This study examined the relation between language skills, gender, and relational/physical aggression. Language skills of 100 preschoolers were assessed with 3 standardized instruments. Relational/physical aggression was rated by the children's teachers. Results indicated that relational and physical aggression tended to increase as language scores…

Purpose: The purpose of this longitudinal correlational study was to test whether an environmental variable and 4 child variables predicted growth rate of number of different nonimitative words used (i.e., lexical density). Method: Thirty-five young (age range = 21-54 months) children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) who were initially…

A study investigated the relationship between speech production and several demographic and developmental factors in 147 children (ages 14-60 months) with hearing impairments. Significant predictors of speech intelligibility and phonetic inventory included the child's age, expressive language ability, degree of hearing loss, mode of communication,…

There has been little research comparing the nature and contributions of language input of mothers and fathers to their young children. This study examined differences in mother and father talk to their 24 month-old children. This study also considered contributions of parent education, child care quality and mother and father language (output,…

The current study attempts to differentiate effects of phonotactic probability (i.e. the likelihood of occurrence of a sound sequence), neighbourhood density (i.e. the number of phonologically similar words), word frequency, and word length on expressive vocabulary development by young children. Naturalistic conversational samples for three…

Longitudinal change in syntax comprehension and production skill, measured over six years, was modeled in 31 individuals (ages 5-20) with Down syndrome. The best fitting Hierarchical Linear Modeling model of comprehension uses age and visual and auditory short-term memory as predictors of initial status, and age for growth trajectory. (Contains…

This report examines the teacher-reported early literacy behaviors of 2,759 preschool children who participated in a state-supported, early intervention preschool program. Preschool teachers (N = 240) completed the Literacy Competence Checklist for all children in their classes. Teachers reported growth in childrens literacy behaviors from Fall to…

A study tested the relationship between prelinguistic pragmatic functions and later expressive vocabulary of 58 toddlers with mild to moderate developmental delays. Results indicate that rate of joint attention and rate of communication were statistically significant predictors of later expressive vocabulary. Rate of behavior regulation was not a…

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)

This study examined the relationship among language proficiency, behavior problems, and other areas of development in 36 children (ages 36 to 40 months). A strong association was found between deficiencies in both expressive and receptive language and behavioral difficulties. Specifically, deficits in expressive language at age 2 were more…

This purpose of this randomized group experiment was (a) to test the post-treatment (i.e., immediately after treatment) and follow-up (i.e., 8 months after the end of treatment) efficacy of a treatment designed to facilitate both sentence length and speech intelligibility (i.e., broad target recast), and (b) to explore whether pretreatment speech…

This study investigated variables that might be associated with outcome differences in language development of 10 children (ages 10-20 months) with blindness or severe visual impairments, attending a developmental vision clinic in southern England. Subjects' early patterns of expressive language development were examined and related to observed…

This study investigated the relationship between day care and young children's language performance. Receptive, expressive and a combined language score plus an intelligence quotient (IQ) were derived for middle-class, Caucasian 3-year-olds from intact families who attended high quality day care since infancy and were compared to the scores of…

This longitudinal study examined predictors of second-grade reading outcomes in kindergarten children (N=604). Findings indicated that five kindergarten variables uniquely predicted reading outcomes in second grade: (1) letter identification, (2) sentence imitation, (3) phonological awareness, (4) rapid naming, and (5) mother's education.…

Children and adolescents with Down syndrome show an emerging profile of speech and language characteristics that is typical of the syndrome (Chapman & Hesketh, 2000; Chapman, 2003; Abbeduto & Chapman, 2005) and different from typically developing children matched for nonverbal mental age, including expressive language deficits relative to…