Background: There is an increasing demand for the assessment of speech and language in clinical and research situations in countries where there are few assessment resources. Due to the nature of cultural variation and the potential for cultural bias, new assessment tools need to be developed or existing tools require adaptation. However, there…

Although interest in the language sciences was previously focused on newly created sentences, more recently much attention has turned to the importance of formulaic expressions in normal and disordered communication. Also referred to as formulaic expressions and made up of speech formulas, idioms, expletives, serial and memorized speech, slang,…

Background: Symptoms of prosodic problems have been found in Swedish children with language impairment at word and phrase level and possibly also at discourse level. Aims: The aim was twofold. First, to characterize a group of children with prosodic problems compared with children with normal language development. Second, to investigate the…

Background: Down's syndrome is a chromosome disorder characterized by a range of physical and psychological conditions, including language impairment. The severity of impairment is variable, and some components of the language system appear to be more affected than others. This description could also be applied to typically developing children…

Background: Children with language impairment (LI) experience social difficulties, including conflict management. The factors involved in peer-conflict progression in pre-school children with LI, and which of these processes may differ from pre-school children with typical language development (TL), is therefore examined. Aims: To describe the…

There is a need for studies on bilingual language acquisition in combination with language impairment (LI). The speech and language clinician must have tools to differentiate between problems depending on inadequate exposure to a language and problems depending on a LI. Another important issue is the pace of bilingual language acquisition relative…

Background: Children with language impairment (LI) experience social difficulties, including conflict management. This paper is therefore motivated to examine behavioural processes guiding preschool peer conflict progression, which ultimately contributes to overall development. Aims: To describe behavioural sequences in conflicts between children…

Background: Although a number of studies have been conducted on normal acquisition in French, systematic methods for analysis of French and normative group data have been lacking. Aims: To develop a systematic method for the analysis of language samples in Quebec French, and to provide preliminary normative data on early lexical and syntactic…

Background: Understanding the relationship between preverbal skills and language development has important implications for identifying communication delay/disorders and for early childhood intervention. In the case of children with Down syndrome, it is well established that symbolic play is associated with the emergence of language. However, the…

Background: Children who have reached the age of 2 years without having acquired a 50-word vocabulary and/or who use no word combinations are referred to in the literature as "Late Talkers". Research has not yet identified the factors that cause slow development of expressive language; in particular, relatively little research has been carried out…

Background: Around one-quarter of children attending language support services have difficulty in retrieving words. Therapy studies with such children have shown that both semantic and phonological techniques can improve word finding. A new approach to intervention is described using a computerized aid that converts letters into sound cues. Aims:…

Background: Parents and professionals can both play a role in improving children's expressive language development and a number of alternative models of delivery exist that involve different levels of input by these two groups. However, these alternative treatments have not been subject to rigorous comparative analysis in terms of both cost and…

Background: The preliminary phase of a project aimed at establishing appropriate outcome measures for intervention with children who have pragmatic language impairments (PLI) is reported. Assessment methods for children with PLI are considered in the context of developing outcome measures for intervention studies. Communicative function…

Background: Despite a large body of evidence regarding reliable indicators of language deficits in young children, there has not been a standardized, quick screen for language impairment. The Grammar and Phonology Screening (GAPS) test was therefore designed as a short, reliable assessment of young children's language abilities. Aims: GAPS was…

Background: English-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) perform more poorly than their typically developing peers in verbal working memory tasks where processing and storage are simultaneously required. Hungarian is a language with a relatively free word order and a rich agglutinative morphology. Aims: To examine the effect…