Williams syndrome is a rare neurodevelopmental disorder caused by deletion of approximately 25 genes on chromosome 7q11.23. Children with the syndrome evidence large individual differences in both broad language and reading abilities. Nevertheless, as a group, children with this syndrome show a consistent pattern characterized by relative…

This article presents an interview with Dr. Sylvia O. Richardson, a pediatrician, speech-language pathologist, researcher, scholar, teacher, and clinician, who has been involved in the field of language-learning disabilities for many years. Widely-published in the areas of language disorders and dyslexia, and a former President of the American…

This paper discusses the history of U.S. reading instruction; instructional approaches and learning processes; the whole language view of literacy acquisition; promoting literate behavior through reading to or writing with children, shared reading, and guiding children's reading/writing; and use of the whole language approach with…

Identifying the main points of a communication is fundamental to successful reading comprehension. Discussed are difficulties in defining main idea, text structure variables in determining important information, textual hierarchy and the theory of macrostructure, text features signalling important information, summary writing, learning-disabled…