Although language samples are child-friendly and well-suited for obtaining global measures of language production, structured protocols have the potential to elicit many different exemplars of language structures in a shorter amount of time. We created a structured elicitation protocol, the Sentence Diversity Priming Task (SDPT), to efficiently…

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…

Complex syntax production emerges shortly after the emergence of two-word combinations in oral language and continues to develop through the school-age years. This article defines a framework for the analysis of complex syntax in the spontaneous language of preschool- and early school-age children. The purpose of this article is to provide…

Research on the language development of internationally adopted children has increased substantially in the past few years, with a variety of methods used to measure language abilities in this population, including parent and teacher reports, norm-referenced tests, conversational and narrative language samples, and other procedures. These…

This review explores the development of relational aggression and relational victimization among peers, with specific emphasis on clinical implications for speech-language pathologists. Developmental manifestations of relational aggression and victimization are reviewed from early childhood through emerging adulthood. The concurrent and…

The comprehension of humor is described as a developmental ability related to children's cognitive, linguistic, and metalinguistic development. Examples illustrate the content and structure of riddles and jokes, as well as developmental changes in children's understanding. Ways to assess and develop humor comprehension are also discussed.…

Confusion is cited regarding the meaning and nature of central auditory dysfunction, and types of tests composing a central auditory test battery are described. Tests focus on auditory closure, auditory figure-ground, and dichotic listening. (CL)

The article looks at syntactic deficiencies involving simple clause structures and grammatical morphology in young children. A framework for understanding the development of simple clause structures is presented followed by a discussion of the correlates of early syntactic development. Procedures to assess and remediate syntactic deficiencies are…

This article develops the concept of communicative participation as a means of analyzing the outcomes of language intervention with young children, including those with disabilities, in everyday contexts such as preschool. The construct's five interrelated layers are identified: (1) life-world participation, (2) participant structure, (3)…

The article reviews existing clinical tests of speech perception, describes behaviorally defined procedures for assessing the skill in normal and language disordered children, and notes the need for a more cohesive framework for the development of speech perception. (CL)

The authors describe the development and role of story grammars and note the implications for assessment of story production and retelling, scrambled stories, and the macrocloze technique (testing the child's ability to predict or infer missing information). Remediation procedures for improving prediction skills and training story grammar…

Discusses the "communication hypothesis" of problem behavior and describes methods for determining the communicative functions served by problem behavior. Reports on application of functional assessment and functional communication training with toddlers. (DB)

This article examines the principles of information processing and the ways in which they can both facilitate and interfere with the language comprehension and production performance of children with language impairment. The clinical implications of these notions for assessment and intervention with children are discussed. (Author/CR)

The article examines the child's ability to produce complex sentences with sections on a structural framework for complex language (clausal and nonclausal complexity), a developmental perspective (coordination of clauses, subordination of nominal, adverbial, and relative clauses), and applied considerations (evaluating and teaching complex…

This paper analyzes Piagetian theory on the relative development of cognition and language, the local homology model which claims there are specific language-cognition relationships at specific points in time, normal development and local homology, and development in language-impaired children. Implications for clinical decision making are…