This paper attempts to investigate the repetition of Relative Clauses (RCs) in Mandarin children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) (aged 4; 5 to 6; 0) and their typically developing (TD) peers. The results of a sentence repetition task indicate that Mandarin children with DLD perform significantly worse than both groups of TD children,…

Elucidating the neural basis of joint attention in infancy promises to yield important insights into the development of language and social cognition, and directly informs developmental models of autism. We describe a new method for evaluating responding to joint attention performance in infancy that highlights the 9- to 10-month period as a time…

Concern for the impact of prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE) on human language development is based on observations of impaired performance on assessments of language skills in these children relative to non-exposed children. We investigated the effects of PCE on speech processing ability using event-related potentials (ERPs) among a sample of…

Auditory processing capabilities at the subcortical level have been hypothesized to impact an individual's development of both language and reading abilities. The present study examined whether auditory processing capabilities relate to language development in healthy 9-month-old infants. Participants were 71 infants (31 boys and 40 girls) with…

Numerous studies have proposed that changes of the human language faculty caused by neural maturation can explain the substantial differences in ultimate attainment of grammatical competences between first language (L1) acquirers and second language (L2) learners. However, little evidence on the effect of neural maturation on the attainment of…

Survivors of preterm birth have a high incidence of neurodevelopmental impairment which is not explained by currently understood brain abnormalities. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that the neurodevelopmental abilities of 2-year-old children who were born preterm and who had no evidence of focal abnormality on conventional MR…

Language disorders in mentally retarded children may be assessed by standardized tests, developmental scales, and informal procedures. The processes to be assessed include comprehension, production, and use in communication. In the assessment of a child, these processes should be related to chronological age and to cognitive development. (CTM)

Data from 30 national service centers found the number of assessment instruments endorsed increased as centers adopted a multidisciplinary approach to education and treatment, the largest proportion of instruments fell within intellectual, motor, and language/communication domains, and instruments were used most frequently for diagnostic and…

Due to the relatively late age of clinical diagnosis of autism, the early brain pathology of children with autism has remained largely unstudied. The increased use of retrospective measures such as head circumference, along with a surge of MRI studies of toddlers with autism, have opened a whole new area of research and discovery. Recent studies…

The developmental curriculum of the Parent-Child Early Education Saturday School for 4-year-olds is presented, and the specific skill competencies and curriculum activities used in the program are described under three major behavioral categories: language skills, gross and fine motor coordination, and math and science concepts. (Some attention is…

This handbook establishes the Montgomery County Public Schools procedure for implementing the Maryland state law on early identification, Section 98C, added to Article 77 of the Annotated Code of Maryland by House Bill 234. This law mandates that each student entering the first year in any primary grade in any public school must be evaluated for…

This detailed curriculum guide describes a model program (the Preschool Hearing Impaired Support Center) implemented in the Detroit Public Schools' preprimary classes for the hearing impaired. The auditory-oral approach is based on the developmental philosophy of Jean Piaget and on principles of regular early childhood education programs. Section…

A 30-minute screening battery of tests and subtests selected from the complete 90-minute battery used in USOE Prekindergarten-Kindergarten research plus three locally developed instruments were identified as the most satisfactory single measures of cognitive, motor, auditory, visual, visual-motor coordination, and language development to provide…

The objective of this case study is to explore the influence of evaluators' beliefs on the diagnosis of language-minority children's cognitive-linguistic development. More specifically, the following five areas are explored: (1) evaluator's cultural and linguistic backgrounds; (2) their beliefs about language-minority children's…