Compares teachers' estimates of spontaneous language with direct observations of performance of developmentally delayed preschool children in classroom situations. Teachers tended to be more accurate in their estimation of children with higher spontaneous language frequencies and to underestimate the frequency of spontaneous language in other…

Six autistic children, age 3-6, and 6 children with Down syndrome were followed over a period of 12-26 months. Autistic children followed the same general developmental path as the Down syndrome children in the acquisition of grammatical and lexical aspects of language. (Author/JDD)

Factors that may influence the picture-elicited narrative production of 4-year-old children were examined. Subjects were 70 children of 4 years of age who told narratives about two familiar events: baking cookies and going to the beach. Of the sample, 22 children in a description condition described each of 6 line drawings for each event. Another…

A comparison is presented of a mother's language to her Down Syndrome two-year-old and his normally developing twin. When interacting with the Down Syndrome twin, the mother used shorter mean length of utterance, greater type-token ratio, more confirmations, more verbal directives, fewer yes-no and true questions, and more directive questions.…

Compared expressive language used by preschoolers when engaged at a classroom computer center with that used during free play. Found that mean lengths of utterance showed no significant differences in amount of language spoken, no matter the context. Found exceptions in which one student was more expressive at the computer, and three others were…

A language evaluation instrument was devised to assess the accuracy of program implementation by teachers of four Australian preschool programs. The Teacher Language Instrument (TLI) categorizes each verbal episode of a teaching interchange for both mode and function. Five general mode categories of teacher language behavior--statements,…

Two related studies investigated (1) the extent to which native language input to five Japanese children was varied based on the children's age, and (2) the effectiveness of adult Japanese second language input to a three-year-old American child during a one-month period in Japan. In the first study, interactions of adult-child dyads were compared…

These articles on scaffolding in language and speech pathology/therapy are included in this issue: "Strategies d'etayage avec des enfants disphasiques: sont-elles specifiques?" ("Scaffolding Strategies for Dysphasic Children: Are They Specific?") (Genevieve de Weck); "Comparaison des strategies discursives d'etayage dans un conte et un recit…