How to help babies and young children right from birth to become competent in talking as well as emergent literacy is illustrated by research findings as well as with specific clinical stories. Both kinds of knowledge can serve to galvanize parents and teachers to increase awareness of infant and preschool language development and the crucial role…

Combining home-school literacy bags with preschool family literature circles provided a strong foundation for family involvement at home and school during this year-long Reading Partners project, and helped parents become essential partners in their children's literacy development. Using home-school literacy bags, children and parents learned…

The age of detection of autism varies and may be linked to differences in the severity of disturbance and any associated retardation. Symptom intensity, overall language level, age of recognition of first disturbances and level of psychological development were examined in 222 children with pervasive developmental disorder with a mean age of 5…

The effects of adult questioning on children's novel word acquisition during storybook reading were investigated. Three-year-olds were assigned to one of three conditions: vocabulary eliciting questions, noneliciting questions, and no questions (control). General vocabulary comprehension and novel word knowledge were equivalent across the groups…

A study examined mothers' accuracy in predicting the responses their children would give and the scores they would achieve on two standardized vocabulary tests. Specifically, the study's primary purpose was to examine maternal estimates of both expressive and receptive vocabulary skills according to two indices: accuracy of total score and…

Picture naming and picture identification tasks were used to investigate lexical-semantic skills in young children learning Hmong as a first language (L1) and English as a second language (L2). A total of 19 children, ages 3; 4 (years; months)-5; 2, participated in this study. Performance on lexical tasks was analyzed as a function of development…

The PLS-4 (Preschool Language Scale, 4th edition) is a psychometrically sound instrument constructed to assess language skills in children from birth to 6 years 11 months. It is a useful diagnostic and research tool that can be used to identify current comprehension and expressive language skills and can measure changes in language skills over…

This article describes the Oral and Written Language Scales, an assessment of receptive and expressive language for children and young adults aged 3 to 21. The test assesses overall language skills and specific performance in oral expression, listening comprehension, and written expression. Its administration, standardization, reliability, and…