, 4 and 6) was examined on a task that allowed for the separate assessment of linguistic and social knowledge, i.e., the ability to appropriately vary politeness and persuasive strategies as a function of listener status. LD and non LD Ss made requests of four imaginary…

The study assessed the oral narrative abilities of 10 normal and 10 learning-disabled (LD) middle school children (11-12 years old). Narratives were assessed using A. Applebee's system for the development of story organization. The narratives were also examined for the specific components used within the stories themselves. Findings revealed…

The study examined whether a difference existed between 10 learning disabled (LD) and 10 normally achieving (NA) high school students in terms of comprehension and production or use of pragmatic skills. The skills examined were pragmatic function (i.e., an utterance spoken in context with specific intent), and code-switching (i.e., modification of…

Twenty-three learning disabled (LD) children (age 8-12 years) and 15 nondisabled children (age 8-12 years) were individually administered the Luria-Nebraska Neuropsychological Battery-Children's Revision (LNNB). Means and standard deviations for each of the test's scales were computed by group, and individual T-tests were calculated for…

The study evaluated the ability of six learning disabled adolescents with normal language ability and eight learning disabled adolescents with deficient language skills to appropriately mark ambiguous referents. Subjects were compared with control groups of normally achieving chronologically age matched adolescents and children matched with the…

Evaluated were language production deficits in 32 learning disabled (LD) adolescents. Ss were administered a battery of subtests containing tasks sensitive to language production difficulties in cognition, convergent and divergent production of semantic units, word retrieval, and retrieval of syntactic structures. Results indicated that speech…

The study attempted to further clarify the relationship between speed and memory span by directly examining whether slower identification of item information is the source of span difficulties in learning disabled (LD) children. Forty-eight sixth grade boys participated in the study, 24 LD and 24 non-LD. The method involved pretesting each subject…

A modeling procedure involving dynamic interactions was used to train three language-delayed preschool children to emit five-element syntactic responses. A single-subject multiple baseline design using within- and across-subject replication was employed to study the acquisition of expanded "agent-action-object" sentences and the…

Language training for the non-verbal or language delayed child should utilize feedback to reinforce correct responses and should closely follow the syntactical development of normal children. The two basic areas of language training are receptive and expressive. Receptive language training includes attending and responding, following single phase…

This study investigated the relationship between the Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integration-Revised (VMI-R) and written expression skills of 54 students (grades 2 to 7) with learning disabilities. Data analysis compared cognitive ability; visual motor skills; achievement in reading, math, and written language; teacher rating of written…

A review of the research on learning-disabled students suggests that these students often exhibit language deficits that are not readily obvious. These language deficits create problems in understanding social interactions and written and oral directions as well as problems in expressing ideas both orally and in written form. The term language…