This article provides a rationale for incorporating early literacy screening into speech language services for young children with communication impairments. Recommendations concern identifying which children and what areas of literacy should be targeted for screening. Guidelines for interpreting findings and for using screening to guide early…

This case study describes Rosemary Crossley's facilitated communication method, which enables certain autistic people to communicate via an electronic device. Controversies surrounding the method and challenges to assumptions about autism are explored. (SK)

Three youths with speech and language disorders completed an interview-training strategy emphasizing self-monitoring procedures. The results indicated that the training procedures were effective in increasing the use of positive comments, questions, and self-disclosures both in mock interviews and actual interview situations. (Author/JDD)

Described is a two-pronged approach to assessment of cognitive-communicative functions in head injury, incorporating elements of both restorative and compensatory models. The approach combines: (1) use of standardized cognitive measures, and (2) observational protocols for systematic evaluation of functioning on integrated, multicomponent tasks…

The case study of a six-year-old nonspeaking girl with severe cerebral palsy demonstrated the effectiveness of intervention with augmentative and alternative communication methods. Both picture symbol communication and functional speech emerged and the child, initially believed to be mentally retarded, was determined to be of normal intelligence.…

This study compared the conversational repair strategies employed by eight language-impaired children, aged 7-11, and their linguistically normal age- and language-matched peers. All of the subjects appeared to recognize the obligatory nature of the neutral clarification requests employed, though performance differences were noted relating to…

Informal criterion-referenced techniques can be used to assess the writing skills of students with disabilities. Teachers can analyze student writing samples with regard to fluency, sentence types, vocabulary, structure, and ideation. A form is presented for collecting and analyzing data from writing samples, and use of the form is illustrated.…

This paper summarizes selected findings on approaches to increasing the rate of communicatively appropriate responses in augmentative and alternative communication. Six approaches--efficient keyboard layouts, reduced keys keyboards, Minspeak with Words Strategy, enlarged keys keyboards, abbreviation expansion, and lexical prediction--are reviewed…

This article summarizes findings of studies on speech-language pathologists with varying levels of clinical experience, presents a working model of clinical expertise, offers comments concerning the development and maintenance of clinical expertise, and identifies some problems with research in this area. An appendix lists knowledge, skills,…

This article presents a case study of a child with Hunter's syndrome, a genetic disorder often resulting in a degeneration of speech and language functioning and hearing loss. The study demonstrates the typical delay in diagnosis and shows how a team approach can maintain such a child in a regular public school setting. (Author/DB)

This study investigated two pragmatic profiles (the Pragmatic Profile and the Profile of Communicative Appropriateness) used to assess the language of two aphasic patients. The study examined interscorer reliability, scoring sensitivity, and diagnostic accuracy. Findings indicate that training in scoring these profiles must be uniform, and greater…

This study, involving 40 preschool children with normal cognitive abilities, determined the effects of initial teaching of semantic elements on compound Blissymbol acquisition, retention, and generalization in a story-telling context. Results indicated that the initial teaching of elements did not contribute to compound acquisition and retention…

This paper discusses the historical context of communication and language intervention and critiques three widely used interventions. It advocates a cross-paradigmatic approach because its inherent flexibility fits with what is known about language acquisition, the nature of different intervention approaches, and human development. This approach…

The Twice-Exceptional Child Project is a collaborative project of the Albuquerque (New Mexico) Public School System and the University of New Mexico to serve students who are gifted and have a mild-to-moderate handicapping condition. This article describes the project's training components, screening and identification procedures, curriculum, and…

An overview of the psychological literature provides support for theoretical explanations of the rapid adoption of facilitated communication for use with individuals with severe communication disorders, despite the lack of empirical support. The influence of cognitive biases, ambiguous stimuli, biases in data, psychological influences, and social…