Purpose: The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate how teachers in the United States understand and perceive developmental language disorder (DLD). This study used a survey to examine teachers' understanding of DLD and the impact of DLD at school to inform advocacy efforts within the discipline of communication sciences and…

In the SEND Code of Practice, the area of Communication and Interaction includes children and young people with speech, language, and communication needs (SLCN). These children and young people may have difficulty with one, some or all of the different aspects of speech, language or social communication that may vary across development. This…

This study examined the characteristics of 14 English Language Learners classified as having learning disabilities (LD) who were also identified as having speech and language impairments (SI) prior to, at, or after initial identification as LD. Data were collected under the auspices of a longitudinal study, Bilingual Exceptional Students:…

In Canadian public primary schools, newcomer West African refugees like other ethnic immigrant students are a visible minority group, often referred as Linguistic and Culturally Different (LCD) students. In the province of British Columbia, newcomer immigrant students are subjected to a battery of tests, as soon as they enroll in the primary…

Growing evidence suggests that, as a group, many internationally adopted children catch up to their peers in terms of their language development by the time they reach their school-age years. Although this appears to be particularly true for children adopted during the first few years of life, it is not true for all internationally adopted…

Although sharing many of the identified difficulties associated with autism, Asperger's syndrome (AS) is widely believed to differ in the domain of linguistic deficit. While researchers may disagree in detail about the language and communication performance of pupils with Asperger's syndrome, there seems to be general consensus that such…

Selective mutism is defined as "the consistent failure to speak in specific social situations despite the ability to speak in other settings" (American Psychiatric Association, 1994 as cited in Zelenko & Shaw, 2000). For many years, selective mutism was considered to be a very rare disorder amongst individuals, and little attention…