Background: Empirical research suggests that social disadvantage has a negative effect on the development of language, and related cognitive skills such as reading. There is, however, no corresponding body of research on the impact of social disadvantage on motor development. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of…

Purpose: To provide the first detailed information about native language abilities of children who are or had been institutionalized. Method: The language of ten 30-month-old children raised in Romanian orphanages was compared with that of 30 chronological-age-matched peers: 10 children who had moved recently from orphanages to foster care, 10…

Researchers and educators have developed an interest in language development. Their studies focused on the cultural context in which language is learned and developed and its relationship to cognitive development. This article reviews the researchers' definitions on oracy and its social facets of language learning. Specifically, it reviews studies…

Some new approaches to the assessment and treatment of language handicaps suggest the need to examine relationships between verbal creativity and language performance. Data were collected from 40 normally developing white fourth, fifth, and sixth grade children, drawn from both urban and rural communities and from a middle socioeconomic level.…

A study of children's recognitory comprehension, the rudimentary ability to begin decoding the content of language, at the end of the first year had as subjects 36 infants aged 10.5, 11.5, and 12.5 months. In an examination of monthly developmental change in their ability to comprehend newly introduced referential terms, the children were exposed…

The handbook, intended for use as a guide for special education teachers, presents an overview of language arts and communication skills. Instructional considerations and teaching ideas (objectives and activities) are presented for three major types of skills: (1) receptive language arts (listening skills, reading, phonics, sight vocabulary,…

A preference procedure which makes possible a wide range of fine grammatical contrasts is proposed as an alternative to the traditional comprehension testing procedure. (GW)

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) subtest scatter and Bannatyne recategorization scores were investigated with three types of learning disabilities in children 6 to 16 years old: visual-motor and visual-perceptual disability (N=66); auditory-perceptual and receptive language deficit (N=18); and memory deficit (N=12). Three…

Recent experimental work in teaching standard English to speakers of nonstandard dialects of English has shown that such speakers often have a good receptive command of the standard dialect, and readily re-encode stimuli presented in the standard dialect into their own nonstandard forms. This fact shows that some modification is needed in the…

Thirty-three deaf college students were tested on ability to read fingerspelled words and letters and computerspelled words and letters, 19 hearing students were tested on the latter task alone, and 12 Ss highly experienced in fingerspelling were tested on the former task alone. On the word task Ss were scored on percent of words correct, with…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among receptive language skills, type of second-language acquisition program, and reading skills among Italian speaking first grade students in the English schools of Montreal, Canada. Half of the fourteen teachers and their classes were randomly assigned to the Richards-Gibson…

The study examined the performance of 19 pairs of autistic and nonautistic (but with a language delay of at least six months) children on the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language. Results indicated no significant differences between groups or between sexes within groups in receptive language skills. (Author/DB)

Discusses "conundrum kids," who are intelligent and talented, but struggle and often fail because their learning styles and developmental timetables do not match the materials, methods, or sequences of a standard curriculum. Shows how one student with receptive language problems was helped by language therapy and alternative teaching…