To assess diagnostic accuracy and test-retest reliability, two forms of a nonword repetition task were administered to 22 preschool children with specific language impairment and 22 controls. Nonword repetition scores provided excellent sensitivity and specificity for discrimination. Scores on nonword repetition and digit span tasks improved from…

Analysis of home videotapes of autistic and normally developing children's first-year birthday parties found that autistic children displayed fewer social and joint attention behaviors and more autistic symptoms. Four behaviors (pointing, showing objects, looking at others, and orienting to name) correctly classified 10 of 11 autistic children and…

Ratings on the Autism Behavior Checklist for 18 children (ages 9-16) with normal intelligence and infantile autism or infantile autism, residual state, revealed that all subjects met the cutoff score for autism or borderline autism on retrospective ratings, but 14 received current ratings below the cutoff. The Autism Diagnostic Interview ruled out…

A discriminant analysis of characteristics of students with behavioral disorders in three progressively more intensive placements indicated that age at time of diagnosis was the strongest discriminating variable contributing to placement outcomes. Younger, brighter students tended to be mainstreamed, and older students with more externalizing…

A study of 233 individuals with severe mental retardation examined the validity of the Diagnostic Assessment for the Severely Handicapped-II (DASH-II) through correlation with the Aberrant Behavior Checklist (ABC). DASH-II as a whole was found to have a high degree of convergent validity with the ABC total score. (CR)

Attempts to better identify the at-risk children with reading disabilities to aid in early intervention before they encounter the years of reading failure usually associated with a formal diagnosis of reading disabilities. Tries to develop a small set of phonological, letter, and memory tasks that would reliably identify children likely to develop…

Concurrent and prospective correlations among reading, spelling, phonemic awareness, verbal memory, rapid serial naming, and IQ were examined in 19 students with reading disabilities and 36 controls at grades two and eight. The strongest predictors of reading disabilities were cognitive-linguistic measures, particularly rapid naming. (Author/CR)

Presents evidence to show variability across states in the use of the severe-emotional-disturbance designation for students and the frequency of comorbid and trimorbid cases being classified as learning disabled. Findings are presented from ongoing projects to illustrate differential profiles for comorbid children. (Author/CR)

Examines issues in the differential diagnosis of autism in preschool children with significant cognitive impairment, including the use of traditional diagnostic guidelines for preschoolers with developmental delays, developmental changes in behavioral characteristics, involvement of cognitive factors in symptom expression, overlap between autism…

Comments on studies that indicate delayed onset of canonical babbling may predict future language impairments. It cautions against the too-early assumption of the use of early perceptual and production capacities as clinical markers and warns that using lack of canonical babbling as a early index of language delay could lead to a high rate of…

This study evaluated an experimental articulation testing instrument for differentiating child speakers (N=21, ages 5:0 to 6:6) of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) with atypical and typical phonologies. Significant group differences were observed, suggesting that the measure can differentiate typical and atypical development in this…

Ten students (age 10) with dyslexia were compared to 10 chronological-age controls and 20 reading-age controls. Response latencies of the students with dyslexia were slower when familiar words, letter clusters, and nonwords had to be named. A larger word-frequency effect and larger word-length effect indicate difficulty with increasing task…

Three studies are reported addressing the reliability of the Scale for Assessing Emotional Disturbance (SAED), a standardized, norm-reference measure linked to the federal definition of emotional disturbance (ED). Results indicate the SAED possesses acceptable test-retest reliability and reasonable interrater reliability and can assist in the…

A study examined the stability of the six subgroups of 242 English children with language impairment at age 8. Findings indicate considerable stability in the patterns of difficulties delineated by the classification system. Poorer stability was evident across time with 45% the children moving across subgroups. (Author/CR)

A study of 684 individuals yielded special population norms on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales for individuals with autism for mute children under 10, children with some verbal skills under 10, mute individuals who are 10 or older, and individuals with some verbal skills who are 10 or older. (Author/CR)