The aim of this longitudinal study was to obtain information on the early lexical development and its predictive value to language skills in very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) children. The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory was used to collect data of the early receptive and expressive lexicon of the 32 VLBW children. This information was…

Structural and functional features of productive language of 15 healthy and 30 at-risk two-year-olds were compared. Although premature and physically handicapped toddlers did not differ significantly from each other, both groups were delayed in a variety of structural indices of productive language. On functional features of language usage,…

This study examined repair strategies used by boys with language impairments, in response to clarification requests following conversational breakdowns. Five subjects, aged four-five, were compared with five age-matched controls and five controls matched for verbal competence. Results showed that all three groups overwhelmingly used revisions to…

The communicative abilities of six sets of same-sex, preschool dizygotic twins were examined. In each dyad, one sibling had a strong history of recurrent otitis media (ROM) but the other twin did not. History of ROM was associated with lowered receptive vocabulary, with no consistent effects detected in expressive speech and language tasks.…

Receptive and expressive language skills were assessed in 13 British children (ages 4-14) with cri-du-chat syndrome. Results found a discrepancy between the children's chronological ages and their presumed language ages and a receptive-expressive discrepancy, with reduced expressive skills compared to receptive skills. Remediation that focuses on…

A story format and discourse analysis procedure was used to evaluate the spoken language skills of 20 elementary students with learning disabilities over a 1-year period. Stories from memory were longer and characterized by more as well as different types of errors than were stories from pictures or stories based on games. (Author/DB)

This study found that three oral discourse genres (script, picture description, and replica play narration) were able to characterize development in discourse abilities in 6 children (ages 5-7) with brain injury and 43 nondisabled children. Brain-injured children produced shorter discourse performances with more off-task talk but showed…

A study of 458 6-year olds (204 prenatally exposed to cocaine), found low language children (n=57) were more likely to be cocaine exposed (63.1 percent), with cocaine-exposed children 2.4 times more likely to be in the low language groups compared with control children after adjustment for covariates. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)