The training study was designed to use the developmentally appropriate communicative intention of protest as a vehicle for teaching request for object to one 3-year-old language delayed preverbal child. Results revealed that with a specific intervention model the S learned to gesturally, vocally, and verbally express the communication intention…

The study was designed to measure language, cognitive, perceptual, and oral-motor abilities in 17 preschoolers referred for speech-language evaluation because of unintelligible speech. Ss were administered a test battery which included tests of hearing, coarticulation, vocabulary, speech sound discrimination, and oral examination of the speech…

In order to determine effects of different sequential placement of the expressive language sample during evaluation of young children referred for speech or languge handicap, 27 normal 3-year-olds were evaluated. Length, complexity, or spontaneity were not affected even when the sample was elicited immediately after formal tests requiring little…

Mean length of utterance (MLU) of 15 Down's Syndrome children, aged 2-12, was examined and found to correlate highly with chronological age despite the children's language delays, at least up to MLU 3.00. MLU also predicted complexity and diversity of bound morphemes and major syntactic structures from MLU 1.00-3.50. (Author/JDD)

The article considers how three types of language skills (receptive, functional expressive, and descriptive expressive) can be integrated into typical gross and fine motor activities for language delayed preschoolers. (Author/CL)

The article points out the most frequently occurring problems in pragmatic functions of children's language, reviews considerations in taking and analyzing spontaneous language samples, and provides a summary of a dialog sample. (Author/CL)

The judgment of vocal affect was studied in 19 language delayed children and 19 children with normal language. The children identified utterances spoken in an angry, happy, or sad tone of voice. The language delayed children made significantly fewer correct judgments. (Author/SEW)

Data are presented to support the reliability, validity, and utility of a procedure to assess the severity of a phonological disorder. The severity metric, the percentage of consonants correct (PCC), is readily derived from a continuous speech sample. PCC values index four levels of severity of involvement: mild, mild-moderate, moderate-severe,…

Outlines the stages of prosodic development that children follow from the beginning of word acquisition through the end of the second year of life. How these stages can be used to provide a model for treatment when working with children who display delayed phonological development is addressed. (Author/CR)

This longitudinal study assessed the narrative language development of primary grade children with slow expressive language development (SELD) as toddlers who either had or had not moved into the normal range of expressive language by early school age. Deficits in narrative skills tended to disappear in children with a history of SELD, though…

This article describes development and use of a novel, script-based stimulability task for toddlers. The task assesses stimulability for fricatives, affricates, and liquids in isolation and single words. Three levels of cuing are provided to elicit desired sounds/words. Use of the task with 10 toddlers having normal speech-language development and…

A theory of normal and delayed development of language is presented, arguing that linguistic capacity develops in gradual, sequential, critically timed phases; children with slowly developing brains have delays in storing utterances; a critical period for activation of experience-dependent grammatical mechanisms declines without optimal result;…