Background: Autism is rarely diagnosed before three years of age despite evidence suggesting prenatal abnormalities in neurobiological processes. Little is known about when or how development becomes disrupted in the first two years of life in autism. Such information is needed to facilitate early detection and early intervention. Methods: This…

The profiles and developmental trajectories of adaptive behavior were cross-sectionally examined in 80 children with Down syndrome ages 1 to 11.5 years using the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales. Profile findings indicated a significant weakness in communication relative to daily living and socialization skills. Within communication itself,…

Effective organizational communication can greatly enhance the quality of the school environment and professional/personal relationships. This book focuses on successful communication skills that can help make the school environment a productive experience for administrators, school staff, students, and parents. Chapter 1 discusses the importance…

An alternating treatments design was used to evaluate and compare the instructional effectiveness of six treatment packages in teaching receptive picture vocabulary to 12 mildly handicapped children (ages 3-6 years). Independent variables in the treatment packages included: least-to-most prompting, correction, group instruction, and individual…

The hypothesis that minority self-concept may vary as a function of implicit ethnic and nonethnic evaluative criteria is investigated by testing 40 Mikasaki Seminole Indian children in their native language with Indian examiners and in English with Anglo examiners. The results indicate response stability across languages and time. (Author/DE)

Five hearing impaired children (2 to 4 years old) were followed longitudinally while using a single channel, vibrotactile aid as a supplement to hearing aids. Standardized language tests (including the Scales of Early Communication Skills for Hearing Impaired Children, the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language, and the Test for Auditory…

A 9-month study of a 1-year-old child's acquisition of the pronunciation of "camera" is presented. The data show that while the child can articulate and perceive all the phonological segments of the adult form, she uses an idiosyncratic child-based form when she spontaneously draws from her lexicon to produce an utterance, systematically modifying…

This booklet for parents provides a brief explanation of how babies and young children learn to communicate with others (through actions and words) and suggests specific ways parents can help their children learn to communicate effectively. (RH)

Communication analysis is a tool for perceptual assessment of existing or projected information complexes, i.e., an established reality perceived by one or many humans. An information complex could be of a physical nature, such as a building, landscape, city street; or of a pure informational nature, such as a film, television program,…

Described is the Modified Language Acquisition Program (MLAP) which used trainable mentally retarded trainers to teach basic language skills to severely and profoundly retarded students in a state hospital. Provided are a flow chart and procedural description to guide the use of the MLAP with attendant-supervised retarded trainers and a second…

This research is testing the suggestion that acquisition and representation of formal language knowledge of dysphasic children is qualitatively different from the normal language acquisition/representation processes. In a cohort-sequential design, aspects of language and cognitive development of 120 dysphasic children aged 6-14 are being analyzed…

Deaf children (N=52) were administered a videotaped presentation of a vocabulary test under one of five conditions: Total Communication (TC) with audio; TC without audio; Manual Communication (MC) with no mouth movement; Oral Communication (OC) with audio; and OC without audio. Modes using MC or TC yielded performances significantly superior to OC…

Native English-speaking advanced French students' ability to match the perceptive performance of native-speaking Francophones was investigated. The results suggest that linguistic competence may be based on perception and production and that biological constraints in adult language learning may be a psychomotor rather than a psycholinguistic…

A multivariate analysis of variance, using three factors obtained from a preschool developmental index (Neale Scales) as the dependent variables, and group membership based on subsequent longitudinal reading performance as the independent variables, resulted in a significant multivariate F for a sample of 204 kindergarten children. (Author/SBH)

This study compared teachers' ratings of the speech intelligibility and receptive communication skills of 15 severely deaf and 15 profoundly deaf students using five methods of communication; and students' scores on tests of these receptive communication methods. Teachers' ratings generally were lower than test scores, with low correlations…