Expressive language outcomes measured by MLU and the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn) at ages 3 and 4 were investigated in 34 late talkers with normal receptive language and in 16 typically developing comparison children matched on age, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal ability. Late talkers made greater gains than comparison children between…

Demonstrates that an understanding of children's language-acquisition difficulties with a wide range of syntactic constructions should be derived from limitations on the child's ability to deal with processing load and formal representational complexity. Maintains this can be done only in the context of a view of syntactic representation…

This critical review examines 10 controlled studies in which traditional operant behavioral procedures were compared with normalized interventions for teaching language to young children with autism. It concluded that normalized language training was substantially more effective than discrete-trial training and yielded more positive parental…

Examines naturalistic adult-to-child speech of Italian middle class mothers to determine which patterns characterize linguistic input to infants. Because Italian is a pro-drop language, adult-to-child speech revealed bias toward more salient semantic and morphological significance of verbs relative to nouns, and verbs will likely occupy…

This article discusses how orientation and mobility instructors can provide direct sensory experience about many concepts that can effect meaningfully positive changes in the understanding and subsequent language development of children with visual impairments. It provides recommendations to enhance the linguistic knowledge and vocabulary…

Describes the phonological acquisition of 129 monolingual Putonghua-speaking children, aged 1.6 to 4.6 years. Children's errors suggested that Putonghua-speaking children master four elements of Putonghua syllables in this order: (1) tones; (2) syllable-initial consonants; (3) vowels; and (4) syllable-final consonants. Suggests that the saliency…

Presents indigenous language revitalization resources, primarily organizations, web sites, and recent publications that are likely to be readily available on the Internet, in bookstores and university libraries, or by interlibrary loan. Includes listings of programs and organizations; videos; Internet indexes, sites, and discussion groups; books;…

Examines the structure-functionality relationship in traditional communication-based treatment approaches for children with autism. Contrary to popular opinion supporting either highly structured or highly functional treatment, feasible middle ground is proposed. The article concludes with instructional tips specific to the implementation of…

Describes characteristics of the student population with limited formal schooling (LFS), defining this student group and discussing its impact on schools. The paper also describes individualized language development plans, classroom instruction, and the assessment of the LFS student. In general, the LFS student is an older youth who lacks literacy…

Examined role of isolated words in early vocabulary development. Found that isolated words are a reliable feature of speech to infants; that they include a variety of word types; and that a substantial fraction of words infants produce are words that mothers speak in isolation. Frequency of hearing words in isolation better predicts learning than…

This study examined the behavior of 70 children with hearing losses attending a clinical program providing an auditory-verbal intervention. Parents' ratings indicated that boys were more likely to display temperament features nonconducive to traditional clinical language intervention. Girls' language and placement outcomes surpassed the boys',…

Findings from several studies indicate: stressed and word-final unstressed syllables are preserved more than nonfinal unstressed syllables; word-internal unstressed syllables with obstruent onsets are preserved more than sonorant onsets; unstressed syllables with non-reduced vowels are preserved more than reduced vowels; and right-sided stressed…

Although shy children speak less in social situations, the extent to which their language skills fall behind those of their more outgoing peers remains unclear. We selected 22 temperamentally shy and 22 non-shy children from a larger group of 400 4-year-old children who were prescreened for temperamental shyness by maternal report, using the…

An approach based on Skinner's (1957) theory of verbal behavior has been developed to understand and teach elementary communication skills to children with autism and developmental disabilities (Sundberg & Partington, 1998). However, few studies have directly examined the characteristics of emerging language in children with developmental…

This article uses an analysis of speech to qualitatively examine the relationship between a blind child and his environment, his use of semiotic signs, and his identity development. A brief overview of development in blind children is followed by a case study. The theoretical construct of this article, which is interactionism, is infused into the…