An essential part of the human capacity for language is the ability to link conceptual or semantic representations with syntactic representations. On the basis of data from spontaneous production, Tomasello (2000) suggested that young children acquire such links on a verb-by-verb basis, with little in the way of a general understanding of…

The effects of adult questioning on children's novel word acquisition during storybook reading were investigated. Three-year-olds were assigned to one of three conditions: vocabulary eliciting questions, noneliciting questions, and no questions (control). General vocabulary comprehension and novel word knowledge were equivalent across the groups…

Cognitive and language skills of 39 siblings of children with autism (SIBS-A) and 39 siblings of typically developing children (SIBS-TD) at ages 4, 14, 24, 36, and 54 months were compared. Twelve of the 39 SIBS-A revealed a delay in cognition and/or language (including one child diagnosed with autism) compared to only two SIBS-TD. Developmental…

Purpose: To examine the relationship between phonological processing skills prior to kindergarten entry and reading skills at the end of 1st grade, in children with speech sound disorders (SSD). Method: The participants were 17 children with SSD and poor phonological processing skills (SSD-low PP), 16 children with SSD and good phonological…

Existing studies of child care have not been able to determine whether higher quality child care protects children from the effects of poverty, whether poverty and lower quality child care operate as dual risk factors, or whether both are true. The objective of the current study was to test two pathways through which child care may serve as a…

Purpose: This study tests the hypothesis that toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) will show differences from contrast groups in preferences for attending to speech. Method: This study examined auditory preferences in toddlers with ASD and matched groups of (a) typical age-mates, (b) age-mates with nonautistic developmental disabilities,…

Background: Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is the most common known inherited cause of intellectual disability, yet very few studies have explored the language comprehension skills of children with FXS. We examined the receptive vocabulary, grammatical morphology and syntax skills of boys with FXS (who were additionally classified as having autism,…

The effectiveness of two extra-stimulus prompting procedures was compared in teaching receptive labels to a 3 year old autistic boy. One prompting procedure was used exclusively by the treatment center the child attended and was similar to extra-stimulus prompts used in previous studies. The procedure involved alternating unprompted trials of a…

Comparison of the fast mapping skills of language-impaired four- and five-year-olds (N=11) and nondisabled peers (N=11) revealed no differences in ability to infer a connection between a novel word and referent, to comprehend a novel word after a single exposure, and to recall nonlinguistic information associated with the referent. (Author/CB)

Language disabled (LD) and average (N=40) six- and eight-year-olds were evaluated on the ability to detect multiple word meanings in ambiguous sentences with and without picture clues and to identify appropriate word meaning by sentence context. LD students did not show average growth in these abilities over the two-year age span. (Author/DB)

The relationship between perspective taking ability and quality of social behavior was investigated with 16 autistic children ranging in age from 6 to 14 years. Results indicated perspective taking ability correlated significantly with two measures of social skills whereas receptive vocabulary and nonverbal intelligence did not. (Author/DB)