Word learning is critical for the development of reading and language comprehension skills. Although previous studies have indicated that word learning is compromised in children with reading disability (RD) or developmental language disorder (DLD), it is less clear how word learning difficulties manifest in children with comorbid RD and DLD.…

Existing research suggests a need for an intervention that can accelerate vocabulary acquisition for young children at-risk due to poverty. An adapted alternating treatments design was used to examine the effects of Dialogic Reading and Activity-Based Intervention (ABI) on participants' production of target words. Participants were three…

Relationships between attention/executive functions and language learning were investigated in students in Grades 4 to 9 (N = 88) with and without specific learning disabilities (SLDs) in multiword syntax in oral and written language (OWL LD), word reading and spelling (dyslexia), and subword letter writing (dysgraphia). Prior…

In Study 1, children in grades 4-9 (N = 88, 29 females and 59 males) with persisting reading and/or writing disabilities, despite considerable prior specialized instruction in and out of school, were given an evidence-based comprehensive assessment battery at the university while parents completed questionnaires regarding past and current history…

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effectiveness of e-book activity for vocabulary acquisition and story comprehension among kindergarteners at risk for learning disabilities (LD) as opposed to typically developing (TD) children. Participants included 136 children aged between five and seven (M = 71.2; SD = 5.64, in months),…

The magnitude of the dichotic right-ear advantage was assessed in 48 normal and 48 learning-disabled children representing an age range of approximately five years. (MP)

The author reflects upon some of the similarities and differences that exist across 25 years of research and practice in language learning disabilities and provides examples of how definitions of and perceptions about language, learning, and reading disabilities are still evolving. The author also evaluates language intervention approaches then…

Compares and contrasts the abilities of normal and learning disabled students to abstract spelling patterns in the course of their acquisition of spelling skills. The performance of the learning disabled was significantly below that of the normal students. In addition, error analysis indicates that the responses of the learning disabled spellers…

This study of comprehension of metaphors found that 11 adolescents with traumatic brain injury (TBI) exhibited little difference in comprehension compared to that of 18 normal adolescents. Ten adolescents with language learning disability, in contrast, demonstrated significantly poorer comprehension of metaphors than did both the normal subjects…

Subjects 9 to 15 years old were divided into four age levels by 18-month increments to compare learning disabled and normal students on indexes of both oral and written language. Four questions guided the inquiry: (1) Does the syntactic development of oral language differ at the age levels measured? (2) What is the trend of syntactic development…

Purpose: There is a substantial minority of children for whom lexical retrieval problems impede the normal pattern of language development and use. These problems include accurately producing the correct word even when the word's meaning is understood. Such problems are often referred to as "word-finding difficulties" (WFDs). This article examines…

Syntactic development in the oral language of learning disabled and normal students at two intermediate and two secondary-school age levels was compared using two indices, the T-unit and the Syntactic Density Score. It was concluded that no single, sensitive, numerical index exists to quantify syntactic development. (SW)

The economic efficiency of alternative types of intervention was investigated with language-impaired preschool children. Forty children were assigned to one of four groups: home-based intervention, center-based intervention, both center- and home-based intervention, and no treatment. The home-based program was more economically efficient based on…

A study compared the performance of 12 reading disabled and 15 normally achieving third grade students and 11 normally achieving first grade students on a variety of measures at different levels of language and reading in order to examine several macro models of reading disability--specifically, the general language, rule abstraction, and speed of…

Tasks involving several areas of cognitive functioning were given to 10 psychotic children and 30 normal children. Comparisons of performance were made between the two groups and also within the psychotic group. The dimension for differentiation was the psychotic children's varying degree of language facility. The psychotic children were…