This study investigated bilingualism effects on the production of focus in 5- to 9-year-old Cantonese-English bilingual autistic children's L1 Cantonese, compared to their monolingual autistic peers as well as monolingual and bilingual typically developing children matched in nonverbal IQ, working memory, receptive vocabulary and maternal…

This study investigated whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing children matched on receptive language share resources fairly and reciprocally. Children completed age-appropriate versions of the Ultimatum and Dictator Games with real stickers and an interactive partner. Both groups offered similar numbers of…

Information and communication technology (ICT)-based reading interventions have potential to help children with reading difficulties, especially those in resource-constrained environments who otherwise might not have access to support. This pilot study aimed to describe the impact of an online, partner-supported reading intervention designed for…

The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine spelling acquisition in French children with developmental language disorder (DLD) over a school year. Through a fine-grained spelling error analysis, we investigated whether spelling profiles could be established in the DLD population. This study comprised three groups: a typically developing (TD)…

This study investigates the referential choice of Mandarin-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The data consist of narratives from 16 children with ASD and 16 typically-developing (TD) children. The narratives were elicited using the wordless picture book "Frog, where are you?" Participants' referential expressions…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate whether children with receptive-expressive language delay (R/ELD) and expressive-only language delay (ELD) differ in their use of gesture; to examine relationships between their use of gesture, symbolic comprehension, and language; to consider implications for assessment and for the nature of…

This study explored the effects of an evidence-based literacy program, ABRACADABRA, on the spelling abilities of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Twenty children with ASD aged 5-11 years were assigned to matched instruction and waitlist control groups. Children in the instruction group received 26 hrs of individualized, home-based…

The purpose of this study was to compare a group of recently diagnosed bilingual-exposed children with autism (n = 20) aged 24-2 months with a matched group of monolingual-exposed children with autism (n = 40). The groups were matched with regard to chronological age at the time of language assessment and nonverbal IQ score, then compared with…

Purpose: Specific language impairment (SLI) is assumed to be causally related to deficits in auditory short-term memory (STM). Although verbal STM deficits have been consistently found in SLI, the results of visual STM tests are inconsistent. Do these inconsistencies reflect different study populations of expressive SLI (ELI) and…

Signaling noncomprehension of the spoken messages of others was examined for youth with fragile X or Down syndrome in comparison with each other and nonverbal MA-matched typically developing children. A direction-following task was used in which some of the directions were inadequate. Both syndrome groups signaled noncomprehension less often than…

This study of Israeli and American preadolescent children examined characteristics of friendship in 44 children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFASD) compared to 38 typically developing children (TYP), as they interacted with a close friend Participants were 8-12 years of age (HFASD: Israel, n = 24; USA, n = 20; TYP: Israel, n =…

The comparison of cognitive and linguistic skills in individuals with developmental disorders is fraught with methodological and psychometric difficulties. In this paper, we illustrate some of these issues by comparing the receptive vocabulary knowledge and non-verbal reasoning abilities of 41 children with Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder in…

Purpose: This study tests the hypothesis that toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) will show differences from contrast groups in preferences for attending to speech. Method: This study examined auditory preferences in toddlers with ASD and matched groups of (a) typical age-mates, (b) age-mates with nonautistic developmental disabilities,…

Purpose: The authors describe the procedures used to explain an unexpected finding that adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) had a lower mean length of utterance (MLU) than typically developing (TD) children in interviews without picture support, but not in narratives supported by wordless picture books. They hypothesize that the picture support of…

Wilkinson and Green (1998) reported that differences in the procedure by which new words were introduced to learners with cognitive impairments significantly affected their accuracy in later tests of receptive understanding of word meanings. However, a limited sample and no control group rendered the data preliminary. Here, I replicated and…