Describes a study which compares expressive language samples from normal children and language impaired children across a range of grammatical and lexical dimensions to determine if it is possible to characterize language impairment using such dimensions. Identifies two variables which were reasonably successful in discriminating the two groups.…

Discusses the identity of language problems among elementary school students and suggests ways to help solve them. (GB)

Discusses published references to deaf infants babbling like normal hearing children and states that the relationship between babbling and hearing still remains to be proven. (EKN)

Investigates language-normal one-year-olds' (N=14) and language-impaired two- and three-year-olds' (N=10) acquisition of words referring to three types of action. Findings revealed that, although both groups produced few of the words, the language-normal subjects comprehended the different types of action, whereas the impaired subjects did not.…

A paper presented at Anglo-American Seminar on Teaching English to the Linguistically Deprived (Walsall, England, June 1968). (Editor/RD)

Presents a critical review of studies designed to teach language production skills to children with specific language impairment. The evidence reviewed suggests that a number of training approaches are effective, often resulting in gains that exceed the rate seen in normal development, provided the speaking situation resembles enough the training…

Examines the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES), its organizational form, and its three major tools: (1) the CHILDES database of transcripts, (2) the CHAT system for transcribing and coding data, and (3) the CLAN programs for analyzing CHAT files. (GLR)

Comprehension and strategy use of 18 autistic children was compared with that of normal 3- and 4-year olds. Subjects were asked to act out certain syntactic and semantic patterns in two experiments. Autistic children performed below the levels of the normal subjects, suggesting that autism is a semantic/cognitive deficit. (PJM)

A study examined the manner in which 10 specifically language-impaired children and their linguistically normal chronological age-matched peers repaired overlapping speech. Conversational samples from each student were elicited by an adult examiner. (26 references) (Author/CB)

Jean Piaget's ideas regarding symbolic function are expanded in this paper to provide a model to use in distinguishing between general symbolic versus specific linguistic deficits in language disordered children (whose disorders are not due primarily to intellectual, sensory, motor, or social-emotional deficits). In applying this model to the…

Study data point to a significant difference between the ability of normal and language-disabled children at the holophrastic stage to use their lexicon to communicate to a listener in a context. (MP)

Describes a follow-up study of 25 boys who had been diagnosed with Specific Expressive Language Delay (SELD) at 24 to 30 months of age. At three to four years, half of the boys continued to exhibit poor expressive language skills, suggesting that young children diagnosed with SELD are at considerable risk for continuing language problems. (33…

Comparison of dysphasic children (N=8) with control children found that the dysphasic children's language development was both delayed and deviant, and that the children's deviant syntax structures were the result of insufficient language processing and could not be traced back to structural characteristics of the sentences used by their mothers.…

A study made to examine the development in production of the English verbal auxiliary and copula (VAC) "to be" compared a group of children with language dysfunction and a group of normal children. Two purposes were to see whether developmental differences are qualitative or quantitative and to calculate the importance of the VAC in language…