Purpose: This article is concerned with the growing body of international evidence indicating that adolescents in contact with the youth justice system are likely to have severely compromised oral language skills, receptively and expressively. A smaller, but persuasive, literature also points to poor literacy skills in this population. Language…

Purpose: The authors of this article examined the etiology of developmental language impairment (LI) at 4 and 12 years of age, as well as the relationship between the 2. Method: Phenotypic and quantitative genetic analyses using longitudinal data from the Twins Early Development Study (Oliver & Plomin, 2007) were conducted. A total of 2,923…

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is the leading inherited cause of intellectual disability. The syndrome is caused by a single gene mutation on the X chromosome. Although individual differences are large, most individuals with FXS display weaknesses across all language and literacy domains compared with peers of the same chronological age with typical…

Analysis of characteristics of 53 children with specific language impairment (SLI), ages 4 to 9, suggested that family history is related to pattern of language performance. Children with deficits in only expressive language had a higher proportion of affected family members than did children with both expressive and receptive language deficits.…

The performance data of individuals with Alzheimer's on language comprehension and expression tests are presented and discussed in the context of possible contributions from impaired working memory functions. It is argued that diminished scores result primarily from attenuated span capacity, difficulty focusing attention, encoding, and activation…

The third of five volumes (and the second of the four curriculum guides) of Project Teach 'n' Reach, a program to help regular classroom teachers teach nondisabled students about disabilities, deals with communication handicaps. The curriculum addresses the following issues under the topic of hearing impairments: anatomical structures of the ear,…

This pamphlet presents an overview of speech and language disorders including a description of symptoms, possible causes, identification, intervention, and current research. Description of the disorders includes examples of symptoms; the four components and the physical tools of speech; and the role of the brain, including its hemispheres,…