This study evaluates the effectiveness of an intervention package including a discrete trial program (Rapid Motor Imitation Antecedent Training (Tsiouri and Greer, "J Behav Educat" 12:185-206, 2003) combined with parent education for eliciting first words in children with ASD who had little or no spoken language. Evaluation of the approach…

Preschoolers with severe autism and minimal speech were assigned either a discrete trial or a naturalistic language treatment, and parents of all participants also received parent responsiveness training. After 12 weeks, both groups showed comparable improvement in number of spoken words produced, on average. Approximately half the children in…

Background: Younger siblings of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are at higher risk for acquiring these disorders than the general population. Language development is usually delayed in children with ASD. The present study examines the development of pre-speech vocal behavior in infants at risk for ASD due to the presence of an older…

Purpose: The aims of this article are twofold: (a) to offer a set of recommended measures that can be used for evaluating the efficacy of interventions that target spoken language acquisition as part of treatment research studies or for use in applied settings and (b) to propose and define a common terminology for describing levels of spoken…

Eight adults with autistic disorders and eight IQ-matched, mentally retarded (MR) subjects were given a task involving the comprehension of structured and unstructured indirect requests. Although the performance of the MR subjects was better in both conditions, both groups performed similarly to normal four- to six-year-olds. (Author/CL)

Interactions between phonology and syntax were inspected in continuous speech samples, from 30 speech-delayed children. Results indicated that two-thirds of the Ss displayed evidence of overall syntactic delay, whereas half showed some limitations in use of phonetically complex morphophonemes, their performance in that area being below the level…

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,…

A teacher describes the results of allowing children in her pre-reading kindergarten class to invent the spellings they needed to communicate through writing. The strategies children employed were found to reflect their developing language abilities. (ED)

Production of grammatical morphemes was examined in free speech samples from 34 4-year-olds with history of slow expressive language development (SELD) and control group. Both the SELD children who had caught up in mean length of utterance by age four and those who had not had acquired fewer grammatical morphemes than controls, though acquisition…

Objectives: Increasing numbers of young children referred for a differential diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) necessitates better understanding of the early syndrome expression and the utility of the existing state-of-the art diagnostic methods in this population. Method: Out of 31 infants under the age of 2 years referred for a…

Twenty-one apparently normal children (ages 18 to 34 months) with slow expressive language acquisition were evaluated initially and again at age 3. The late talkers also scored significantly lower in receptive communication and socialization. Followup showed nearly half the group remained delayed in expressive communication and socialization,…

Children identified as late talkers at 20-34 months of age were followed yearly throughout the preschool period. Data suggest that the longer a language delay persists, the less the chance of spontaneous recovery during the preschool period. Late-talking girls had less chance for spontaneous recovery than did late-talking boys. (Author/JDD)

Data on speech, language, performance IQ, school placement, and behavior are presented on 18 subjects diagnosed in childhood as "aphasic" and followed through adolescence. Results revealed slow but steady growth in language with expressive skills showing more rapid progress than comprehension. Performance IQ was highly correlated with language…

This longitudinal study assessed the narrative language development of primary grade children with slow expressive language development (SELD) as toddlers who either had or had not moved into the normal range of expressive language by early school age. Deficits in narrative skills tended to disappear in children with a history of SELD, though…

Comments on studies that indicate delayed onset of canonical babbling may predict future language impairments. It cautions against the too-early assumption of the use of early perceptual and production capacities as clinical markers and warns that using lack of canonical babbling as a early index of language delay could lead to a high rate of…