This study examined the relationship between 20 hearing-impaired sixth and seventh grade students' ability to write syntactically correct sentences in two formats, one structured and one unstructured. Students generated more syntactically correct sentences in the structured format with little correlation between performance on the two formats.…

When assessed for speech/language development, 31 children (age 1-12) fitted with endotracheal tubes for more than 3 months beginning by age 13 months showed overall language functioning within normal limits and commensurate with cognitive ability. However, a pattern of expressive language disability was noted in the oldest group. (Author/JDD)

This study examined repair strategies used by boys with language impairments, in response to clarification requests following conversational breakdowns. Five subjects, aged four-five, were compared with five age-matched controls and five controls matched for verbal competence. Results showed that all three groups overwhelmingly used revisions to…

Analysis of the discourse of eight- and nine-year-old children with emotional disturbances as compared with that of non-emotionally disturbed peers found significant differences between the groups. The analysis focused on mean length of utterances and discourse error patterns. (MSE)

Talks with students who share their thoughts and ideas about classroom environments which foster writing for learning. Discusses how teachers influence and affect students' writing environments. (MG)

Twenty-three normal adults and four closed head-injured (CHI) adults with a high level of language recovery retold and generated stories. The two tasks differentially influenced the performance of both groups. The two groups differed in measures of cohesiveness and story grammar only in the story generation task. (Author/JDD)

Pacing boards can assist in the transition from single word to multiword utterances by children with language impairments. The pacing board provides visual and motor cues to help young children imitate and spontaneously produce multiword utterances as well as increase metalinguistic awareness of speech units. Instructions for making pacing boards…

Spontaneous speech samples from 10 Swedish children were analyzed grammatically. The five subjects (age five) with specific language impairment (SLI) differed from controls in their more restricted usage of word order patterns and number of grammatical errors. Their speech also showed frequent omissions of grammatical morphemes. Results suggest…

This study evaluated the "missing-item" language intervention with two moderately to severely retarded students (ages five and six) in a special class setting. The missing-item format produced effects in requests for targeted snack items and, after generalization training, a requesting repertoire that was durable and generalized across…

The prelinguistic intentional communicative behaviors of 10 noninstitutionalized children (ages 6-13) with profound mental retardation were analyzed according to communicative rate, communicative function, discourse structure, communicative means, and syllable shape. Findings are compared to data from children without mental retardation and…

This review looks at the impact of word finding deficits, psycholinguistic considerations in naming (including relevant intrinsic and extrinsic variables), behaviors indicative of word finding difficulty, screening for word finding disorders in the classroom, direct assessment (both formal and informal), individual differences, and word retrieval…

Word finding in relation to brain injury is discussed for children and adolescents with unilateral congenital malformations of the brain, early hydrocephalus, childhood-acquired left hemisphere stroke, and acquired traumatic head injury. Studies examining the recovery of word-finding deficits after brain injury are discussed, along with…

This study compared the object naming, object recognition, reading, and spelling abilities of 22 adults, half with written language difficulties and half without. Significant positive relationships were obtained between object naming ability and reading ability, object naming and spelling, and reading and spelling performance. Results suggest that…

Of 30 children with low birth weight, only 4 demonstrated clinically significant language problems at age 3. Language problems were characterized by circumscribed expressive syntax difficulties but were not related systematically to birth weight, gestational age, length of neonatal hospitalization, severity of respiratory illness, socioeconomic…

Self-initiated repairs produced by 14 normal-language and 14 language-disordered children (ages 8-12) during a story retelling task are described. No group differences were found for grammatical repairs, text meaning repairs, or cohesive repairs relating to text meaning. Differences were significant for success of cohesive repair attempts and…