Using a set of fine-grained auditory discrimination tasks, 21 children with language-learning problems were compared with 21 normal children, aged six-nine. Across three years, children with language-learning problems showed poorer auditory discrimination for temporally based acoustic differences, poorer receptive vocabulary and language…

Thirty-four children (ages 5-16) born to alcoholic mothers were assessed on measures of intelligence, reading, receptive vocabulary, memory for sentences, visual memory, and visual-motor integration. The children were found to be least deficient on intellectual measures and most deficient on memory for sentences and silent and oral readings.…

This experiment sought to define a confidence limit for maximum word-recognition scores obtained from 212 young and elderly adults with confirmed cochlear hearing loss. A 95% confidence limit was found and supported through analysis, although it is suggested that, in some cases, word recognition should be measured at additional levels to obtain…

Six young children (ages 25 to 40 months) with delays in language comprehension were presented with stimulus items in 3 conditions: (1) object cue and speech, (2) movement cue and speech, or (3) speech alone. All children identified referents with fewer trials when object or movement cues were used with speech compared to use of speech alone.…

A two-year-old child and an eight-year-old bonobo exposed to spoken English and lexigrams from infancy were asked to respond to novel sentences. Both subjects comprehended novel requests and simple syntactic devices. The bonobo decoded the syntactic device of word recursion more accurately than the child; the child performed better than the bonobo…

Presents data that challenge the view that the omission of functional categories by children with specific language impairment is a manifestation of the same immaturity characterizing the grammar of young children without impairment. Data include atypically high omissions or even almost total absence of determiners in the speech productions of a…

A follow-up study examined cognitive and motor development in 52 children prenatally exposed to cocaine (ages 48-64 months) and 52 typical children. Results found that the children who were prenatally exposed to cocaine continued to exhibit problems in expressive and receptive language areas. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

A study examined cognitive and motor development in 56 toddlers prenatally exposed to cocaine (ages 12-27 months) and 56 typical toddlers. Infants prenatally exposed to cocaine experienced developmental problems in expressive and receptive language areas. In addition, there was a possible relationship between cocaine exposure and subsequent…

An Autism Diagnostic Interview (ADI-R) was conducted with parents of 11 children with early infantile autism and 16 with a language disorder, along with a standardized Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-G). Ten children with autism were correctly classified on both measures. One child with a language disorder was falsely classified on…

Assessment methods adapted from qualitative research including ethnographic interviewing and journal writing were applied to the case of an adult with aphasia. By analyzing reports of the client and significant others over the course of treatment, changes in social participation and psychosocial well being were documented. These descriptive data…

Background: Parents and professionals can both play a role in improving children's expressive language development and a number of alternative models of delivery exist that involve different levels of input by these two groups. However, these alternative treatments have not been subject to rigorous comparative analysis in terms of both cost and…

The speech and language developmental progress of children with hearing loss educated using an Auditory-Verbal approach was compared to that of a control group of children with normal hearing. The experimental group consisted of 29 children ages 2-6 years with a mean pure tone average in the better ear of 76.17 dB HL at 0.5, 1 and 2 kHz. The 29…

Background: The behaviours of 24 mothers of children with fragile X syndrome (FXS) with their affected children were examined during planned observations in their homes. The goal of this study was to describe concurrent maternal interactive behaviour and the factors that influence the type and frequency of these behaviours within this group.…

This collection of four "focus flyers" developed by the Services for Children with Deaf-Blindness program at the University of Southern Mississippi provides practical guidelines for parents and teachers working with infants, children, and young adults who are deaf-blind. The first flyer is on communication interactions and is organized into an…

Although testing language has traditionally taken the form of testing knowledge about language, the idea of testing communicative competence is becoming recognized as being of great importance in second language learning. Communicative language tests are intended to be a measure of how the testees are able to use language in real life situations.…