The article describes development in Illinois of the Department of Rehabilitation Services Sign Language Assessment Tool. The instrument is designed to evaluate the level of receptive and expressive sign language proficiency of rehabilitation personnel serving the deaf. (DB)

Narrative abilities of 24 learning disabled (LD) and 27 nondisabled children (ages 7-12.5 years) were compared. Although LD students were able to reconstruct stories as well as were nondisabled students, narrative analysis of both original and retold stories can provide useful information on language skills beyond the sentence level. (Author/DB)

The study compared the effectiveness of a peer model and an adult model in teaching an expressive language task to four autistic boys (ages 7-10). Results indicated that all children learned from both models and few consistent differences occurred across the two conditions. Generalization and maintenance was also consistently high in both…

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,…

Effects of receptive vs. expressive training of category labels on acquisition of generalized referential labels by six prelinguistic severely mentally retarded children (5-19 years old) were investigated. Data indicated that receptive training resulted in more accurate generalization to novel category members than did expressive training.…

Describes a study that compared the language abilities of first and third grade children. The children's narratives were analyzed for differences in T-units and the use of reference and conjoining. Results indicate that the older children used longer T-units and generally had more cohesive ties within their narratives. (Author/SED)

Data on speech, language, performance IQ, school placement, and behavior are presented on 18 subjects diagnosed in childhood as "aphasic" and followed through adolescence. Results revealed slow but steady growth in language with expressive skills showing more rapid progress than comprehension. Performance IQ was highly correlated with language…

Twenty-nine male and 35 female right-handed children, aged five to seven, were assessed for the effect of familial sinistrality left-handedness on a rapid color-naming task. Controlling for age and family size, a significant effect for degree of familial sinistrality was found in the girls but not in the boys. (Author)

The construct validity of the Receptive-Expressive Emergent Language Scale (REEL) was investigated with 60 mentally retarded children (1-3 years old). Results indicated that REEL language ages were generally consistent with samples of communicative behavior and were also related significantly to indices of children's cognitive functioning.…

Urges teachers to leave an expressive domain for the young child's writing, in which the audience is the young child. (DD)

A paper presented at a workshop on "Teachers Writing" at the 1976 Conference on English Education. (DD)

From the individual expressive vocabularies of 19 preschool deaf children a composite vocabulary list of 493 words was assembled to include all words and expressions used by two or more children. (Author/MC)

Part of a continuing series. (DD)