A study of 25 toddlers with expressive language delays and their mothers investigated whether a focused stimulation intervention concentrating on lexical training had indirect, secondary effects on the children's phonological abilities. Results indicate the toddlers that received the intervention made treatment gains in two areas of phonological…

This article offers suggestions on enhancing emotional vocabulary in early childhood education settings. A schematic of children's emotional literacy is followed by ways to build emotional vocabulary by teaching directly, teaching incidentally, or utilizing special activities. Suggestions also address teaching children to recognize feelings in…

This review focuses on methods used to identify language impairment in 72 published research studies from 1983-88. Test data were most frequently used, and expressive and receptive language were routinely assessed. Research problems included the lack of clarity regarding the specific number and identity of tests used and use of incomplete tests.…

The study compared the effectiveness of two language intervention procedures, modeling alone versus modeling plus evoked production with four language disordered children (ages five and six). There was no marked difference between the procedures as measured on generalization probes. (Author/DB)

The Denver Developmental Screening Test (DDST) and an expressive language measure were administered to 114 children (aged 24 to 74 months) suspected of developmental difficulties. The DDST did not identify the majority of children who failed the expressive language screening, even after cutoff scores were made more rigorous. (Author/JDD)

This paper identifies characteristics of poor speechreaders, defines developmental dyspraxia in profoundly hearing-impaired children, and outlines the speechreading process. An active training method is described in which expressive and receptive skills are integrated, by having hearing-impaired people speechread their own speech via videotape…

Four toddlers with mental retardation were studied in the context of a multiple baseline across subjects design. Results supported the use of a modified version of milieu teaching to increase intentional requesting by these children. Increased intentional requesting was generalized to interactions with mothers. (Author/DB)

This study of 18 mothers and their legally blind children, aged 20-36 months, found that the overall home environments were favorable. Home environments were not significantly related to any developmental scores except for the positive relationship between the emotional and verbal responsiveness of some mothers and the expressive pragmatic…

Brainstem auditory evoked response latencies were studied in 80 males (13 with Down's syndrome). Latencies for waves P3 and P5 were shorter for Down's syndrome subjects, who also showed a different pattern of left versus right ear responses. Results suggest decreased lateralization and receptive and expressive language ability among people with…

This study examined qualitative developments in 96 school-aged children's expressible knowledge of 434 words (selected to represent dictionary contents). Developmental changes were found in proportions of high quality definitions, semantic and syntactic form, effects of parts of speech, morphological composition, and lexical organization. Results…

This article addresses the concept of communication and social role including dimensions of speaker-listener relations, speaking options in these relations, and implications of language/learning-disabled individuals' failure to appreciate these dimensions and options. (DB)

A teacher describes use of a three-phase freestyle writing activity to encourage students with disabilities to develop independent expressive written language. Students develop their skills by writing for brief periods, first whatever comes to mind, then a self-selected topic, and subsequently a teacher-selected topic. (DB)

The use of continuous discourse tracking to evaluate sensory prostheses for the hearing impaired was assessed in terms of the strategies used by the talker and responses elicited from the listener. Listeners showed small but significant differences in response patterns. Much larger differences were observed in the pattern of correction strategies…

This study of four preschool children (two typically developing, one physically disabled, one mildly developmentally delayed) found that use of a simultaneous prompting procedure was effective in teaching expressive word recognition to three of the students. Maintenance and generalization were also successful. (Author/JDD)

Twenty-eight adults with Down's syndrome and 28 adults with retardation of unknown origin responded to a language elicitation test. The adults with Down's syndrome exhibited an almost universal failure in mastering individual elements of the auxiliary verb system. The nature and source of biological constraints on language learning and…