The study examined whether exposure to Kindergarten PAVEd for Success, a vocabulary instruction program, improved expressive vocabulary of kindergartners. The study analyzed data for nearly 1,300 kindergarten students in 64 schools serving predominantly rural and high poverty youth in the Mississippi Delta region and surrounding areas.…

A predominant theory regarding early stroke and its effect on language development, is that early left hemisphere lesions trigger compensatory processes that allow the right hemisphere to assume dominant language functions, and this is thought to underlie the near normal language development observed after early stroke. To test this theory, we…

Purpose: To describe the concurrent validity and classification accuracy of 2 Spanish parent surveys of language development, the Spanish Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ; Squires, Potter, & Bricker, 1999) and the Pilot Inventario-III (Pilot INV-III; Guiberson, 2008a). Method: Forty-eight Spanish-speaking parents of preschool-age children…

Two approaches to grammar instruction are often discussed in the ESL literature: direct explicit grammar instruction (DEGI) (deduction) and indirect explicit grammar instruction (IEGI) (induction). This study aims to explore the effects of indirect explicit grammar instruction on EFL learners' mastery of English tenses. Ninety-four…

Qigong massage is an eastern form of massage that can be delivered by western parents to their children with appropriate training and support. It has been shown to improve developmental measures in young children with autism when given daily for five months. A recent trial evaluating its effect on motor development in young children with Down…

The study investigates the preschool readiness of moderately preterm children and, in particular, the likely presence of learning disabilities at preschool age. Its theoretical model detects linguistic comprehension and expression; memory-related metacognition and cognition skills; orientation and motor coordination skills; premathematics and…

This study examined the relation between young English language learners' (ELL) native oral language skills and their language input in transitional bilingual education kindergarten classrooms. Spanish-speaking ELLs' ("n" = 101) Spanish expressive language skills were assessed using the memory for sentences and picture vocabulary…

The DAPPLE (Dynamic Assessment of Preschoolers' Proficiency in Learning English) is currently being developed in response to a clinical need. Children exposed to English as an additional language may be referred to speech and language therapy because their proficiency in English is not the same as their monolingual peers. Some, but not all, of…

This study grew from a need identified by professionals working in the same community to explore interagency support for augmentative and alternative communication device implementation with students, families, and professionals involving the local school system and university. A case study was used to document intervention with a second-grade…

Rapid changes in language skills and social competence, both of which are linked to sensitive parenting, characterize early childhood. The present study examines bidirectional associations among mothers' sensitive parenting and children's language skills and social competence from 24 to 36?months in a community sample of 174 families. In addition,…

This article is about an investigation into the English spoken language competence of 144 first graders in two urban ('township') schools in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. The study was conducted from an anthropological and a cognitive developmental perspective. In one school isiZulu and Sesotho are used mainly as medium of instruction,…

The purposes of the study were to determine (a) the ability of two spontaneous language measures, mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLU-m) and number of different words (NDW), to identify African American preschool children at low and high levels of language ability; (b) whether child chronological age was related to the performance of either…

Although considerable progress has been made in improving the acquisition of expressive verbal communication in children with autism, research has documented that a subpopulation of children still fail to acquire speech even with intensive intervention. One variable that might be important in facilitating responding for this nonverbal subgroup of…

Objective: This article examines the form and function of spontaneous communication and outcome predictors in nonverbal children with autism following classroom-based intervention (Picture Exchange Communication System [PECS] training). Method: 84 children from 15 schools participated in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of PECS (P. Howlin, R.…

Language impairment is a common core feature in Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) and Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Many studies have tried to define the specific language profiles of these disorders, some claiming the existence of overlaps, and others conceiving of them as separate categories. Fewer have sought to determine whether…