Four nine year olds with mild mental retardation received training on the meaning of idiomatic phrases. All children demonstrated learning and an ability to understand the learned idioms when presented in unfamiliar contexts. Children were able to generalize their receptive learning to an expressive task with varying levels of success. (Author/JDD)

This study, involving 26 children (ages 44-70 months) with impairments in grammar and phonology, found that children receiving either a clinician-administered or parent-administered intervention showed gains in expressive grammar, but there were no indirect effects on subjects' phonological production. Language intervention approaches for young…

This study compared pragmatic skills of 5 children (ages 4-6) with specific language impairments (SLI) and their younger siblings matched for mean length of utterance. Analysis of communicative acts on three levels (social interchange, speech act, and conversational) indicated comparable performance within sibling pairs, but SLI children…

This study of 44 late-talking and normally speaking toddlers with and without histories of middle ear involvement revealed no differences in expressive language outcome attributed to history of middle ear involvement. There seemed to be intergroup differences in outcome on measures of articulation that were associated with history of middle ear…

This study evaluated the relationship between the play behaviors of 18 deaf blind children (aged 3-12) and their communication skills using the Play Assessment Scale and several multidomain developmental checklists. Results revealed that behaviors observed during play assessment were highly related to ratings of receptive, expressive, and…

This article discusses the use of sign language to facilitate language development of children with developmental disabilities mainstreamed into the early childhood setting. It discusses the benefits of using sign language, presents a rationale for its use, and provides instructional guidelines and resources. (JDD)

This study compared the science vocabulary performance of 76 students with learning disabilities (LD) and 78 normally achieving (NA) students at elementary and intermediate grade levels. Findings indicated significant differences in receptive language performance between LD and NA students and differences in expressive language between older and…

Two children (ages four and five) with word-finding deficits characterized largely by semantic substitutions participated in a treatment involving phonological information about target words. Treatment resulted in reduction not only of occasional phonological word-finding substitutions but also of the large number of semantic word-finding…

Forty-eight subjects (grades 1-12) with phonological disorders were identified and categorized into either Residual or Delayed groups and performance was compared with that of 24 normal individuals on various speech and language parameters. Results indicated that voice disorders, deficits in expressive language, and hearing problems occurred more…

This study, with 30 language learning-disabled, reading-disabled, and normal primary school children, found that clause structure complexity, fluency, and grammatical and phonemic accuracy tended to be highest when children were discussing absent referents, providing explanations and stories, and giving unshared information. These effects were…

This study compared the effect of productivity (a correlate of suffix frequency) on derivational suffix use in 69 elementary and middle school students' derivational suffix use. Twenty-three students had language-learning disabilities (LLD). Students with and without LLD used highly productive suffixes but LLD students were less accurate in…

This study of the forms and functions of expressive communication produced by 84 children and adults with severe mental retardation found significant differences among participants associated with differences in their communication levels (contact gesture, distal gesture, or symbolic), age (child or adult), and residential status (community home…

Discusses how speech-language pathologists can use photography to encourage more active language expression in children with language and learning disabilities, and describes seven categories for photography use in language learning environments. Each photo project includes suggested language objectives, applications, and advantages. (Author/CR)

Twenty-six children and adolescents who were unable to produce /r/ correctly listened to a tape of 200 words containing /r/ spoken, either correctly or incorrectly, by either the subjects themselves or another speaker. Subjects judged both the correctness of the /r/ and the speaker's identity. Results support a relationship between speech…

This study used longitudinal productivity criteria to establish the phonetic skill of 20 children (followed from 9 to 16 months). The number of specific consonants produced consistently across the months predicted referential lexical use at 16 months. Prior use of at least two supraglottal consonants characterized the children achieving…