Music has been shown to improve social interaction and attention to verbal stimuli in autism. We report a feasibility randomised controlled trial of an online intervention using music-assisted programmes, compared with best-practice treatment (Social Communication Intervention for Pre-schoolers-Intensive) for language learning in preschool…

Background: Within cohorts of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) there is considerable variation in terms of language ability. In the past, it was believed that children with ASD either had delayed articulation and phonology skills or excelled in those areas compared to other language domains. Very little is known about speech sound…

Background: Oral language competence provides children with an essential foundation for academic achievement and emotional well-being, yet many children enter school with delayed language and those living in economically disadvantaged areas are at disproportionate risk of experiencing language difficulties. A tiered system, offering high-quality…

Given the rich bound morphology of Spoken Arabic, an attempt was made here to construct a developmental measure corresponding to the mean length utterance (MLU) in English and to morpheme-per-utterance (MPU) in Hebrew. The adaptation to Arabic resulted in a new measurement termed Arabic-MPU, that was experimentally tested on a sample of 98…

Background: Difficulties in language development are related to social and emotional problems, lower academic outcomes, and lower quality of life from childhood to adolescence. These grave consequences might be significantly reduced by timely identification and professional support. The introduction of systematic screening for language delay (LD)…

The purpose of the present study was to address the extent to which narrative intervention improved late talkers' ability to generate personal narratives and the extent to which the effect of narrative intervention was maintained after three weeks of no intervention. Three late-talking preschool children participated in this narrative intervention…

Background and Aims: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present with impairments in social interaction and stereotypic behaviors. About a third may exhibit delays in verbal expression beyond preschool age, potentially categorizing them as nonverbal/minimally verbal (NV/MV), a condition that can persist into adulthood and affect their…

This study compared a picture exchange (PE) system and an iPad®-based speech generating device (SGD) when teaching requesting skills to preschoolers with developmental disabilities and limited functional speech. A multiple baseline design with counterbalancing the order of two instruction conditions across participants was applied to compare the…

Purpose: This article explored the predictive values of three main language delay (LD) trajectories (i.e., persistent, late onset, and transient) across 3-5 years on poor literacy at 8 years. Additionally, the effect of gender was assessed, using both gender-neutral and gender-specific thresholds. Method: The data comprised mother-reported…

The main goal of this study was to ascertain the effectiveness of an intervention programme on narrative coherence in students with Typical Development (TD) and with a Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Participants were 99 five-year-old students from schools in Tenerife. A task involving retelling a story was used for the narrative analysis,…

This study explored participation- and impairment-based outcomes for 24 late-to-talk toddlers (M age = 20.46 months, SD = 3.09, 62.5% male) whose parents participated in Target Word™, The Hanen Program® for Parents of Children who are Late Talkers in community clinics across Ontario. Parents completed the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development…

The relevance of the research is due to the necessity of creating the pedagogical conditions for correction and development of speech in children having the general speech underdevelopment. For them, difficulties generating a coherent utterance are characteristic, which prevents a sufficient speech readiness for schooling forming in them as well…

This article examines early developmental histories of learners who attended a government-funded school for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in South Africa from 1992 to 2014. A total of 141 complete historical admission records of learners were analysed. Frequencies, means and correlations were determined for perinatal conditions and…

Providing evidence-based early intervention (EI) to caregivers is an effective way to promote development in young children. EI services in the United States have decreased risk factors associated with language impairment (LI) as they help improve both short and long-term outcomes for both caregivers and children. The positive results for EI…

While little is known about why children make speech errors, it has been hypothesized that cognitive-linguistic factors may underlie phonological speech sound disorders. This study compared the phonological short-term and phonological working memory abilities (using immediate memory tasks) and receptive vocabulary size of 14 monolingual preschool…