Among results of a comparison of 20 language disordered and 20 control children (ages 7-10) were that only the nonhandicapped children changed the number of complete episodes narrated as a function of the listener's shared information, while neither group altered the accuracy of conjunctive use as a function of the listener. (Author/DB)

Results of a seven-week sentence stimulation treatment on sentence production in an aphasic adult female with agrammatism indicated that treatment influenced description of test picture sets and that some generalization to other picture sets occurred. (Author/DB)

A simultaneous treatments design was used to compare effects of modeling and corrected practice on generative language acquisition of six preschoolers. New syntactic forms used to describe agent-action-object stimuli were taught concurrently. All six children learned both new syntactic forms. Corrected practice produced a faster rate of learning.…

The mother of a four-year-old with Down's syndrome describes how sign language instruction helped not only to increase his manual expression but his oral speech as well. (CL)

The acquisition of conversational response skills by young retarded and nonretarded children matched for chronological age and expressive linguistic ability was compared. Retarded Ss showed delayed response performance in comparison with controls matched for CA. When matched for language level, however, retarded children demonstrated significantly…

Argues that one's cognitive patterns "force" the nature of the subject matter one generates and imitation facilitiates the internalization of these patterns. (RD)

Normal-hearing elementary school-age children (N=180) performed rote sequencing language tasks, named colors, and told their birthday. For the six automatic and semiautomatic expressive language tasks, maturational trends were noted for all observations. Central tendency values and standard deviations by grades for the six tasks are reported.…

In the first experiment, the imitative skills of four-year-olds were assessed as a function of sentence comprehension and delayed imitation. The second experiment examined the relationship between the Carrow Elicited Language Inventory (CELI) and Developmental Sentence Scoring under three imitative conditions: zero-, three-, and five-second…

The efficacy of employing linguistic elements (verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc.) arranged in systematic combination matrices on the development of expressive verb-noun phrase usage was demonstrated when two of three moderately to severely handicapped six- and seven-year-old students showed gains in trained and novel responses. (CL)

Comparison of alpha amplitudes of 12 children with learning disabilities and 12 normally achieving controls in three task situations found no significant differences between groups in alpha amplitude but a significant task effect with the vigilance, story comprehension, and rehearsal conditions showing decreasing alpha amplitudes in both groups of…

The relation between physical identity and name identity encoding speed was assessed in 32 mentally retarded adults and nonretarded controls. A difference between retarded and nonretarded subjects in preparation time was apparent; however, this difference did not influence encoding speed. (Author/DB)

Twenty-one aphasic and seven nonaphasic adults participated in a referential communication task. Both aphasic and nonaphasic subjects successfully determined essential information to be communicated and communicated it to a listener. Nonaphasic and nonfluent aphasic subjects were more efficient in communicating information than mixed or anomic…

In a study of 50 normal children and 65 children with expressive language disorder (ELD), results showed no differences in the frequency, duration, or timing of episodes of otitis media. For children with ELD, there was a relationship between otitis media and expressive language improvement. (BC)

Investigation of the impact of speaking rate variations in the linguistic input provided to 32 school-age children (half with specific language impairment (SLI) found both SLI and typical children had similar recognition accuracy, but SLI children had significantly more difficulty with the production of novel words presented at a fast rate.…

The purpose of this cross-sectional study, conducted with a random sample of 166 students with emotional disturbance (ED), was to establish, with attention to age and gender differences, the extent to which students with ED served in public school settings experience language skill deficits. This study also examined particular types of problem…