Despite strenuous attempts made by the New Labour government in the UK to progress towards its goal of eradicating child poverty by 2020, educational outcomes for disadvantaged children remain depressed compared to those of more advantaged children. The fact that children from poorer socio-economic backgrounds are at much greater risk of language…

We review a significant body of evidence from independent prospective studies that if a mother is stressed while pregnant, her child is substantially more likely to have emotional or cognitive problems, including an increased risk of attentional deficit/hyperactivity, anxiety, and language delay. These findings are independent of effects due to…

Purpose: The association between language delay and behavior problems in toddlers was examined in 2 studies, 1 conducted in a developmental clinic in New Jersey (Study 1; N = 83) and the other conducted in a developmental clinic in New York (Study 2; N = 103). Method: In both clinics, parents of 18- to 35-month-olds completed the Language…

A number of authors have presented data on the word length (measured in syllables) in the spontaneous speech of children across the developmental period. These data suggest a developmental trend of increasing length with age. The current study sought to examine this possibility in more detail. Conversational speech data from 320 children with…

Although most children seem to love music, our understanding of the role it plays in facilitating speech and language learning is limited, as is research validating its efficacy in the clinical setting. The purpose of this study was to examine how singing affects children's quick incidental learning (QUIL) of novel vocabulary terms. Sixteen…

The primary purposes of this research were to discover any differences between deaf and normal speech compressed 15 or 30 percent related to level of comprehension test, sex of speaker, and form of test, and to learn whether there was a relationship between percent of compression and degree of comprehension. The subjects--219 undergraduates at…

Language delayed children need systematic instruction, experience with a range of language functions, and opportunities for spontaneous speech. (DD)

A dichotic word task was used to contrast the speech-perceptual functioning of 29 Down's syndrome children having either good or poor speech and language skills to that of nonretarded Ss. (Author)

Gestural joint attention behaviors, personal pronoun use, and spontaneous communicative behavior were compared in 11 autistic children and 11 children with developmental language delay (DLD). DLD children responded correctly to joint attention interactions more often and their spontaneous gestural behavior was more communicative and…

Minimum language skills for kindergarten success are described and defined as "school readiness language." A school-readiness-language checklist gives a procedure for documenting a child's level of language skill. Specific techniques are presented to remedy documented gaps within the context of the kindergarten classroom. (Author)

Five conditions for sampling the continuous speech of 12 speech-delayed children were defined and compared. Conditions differed on variables associated with examiner behavior and stimulus materials. General findings of few significant differences associated with sampling conditions support the validity of continous speech sampling for phonologic…

Structural and functional features of productive language of 15 healthy and 30 at-risk two-year-olds were compared. Although premature and physically handicapped toddlers did not differ significantly from each other, both groups were delayed in a variety of structural indices of productive language. On functional features of language usage,…

A total of 192 high-risk infants and 85 full-term healthy newborn infants were administered the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. A principal component analysis was performed separately for the high-risk and control infants. Results suggest that the high-risk infant is similar to the normal infant in behavioral development, especially when…

Synthesized speech stimuli with slowed-down critical formant cues were easier for 24 children with delayed language to discriminate. Further training with extended duration stimuli did generalize to stimuli of normal durations. (Author/CM)