Purpose: The present study explored the extent to which early prelinguistic communication skills predict expressive language in toddlers with autistic siblings (Sibs-autism), who are known to be at high likelihood for autism and language disorder, and a comparison group of toddlers with non-autistic older siblings (Sibs-NA). Method: Participants…

Background: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have problems acquiring language, affecting their communicative participation, social--emotional functioning (SEF) and quality of life (QoL). Aims: To investigate whether communicative participation mediates the relation between language and SEF and QoL. Methods & Procedures: In a…

One of the earliest indicators of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is delay in language and social communication. Despite consensus on the benefits of earlier diagnosis and intervention, our understanding of the language growth of children with ASD during the first years of life remains limited. Therefore, this study compared communication growth…

Oral language skills are essential for developing good interpersonal relationships, for emotional and behavioral function as well as for academic and vocational success. Language problems can have serious, adverse consequences, and individuals coming into conflict with the law often have a history of undiagnosed language problems and poor academic…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between functional communication skills, underlying speech, language, and cognitive impairments and school-based speech pathology services in students with cerebral palsy (CP). Method: Thirty-five participants with CP who had Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) were classified…

Background: Previous research suggests that speakers are especially likely to produce manual communicative gestures when they have relative ease in thinking about the spatial elements of what they are describing, paired with relative difficulty organizing those elements into appropriate spoken language. Children with specific language impairment…

Parents' perspectives on a home-based, parent-implemented social-pragmatic communication intervention for young children aged 37 to 60 months with limited expressive language are presented in this report. The researchers analyzed the perspectives of seven parent participants in the Institute of Education Sciences-funded Parent-Implemented…

Previous studies have highlighted a high level of language impairment (LI) and pragmatic language disorder (PLD) amongst children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD). However, little is known regarding the impact of LI in the severity of PLD in this group. This study investigates the language and pragmatic language skills of…

Background: Down syndrome (DS, OMIM #190685) is the most commonly identified genetic form of intellectual disability with congenital heart defect (CHD) occurring in 50% of cases. With advances in surgical techniques and an increasing lifespan, this has necessitated a greater understanding of the neurodevelopmental consequences of CHDs. Herein, we…

This article reviews research on speech and language abilities in people with cri du chat syndrome (CCS). CCS is a rare genetic disorder, with an estimated incidence between 1 in 15,000 and 1 in 50,000 births, resulting from a deletion on the short arm of chromosome 5. In general, individuals have delayed speech and language development, and some…

This study compared pragmatic skills of 5 children (ages 4-6) with specific language impairments (SLI) and their younger siblings matched for mean length of utterance. Analysis of communicative acts on three levels (social interchange, speech act, and conversational) indicated comparable performance within sibling pairs, but SLI children…

Discusses how speech-language pathologists can use photography to encourage more active language expression in children with language and learning disabilities, and describes seven categories for photography use in language learning environments. Each photo project includes suggested language objectives, applications, and advantages. (Author/CR)

Language characteristics of 11 children (ages 6-8) with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 11 typically developing children were compared for semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic language skills. Findings indicated no differences on receptive vocabulary, but children with ADHD performed worse on tests of expressive speech and…

Three nonspeaking children with autism who had used facilitated communication were evaluated with four experimentally controlled tasks. Findings suggested a generalized language deficit, rather than isolated word-finding or perceptual difficulties, and were consistent with previous studies revealing facilitator cuing. Questions are raised about…

This study used dependency analysis to document and describe the narrative discourse impairments of 10 children (mean age 12) and 10 adults (mean age 35) with traumatic brain injury (TBI), and matched controls. Individuals with TBI were significantly more disfluent than controls and their narrative performance required a significant listener…