Background: The Language Development Survey (LDS) and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI) are two parental report forms that have been productive in providing data on early child language during the past 30 years. The instruments have been used both in studies relating to typical developing children and in screening…

Purpose: Little is known about the specific nature of language abilities of autistic adolescents and young adults with language impairment (LI), limiting our knowledge of developmental trajectories and ability to develop efficacious speech/language supports. An important first step is establishing proof of concept of identification of LI in this…

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…

Purpose: Phonological complexity is known to be a good index of developmental language disorder (DLD) in normal-hearing children, who have major difficulties on some complex structures. Some deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) present a profile that evokes DLD, with persistent linguistic difficulties despite good audiological and…

Purpose: The ability to identify children early in development who are at substantial risk for language/literacy difficulties would have great benefit both for the children and for the educational and therapeutic institutions that serve them. Information that is relatively easily available prior to the age of 3 years, such as late talking, family…

Children with language disorders have particular difficulty with verbs, but when this difficulty emerges is unknown. We examined syntactic (transitive, intransitive, ditransitive) and semantic (manner, result) features of two-year-olds' verb vocabularies, contrasting late talkers and typically developing children to look for early differences in…

Purpose: This follow-up study assessed (a) the influence of phonological working memory (pWM), home literacy environment, and a family history of linguistic impairments in late talkers (LTs); (b) the diagnostic accuracy of a task of nonword repetition (NWR) in identifying LTs; and (c) the persistence of lexical weaknesses after 10 months. Method:…

Purpose: In order to support evidence-based practice, this study served to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy, convergent validity, and divergent validity of the Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test-Preschool: Second Edition (SPELT-P2; J. Dawson, J. A. Eyer, J. Fonkalsrud, 2005) in order to determine whether it can be used as a valid…

Prospective questionnaire data from a longitudinal population sample on children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), developmental delay, specific language impairment, or typical development (TD), were collected at ages eight, 12 and 24 months, via the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scale Developmental Profile (CSBS)--Infant Toddler…

Reviews the language basis of reading disabilities and provides a checklist of language deficits frequently associated with reading disabilities. Areas assessed include: word retrieval, verbal memory, speech production, comprehension, expressive language, and speech sound awareness. The checklist is designed for early identification of reading…

Two studies are reported demonstrating the reliability, validity, and clinical utility of the Language Development Survey (LDS) as a screening tool for the identification of expressive language delay in toddlers. The LDS test-retest reliability was .97. The LDS also correlated highly with other measures and the LDS identified at-risk group scored…

This study evaluated an Extended Optional Infinitive theory of specific language impairment (SLI) in children, which suggests that SLI children omit finiteness markers longer than do normally developing children. Comparison of 18 SLI 5-year olds with 2 normally developing groups (ages 5 and 3) found that SLI subjects omitted finiteness markers…

This article describes the EpiSLI diagnostic system for identifying specific language impairment in kindergarten children for the purpose of epidemiological research. The system employs five composite scores representing norm-referenced performance in three domains of language (vocabulary, grammar, and narration) and two modalities (comprehension…

This study evaluated the validity of language-assessment instruments with Native American children, ages 3 to 5. Results indicated that the Preschool Language Scale-3 provides a valid assessment of the receptive and expressive language skills of 3- and 4-year-old Native-American children. However, use of this scale with 5-year-old Native Americans…

This publication discusses the role of Language Sample Analysis (LSA) in identifying language disorders, providing detail necessary to initiate a focused intervention program, and providing a method for monitoring progress in language intervention. Section 1 provides an overview of the LSA process and types of language disorders, while Section 2…