Siblings play an important role in the lives of children with disabilities, especially those with complex communication needs (CCN). However, children with CCN require support to learn social and communication skills. Like other communication partners, typically developing (TD) siblings may struggle to understand how to best interact with a child…

Two sets of nonwords (with and without true morphemes) were compared for their ability to differentiate students in Grades 1 through 12 with and without language impairment (36 each; N = 72) on a nonword repetition task. Results indicated that either nonword type could contribute to differential diagnosis.

In this pilot study, we ask whether repeated storybook reading is also beneficial for word learning in children diagnosed with specific language impairment (SLI). We compared 3-year-old German learning children diagnosed with SLI to typically developing children matched on age and socioeconomic status (SES). One week later, children with SLI…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) produce impoverished personal narratives. We developed an intervention to improve parental talk with their son/daughter with ASD which would thereby improve the child's narration. In this pilot study, we randomly assigned parents to an intervention group who received information about the importance…

This pilot study describes an intervention package, MODELER for Read and Talk, designed to provide enriched language interaction for children with complex communication needs who require augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). MODELER (Model, Encourage, Respond) includes (a) modeling AAC as you speak, (b) encouraging communication…

Researchers have established that morphological awareness is an important skill because it contributes unique variance to word-level reading and reading comprehension; however, few studies include students with reading disorders. The purpose of this pilot study was to investigate whether training morphological awareness would improve morphological…

Changes in natural language environments of families receiving quantitative language feedback in Shanghai were investigated. Volunteer parents of 22 children aged 5 to 30 months were recruited from a hospital and a learning center. Quantitative measures of adult word count and conversational turns with children were collected regularly over 6…

We evaluated the narrative and expository writing samples of 12 adolescents with language-learning disabilities (LLD) in Grades 6 to 12 for elements of microstructure (e.g., productivity, grammatical complexity) and macrostructure (genre-specific text structure elements) using an experimental measure. Writing samples were elicited with…

The concept of early intervening services was introduced into public school systems with the implementation of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004. This article describes a program developed for students with speech sound disorders that incorporated concepts of early intervening services, response to…

This pilot study investigated Standard American English (SAE) morphological development for 15 bilingual Hispanic preschoolers. Analysis of data from spontaneous language samples revealed emergent use of Brown's (1973) 14 grammatical morphemes. Because mastery generally was later than for SAE speakers, clinicians are urged to use caution when…