Twenty-three normal adults and four closed head-injured (CHI) adults with a high level of language recovery retold and generated stories. The two tasks differentially influenced the performance of both groups. The two groups differed in measures of cohesiveness and story grammar only in the story generation task. (Author/JDD)

The spontaneous expressive language abilities of 9 severely brain-injured children/adolescents and age- matched normal controls were examined over a 12-month period following injury. Subjects demonstrated improvement on the majority of measures, but only a few reached the level of their control subjects. Interindividual variability was…

Sampling spontaneous expressive language through video narration is offered as a means of reducing variability among language samples over time or from different speakers. Advantages include content stability, high interest value, and high processing demands. Disadvantages include brevity of the samples, lack of information on dyadic communication…

Clinical approaches to encouraging spontaneous talking in language delayed children are considered in terms of pragmatics, the effects of communication on behavior. (Author/IM)