The study examined the expressive communicability (i.e., the amount, fluency, elaboration, clarity, and veracity of voluntarily transmitted information about oneself) and belief systems of 30 hospitalized adult schizophrenics and 30 matched normals. Schizophrenics differed from normals on all measures and the different beliefs predicted expressed…

Topic continuing and nontopic continuing utterances produced by three productively language-disordered preschoolers were analyzed. Results suggested that Ss produced a proportion of adjacent utterances comparable to proportions previously reported for children with normal production language skills and that they relied on an imitation strategy to…

The study investigated the conversational participation of eight language-impaired children (ages 6-8) in interactions with normal language peers. No significant differences were found between impaired and normal children in number and proportion of topics maintained, topics introduced, or topics shaded. A familiarity effect in Session 2 was also…

Conversation analysis was used to investigate a conversational partner's strategies when assisting with the word searches of an aphasic person. Analysis of 38 authentic videotaped conversation sequences identified four conversation strategies systematically and collaboratively used: guessing, alternative guessing, completion, and closing…

Language sample data from normal subjects (ages 40-79) were collected to determine how normal aging might affect performance on a picture description task, routinely used for assessment of aphasic individuals. Only an increase in the number of paraphasias and a decrease in communication efficiency correlated with increased age. (DB)

The study coded the communicative expressions (using manually coded English) of five 3-year-old deaf children while interacting with their mothers. A large proportion of the expressions consisted of social or imperative intentions while a much smaller proportion were used for heuristic or informational purposes. (Author/DB)

This study compared pragmatic skills of 5 children (ages 4-6) with specific language impairments (SLI) and their younger siblings matched for mean length of utterance. Analysis of communicative acts on three levels (social interchange, speech act, and conversational) indicated comparable performance within sibling pairs, but SLI children…

The communicative abilities of six sets of same-sex, preschool dizygotic twins were examined. In each dyad, one sibling had a strong history of recurrent otitis media (ROM) but the other twin did not. History of ROM was associated with lowered receptive vocabulary, with no consistent effects detected in expressive speech and language tasks.…

This study used dependency analysis to document and describe the narrative discourse impairments of 10 children (mean age 12) and 10 adults (mean age 35) with traumatic brain injury (TBI), and matched controls. Individuals with TBI were significantly more disfluent than controls and their narrative performance required a significant listener…

Seven aphasic and seven normal adults described cartoon drawings and received one of three types of feedback (explicit, false, or implicit). Subjects' recodings showed that normal subjects used more expansion and deletion than aphasics. No significant differences existed between groups for repetition or revision. Subjects' responses varied…

Discusses the use of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) to enhance comprehension and expression of people with autism. A theoretical model for AAC assessment and intervention is presented and illustrated with a case study of a 6-year-old boy with autism and severe expressive and receptive language impairments. (Author/DB)