Prosody production atypicalities are a feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), but behavioral measures of performance have failed to provide detail on the properties of these deficits. We used acoustic measures of prosody to compare children with ASDs to age-matched groups with learning disabilities and typically developing peers. Overall,…

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is frequently associated with learning disabilities. The present study examined the written composition of children with ADHD, which depends to a large degree on continuous self-regulation and attentional control skills for organizing information and maintaining the level of effort. Fifty children…

Describes a study in which 20 reading-disabled children, ages 7-10, were compared with 20 nondisabled readers in the same age range as to their ability to interpret complex sentences. Results showed that the nondisabled readers performed at higher levels of grammatical development than did the reading-impaired children. (SED)

Describes a study which examined learning disabled children's understanding of conversational rules for initiating repair of a communication breakdown. Results show learning disabled children were less likely to request clarification of inadequate messages and made fewer correct referent choices than normal children, but analyses suggest this…

Two aphasics with a similar level of phonological production difficulty are compared to distinguish the properties of disruption to two stages in the phonological system for producing single words: activation of stored lexical-phonological representations versus construction of phonemic representations. A set of distinguishing behavioral features…

Compares the communicative behaviors of 18 learning disabled/language impaired (LD/LI) children with two matched groups of normally developing children. LD and normal groups were matched up by age and language mates, and observed for evidence of communicative effectiveness and verbal output. Findings of the study are discussed and related to the…

Describes a study of gist recall in language impaired children. Stories were read to groups of normal and language impaired children and oral recall was requested immediately. The groups differed primarily in the amount of accurate recall. It seems that language impaired children are deficient in recall for material within their linguistic grasp.…

The hypothesis investigated is that children with a reading disability understand and use sound-spelling correspondence rules less frequently in spelling than children with other learning disabilities (arithmetic disability) and normally achieving children. Results showed that subtypes of learning-disabled children use spelling strategies that are…

Reports results from a detailed syntactic analysis of spoken language samples collected from poor and good readers at eight years of age. Results showed an undeniably strong association between reduced language comprehension and reading impairment at age eight, an association that appeared to strengthen by age nine. (SED)

Describes a follow-up study of 25 boys who had been diagnosed with Specific Expressive Language Delay (SELD) at 24 to 30 months of age. At three to four years, half of the boys continued to exhibit poor expressive language skills, suggesting that young children diagnosed with SELD are at considerable risk for continuing language problems. (33…

In a study of the effects of modeling on the abilities of learning disabled (LD) and nondisabled boys, grades two to eight, to interview classmates, a dialog model increased LD children's production of open-ended questions and comments. Results suggest LD children are aware of their difficulties in conversational interaction. (MSE)

Compares and contrasts the abilities of normal and learning disabled students to abstract spelling patterns in the course of their acquisition of spelling skills. The performance of the learning disabled was significantly below that of the normal students. In addition, error analysis indicates that the responses of the learning disabled spellers…

Results of a study of learning disabled children's conversational competence indicate that they may not be providing their conversational partners with feedback that others need to adapt their communicative style to these children's comprehension levels. The difficulty in identifying social contexts where different conversational rules apply may…

Examines differences in language ability between normally achieving students and learning-disabled students with reading comprehension problems. Poor comprehending students differed from normal achievers for all language measures and in the manner that reader- and text-related variables predicted comprehension. Results supported the positive role…

Investigated whether the pseudoword repetition difference between poor and normal readers in the Netherlands could be explained by differences in memory for verbal materials or in familiarity with the composition of verbal materials. Concludes that the pseudoword repetition of poor readers is already operative in early, perceptual states of…