A time delay procedure was used to teach three children (ages 5-9) with autism to ask the question "What's that?" when novel stimuli were presented, and generalization of the skill was assessed. Results suggest that children with autism can be taught to ask questions that lead to acquisition of new information. (Author/DB)

A story format and discourse analysis procedure was used to evaluate the spoken language skills of 20 elementary students with learning disabilities over a 1-year period. Stories from memory were longer and characterized by more as well as different types of errors than were stories from pictures or stories based on games. (Author/DB)

This study found that the speech of mothers (n=28) of toddlers slow to acquire expressive language tended to differ only in the frequency of use of lexical contingency devices (specifically expansion and extension of child speech), when compared to mothers of normally speaking toddlers. (Author/DB)

Twenty-eight toddlers with slow expressive language development were compared to normally speaking age-mates and found to show delayed rather than deviant development in the average level of complexity of their syllable structures, the number of different consonant phonemes produced, and the percentage of consonants correctly produced in…

Examination of 23 4-year-old children classified otitis media negative or positive during their first year of life indicated that otitis positive children required a more advantageous signal-to-competition ratio for sentence intelligibility, compared to otitis-negative peers. No intergroup differences were found in receptive or expressive language…

The frequency and types of questions that 4 hearing mothers used with their deaf daughters (ages 3-4) were examined. Results indicated that these mothers used fewer questions than hearing mothers of hearing children, but the types of questions were similar. Child's mean length of utterance influenced the amount and types of questions mothers used.…

A third-grade classroom participated in a communication skills unit (CSU) designed and implemented collaboratively by a teacher, speech-language pathologist, and student speech-language pathologist. The CSU aimed to increase the students' metapragmatic awareness of explanation adequacy. Students showed significant improvement in ability to rate…

This study evaluated 9 computer-generated measures of children's language production, based on 24 children with specific language impairment and 24 normally developing children, ages 24-50 months. Three measures possessed desirable developmental and diagnostic characteristics: mean syntactic length, total number of words, and number of different…

This study, involving 20 children (ages 4-11) with severe hearing impairments, affirmed the content validity of the Clark-Madison Test of Oral Language as a measure of nonwritten expressive language with hearing-impaired children. Performance comparison with hearing individuals revealed a different profile of strengths and weaknesses than did…

Concepts of the learner and liberal education in the "Graduation Program" recently published by the British Columbia (Canada) Ministry of Education and the program itself are intended to serve utilitarian ends rather than a real liberal education, as defined by the author, to whom good expressive practice is central. (SLD)

Discusses importance of adults asking questions that encourage development of children's expressive language. Compared the responses of 4- to 5-year olds asked only closed questions with those of children asked verbal reflective questions in which the questioner restated part of the child's previous utterance. Found that closed questions generated…

This study investigated the semantic and syntactic knowledge of a child (age 12) with severe multiple disabilities who could read, write, and comprehend 2 languages but did not initiate conversation. The study demonstrates that high levels of language comprehension and ability to read and write do not automatically transfer to conversational…

Three children with language impairment (ages 38 to 41 months) and their mothers participated in a study evaluating a storybook reading process for facilitating mother-child interactions. The complete reading cycle (CRC) involved: (1) attentional vocative, (2) query, (3) response, and (4) feedback. Results indicated changes in mothers' storybook…

Landau-Kleffner syndrome is characterized by difficulty in receptive or expressive language, abnormal electroencephalograms, and seizures. This article describes the primary and secondary characteristics of children with this syndrome and offers educators a framework for intervention techniques. These include using predictable language, creating…

A study compared children with autism or Asperger syndrome with speech delays (n=23) with those without speech delays (n=24). No significant differences were found on any of the 71 variables analyzed, including autistic symptoms and expressive language. Results suggest that early speech delay may be irrelevant to later functioning. (Contains…