Results of two experiments involving four severely handicapped preschoolers suggested that Ss could be taught rudimentary communication skills prior to the attainment of J. Piaget's sensorimotor stage 5. It was further suggested that establishment of initial labeling in an elicited training format will not necessarily generalize to either…

Raises some questions about the way children write stories and the part teachers play in their writing. (HOD)

Summarizes historical and contemporary examples of stories for children that contain a "magic element" or "oral sorcery" that complements the basic structure of beginning, consistent sequence of events, and full stop ending. (CRH)

A communication program for autistic children (three to six years old) which increased communication skills in the context of establishing reciprocal communication exchanges involving intensive modeling of verbal responses within joint activity routines and reinforcement based on fulfilling the intent of the child's communication. (Author/CL)

Hexagonal'' refers to the new vocabulary and idioms that continue to infiltrate Spanish, French, and other languages. (SK)

Suggests methods for helping children develop and maintain the art of conversation. (RB)

The Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test was administered to 56 males and 52 females from 45 to 80 months of age to investigate sex differences in the expressive vocabulary of Head Start children. Data indicated no significant sex differences. (Author/PN)

Four 17- to 21-month-old normally developing, and four 32- to 35-month-old language impaired children, classified as "referential" speakers or "expressive" speakers, produced linguistic features in clusters, and manifested play behaviors that were consistent with the children's pattern of lexical distribution. (Author/MC)

The syntactic proficiency of 67 learning disabled children was evaluated during a task requiring them to convey information to a listener. Learning disabled children in all grades were found to produce shorter mean main clauses than nondisabled children even on this relatively simple communicative task. (Author/SEW)

Results of two studies with 45 normal three- to five-year-old children indicated that, when the Ss initiated actions with verbal instruction, their use of conjunctions and clause ordering was more effective than in other initiated contexts without a verbal model. (Author/MC)

Results of two studies with 60 children aged three, five, and seven, and 40 children aged four through 6.8, indicated that use and understanding of politeness at age three years seemed related to emerging ability to understand the perspective of another, and at later ages, to knowledge of social roles. (Author/MC)

The authors describe a developmental approach for teaching expressive writing skills to learning disabled adolescents. General guidelines for remediation are outlined, and activities useful in a developmental writing approach are listed. (SW)

Microcomputers can serve as expressive communication tools for severely physically disabled persons. Features such as single input devices, direct selection aids, and speech synthesis capabilities can be extremely useful. The trend toward portable battery-operated computers will make the technology even more accessible. (CL)

The relationship of object permanence and classification skills to receptive and expressive language development was investigated in infants. Object permanence, classification, and parent-child verbal interaction ratings were about equally related to language comprehension functioning, while permanence was more strongly related to language…