Background: The implicit learning deficit hypothesis claims that impaired implicit learning underlies deficits in social-communicative abilities associated with developmental language disorder (DLD). However, previous research testing this hypothesis revealed inconsistent results and largely used process-impure sequential learning tasks. Aims:…

To promote children's language development through designs that consider familial contexts, the authors explored the effectiveness of a dialogic reading intervention customized for older siblings in immigrant Latino families. The dialogic reading intervention, developed with components of training, modeling, and coaching, systematically supported…

Purpose: The goal of this study was to evaluate possible associations between child- and mother-reported temperament, stuttering severity, and child-reported impact of stuttering in school-age children who stutter. Method: Participants were 123 children who stutter (94 boys and 29 girls) who were between 9;0 and 14;10 (years;months) and their…

Autism and psychosis share overlapping clinical features and can occur comorbidly. Given growing recognition that early identification of psychosis risk symptoms may lead to better functional outcomes, the field needs valid tools for use in the assessment of psychosis risk symptoms within autism. This study employed a multi-method approach to…

Purpose: We examined the effects of physiological arousal on speech motor control and speech motor practice effects in preschool-age children who do (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS). Method: Participants included 18 CWS (M[subscript age] = 4 years 5 months) and 18 age- and gender-matched CWNS. The participants repeated a phrase "buy bobby a…

Purpose: Developmental language disorder (DLD), an unexplained problem using and understanding spoken language, has been hypothesized to have an underlying auditory processing component. Auditory feedback plays a key role in speech motor control. The current study examined whether auditory feedback is used to regulate speech production in a…

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit challenges with reading development. Evidence-based interventions and specialized approaches to reading instruction are currently being implemented across educational contexts for learners with ASD (Machalicek et al., 2008), yet there is limited understanding of how core ASD features may…

Research Findings Research suggests children from low-income environments have vocabularies that differ from those of their higher-income peers. They may have basic knowledge of many words of which children from higher income environments have acquired sub- or supra-ordinate knowledge. This study sought to determine if children from low-income…

Background and aims: The purpose of the current exploratory study was to describe the inferential narrative comprehension skills of young school-age children on the autism spectrum who, as a group, are at high risk of significant and persistent reading comprehension difficulties. Our aim was to investigate whether the anticipated difficulties in…

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) commonly present with oral language weaknesses which disrupt the development of literacy and impede related academic progress. While there is evidence to support the delivery of manualised Tier 2 interventions with this population, little is known about the effects of Tier 1 interventions. A…

Research Findings: This study reports on the dimensionality and validation of the Preschool Learning Behaviors Scale (PLBS) for use in a sample of preschool children in early childhood special education classrooms. The PLBS is a teacher-report instrument that characterizes children's approaches to learning. The sample included 600 preschool-age…

We describe the design and development of a technology-based inference-making intervention system that includes a set of interactive learning modules, each of which engages students to (a) view age-appropriate children's videos, (b) learn vocabulary words that are central to main ideas in each video, (c) respond to inferential questions, (d)…

In the current study, we examined the effects of response prompting strategies (i.e., constant time delay, system of least prompts) and frames on sentence writing for three participants, ages 7 to 12, with moderate intellectual disability. We used a concurrent multiple probe across behaviors design to evaluate the efficacy of the intervention…

Purpose: This study evaluated the efficacy of an instructive feedback strategy for modeling letter names and sounds during presentation of positive feedback within a small group phonological awareness intervention for preschoolers. Method: Two experiments were conducted using multiple baseline designs across children and behaviors. Letter name and…

There is limited research on teaching narrative writing skills to students with moderate to severe intellectual disability. In the current study, we used a multiple probe across participants single case design to evaluate the effects of an intervention package comprised of modeling, story templates, and self-graphing, on the inclusion of story…