Comparison of the fast mapping skills of language-impaired four- and five-year-olds (N=11) and nondisabled peers (N=11) revealed no differences in ability to infer a connection between a novel word and referent, to comprehend a novel word after a single exposure, and to recall nonlinguistic information associated with the referent. (Author/CB)

Eighteen language disabled kindergarteners participated in a five-month intervention program emphasizing the development of expressive grammar. Ss made significant gains in expressive syntax, receptive morphology, expressive language, and one aspect of receptive language. Control Ss only made significant gains in one aspect of receptive language.…

The Test of Language Development was administered to a purposive sample of early elementary learning disabled students in an effort to analyze their language performance. Statistically significant differences were indexed between receptive and expressive language skills for this sample. (Author)

Children with language learning problems (N=151) and normally learning children (N=143) were tested on fine-grained auditory discrimination tasks that required responding to small acoustic differences. Performance on the auditory tasks was highly correlated with group placement suggesting that fine-grained auditory discrimination makes a major…

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,…

A 1-year followup of 10 children with delayed onset of early speech skills found that all 4 children who were still delayed had been delayed in language comprehension and gesture tasks the previous year whereas the 6 children who had "caught up" had demonstrated age-appropriate language comprehension and gesture usage earlier. (Author/DB)

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…

Results of the study of receptive and expressive language abilities of 30 Down's Syndrome adolescents suggested that early recurrent otitis media may play an important role in the language deficits commonly found among Down Syndrome persons. (Author/DB)

A preference procedure which makes possible a wide range of fine grammatical contrasts is proposed as an alternative to the traditional comprehension testing procedure. (GW)

The study examined the performance of 19 pairs of autistic and nonautistic (but with a language delay of at least six months) children on the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language. Results indicated no significant differences between groups or between sexes within groups in receptive language skills. (Author/DB)

A longitudinal study revealed that 14 normal and 29 specifically language impaired (SLI) four to eight year-olds developed skills in receptive and expressive language and speech articulation over the three to four years between evaluations. However, SLI subjects developed at a slower rate and the majority of them manifested reading impairment at…

The receptive and expressive "wh" interrogative performance of 20 language-delayed children (4.3 to 6.4 years old) was compared to available normative data. These findings suggest that the delayed children develop the same order of acquisition and rules for questioning as normal children, but at a slower rate. (Author/SEW)

Four developmentally delayed preschoolers were taught action-object responses in receptive and expressive language modalities, using matrix-training procedures. Acquisition of a word combination rule was facilitated by the use of familiar lexical items, whereas subsequent acquisition of new lexical knowledge was enhanced by couching training in a…

Discusses the assessment of children's early language comprehension by the use of (1) parent reports; (2) preferential-looking models; and (3) event-related brain potentials. Examines recent findings on dissociations between language comprehension and production in normal, late-talking, and brain-injured children and considers the implications of…

The degree of correlation of the "concept" subtest of the Developmental Indicators of the Assessment of Learning (DIAL) with the Boehm Test of Basic Concepts (BTBC) was studied with 95 beginning kindergarten children. Both measures were highly correlated, indicating the evaluation of similar abilities. (Author/SEW)