Three nonspeaking children with autism who had used facilitated communication were evaluated with four experimentally controlled tasks. Findings suggested a generalized language deficit, rather than isolated word-finding or perceptual difficulties, and were consistent with previous studies revealing facilitator cuing. Questions are raised about…

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…

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…

By looking at data on expressive phonology, non-word repetition, non-word discrimination and phonological sensitivity in two groups of Swedish children, the common basis for tasks tapping into different levels of phonological processing is discussed. Two studies were performed, one including children with language impairment (LI) and one including…

The primary objective was to compare the grammatical output of children with language disorders on different tasks. Sixty-five children with language disorders, aged six to eleven, completed the syntactic formulation (elicitation) and narrative subtests from the Assessment of Comprehension and Expression 6-11 (Adams et al. 2001). Grammatical…

Purpose: To examine the validity of the Expressive Vocabulary Test (EVT; K. Williams, 1997) for assessing the expressive vocabulary skills of African American students. Method/Results: One hundred sixty-five African American preschool and kindergarten students were administered the EVT. The mean EVT score for these African American students was…

This meta-analysis examined whether writing about stressful experiences affects health care utilization (HCU) compared with writing on neutral topics or no-writing control groups. Randomized controlled trials of 30 independent samples representing 2,294 participants were located that contained sufficient information to calculate effect sizes.…

In this article I share stories I have lived alongside my son, Matthew, who is challenged by multiple disabilities, particularly in the domain of expressive speech. Narrative inquiry shaped a space to attend and inquire into stories. The stories reveal the tension between an identity "given" and an identity continually "created" in relationship.…

This study examined the growth of expressive language skills in children who received cochlear implants (CIs) in infancy. Repeated language measures were gathered from 29 children who received CIs between 10 and 40 months of age. Both cross-sectional and growth curve analyses were used to assess the relationship between expressive language…

The complex nature of written expression presents difficulty for many students, particularly those with learning disabilities (LD). The literature in the area of written expression and students with learning disabilities indicates that explicit, rule-based instruction can enhance the writing skills of struggling students. Research in Direct…

This study examined the composition of vocabulary and preschoolers' vocabulary learning in an early literacy program. Fifty-six children with typical achievement, with special needs, and at risk for disabilities participated. Curriculum-based measures (CBM) were used to track children's receptive and expressive vocabulary growth over three…

Oral language skills in the preschool years are predictive of children's later reading success and literacy acquisition, and among these language skills, vocabulary and narrative ability play important roles. Children from low socioeconomic families face risks to their language development and because of threats to these skills it is important to…

This paper reports an assessment of the collocational competence of students of English Linguistics at the University of Granada. This was carried out to meet a two-fold purpose. On the one hand, we aimed to establish a solid corpus-driven approach based upon a systematic and reliable framework for the evaluation of collocational competence in…

Purpose: Language and speech are difficult to assess in newly arrived internationally adopted children. The purpose of this study was to determine if assessments completed when toddlers were first adopted could predict language outcomes at age 2. Local norms were used to develop early intervention guidelines that were evaluated against age 2…