Purpose: This study was designed to (a) compare the speech fluency of school-age children who do and do not stutter (CWS and CWNS, respectively) within 2 standard diagnostic speaking contexts (conversation and narration) while also controlling for speaking topic, and (b) examine the extent to which children's performance on such discourse tasks is…

There are few measures of pain for people with limited ability to communicate. Eight parents of adults with a known learning disability and associated physical health complaint were interviewed to explore their experience of identifying and managing the pain felt by their children. The parents did not often perceive their son or daughter to be in…

Research on facilitated communication (FC) is discussed, along with flaws in previous validation studies and suggestions for improving validation studies, including: testing first whether the person can do the task required under quiet, relaxed conditions; allowing the person to practice the skill until it can be used during the validation test;…

The Inventory of Potential Communicative Acts (IPCA) was given to 20 children with developmental and physical disabilities. Results indicate the IPCA is an efficient means for collecting accurate, verifiable data of the potential communicative acts of children with severe communication impairment associated with a range of developmental and…

This article discusses some specific outcome measures for social communication problems exhibited by school-age children. Measures are discussed relative to (1) a model for viewing abilities essential for social communication and (2) a framework for sampling these abilities across four different contexts. A case example applies these outcome…

A framework to help speech-language pathologists deal with the communication problems of adolescents involved in violence in either school or correctional facility settings is proposed. Intervention programs containing socially and academically relevant activities that focus on assessment, general intervention principles, conversational…

This paper summarizes and illustrates an approach to assessment of communication development and treatment which focuses on the early relationships of preconversational children with their significant adults. The assessment approach is part of the Ecological Communication (ECO) model, which views caregivers of delayed children as critical to the…

This article discusses how practitioners can link assessment to action when planning communication interventions for young children with disabilities. It reviews communication components and discusses strategies for collecting information that may be especially useful in the domain of communication. Strategies for turning assessment information…

This article describes the development and possible applications of the Teacher Assessment of Student Communicative Competencies (TASCC) for use with students in the first through fifth grades. The TASCC allowed 20 teachers to successfully observe and measure their students' verbal and nonverbal communicative abilities and use of compensatory…

The paper reviews normal communication skills in infants, young children, and adults from the perspective of barriers to communication interaction and implications for handicapped individuals. The communicative competence construct is described, noting the complex relationship between verbal and nonverbal behavior. Parental response to a child's…

"Partners in Augmentative Communication Training" (PACT) is a communication interaction facilitation program for child augmentative technique users and their communication partners. The program offers guidelines for use in developing individualized plans for improving conversational interaction. This resource guide addresses priority…

Focusing on the preconversational child who has yet to develop a stable or generalized habit of spontaneous conversation, this book presents ECO (Ecological Communication Model), a new intervention model for social and communicative development of developmentally delayed children. The model is based on two perspectives: the literature on the…

This monograph presents 11 papers on a study of the problem of specific diagnosis with children who do not communicate effectively. About 500 children with inadequate communication skills, selected as having a developmental language disorder, autism, or low IQ without autistic features, were studied by a multidisciplinary team. Data collected…

The Communicative Development of Toddlers with Cerebral Palsy (COCP) project developed an assessment-intervention program for non-speaking children with cerebral palsy. The goals of the project's Assessment-Intervention protocol are to teach the child to communicate in an appropriate, effective, and efficient way in different situations and with…