View of children's word-finding difficulties: disciplinary influences.

A consensus was not found among the participants regarding those characteristics that constituted a WFP and how word finding was different from or related to word retrieval problems, some forms of "dysfluency," and "language processing" difficulties. The lack of consistency was seen both within and across disciplines. Instances where there was consistent agreement among members of a discipline must be interpreted cautiously because a relatively small number of participants was involved in the interviews. Further, the results should not be generalized to an assessment of all children with WFPs, because only three children were viewed by the professionals. The findings do suggest, however, dimensions along which problems in interpreting WFPs may occur. The analysis of the clinician interviews and videotape viewing of the three language-impaired children have specific implications for clinicians when diagnosing WFPs in children. First, differences in the clinicians' knowledge of a what word finding is, how it is manifested, what relationship it has to other skills, and how it should be assessed was evident. Such differences in understanding WFPs in children have been described in the literature (Gardner, 1974; German, 1983, 1984; Kail & Leonard, 1986; Lewis & Kass, 1982; Nippold, 1992; Oldfield & Winfield, 1964; Snyder & Godley, 1992). Second, the clinicians frequently made diagnostic assumptions when they admittedly were unsure of their conceptual framework and that of their colleagues. The impact of these assumptions was seen in the clinicians' general lack of agreement in the identification of actual instances of WFPs and in their rankings of those tasks believed to be most helpful in making a diagnosis of a WFP.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Managing the language and learning needs of the communication-impaired preschool child. A proactive approach.

If a proactive approach to assessment and intervention had been used in the case study presented at the beginning of this article, the following might have occurred: The SLP would have asked the parents and brother of the 3 1/2-year-old child referred for a communication evaluation to participate in the assessment activities. The parents would have been asked to prioritize their expectations for their daughter's communication, behavior, and school success. They would have been told the SLP would do the same based on her knowledge of performance expectations in these areas for a 3 1/2-year old. Both the parents and the SLP would have agreed to consider describing the child's communication, behavior, and potential for school success in more than a single setting or context. The child would have been seen in her home as well as in a preschool setting. The clinician would have observed the child's play with both familiar and unfamiliar children and adults. The parents would have kept a log of their child's communication successes and failures for one week. The clinician would have used those situations the parents identified as successful and unsuccessful to specify the child's strengths and weaknesses. The parents would have been asked to write down ideas they had on the type of intervention, if any, they felt their daughter needed to meet the expectations they set. The clinician would do the same and would have consulted with an educational specialist and a psychologist to obtain their perspective on the educational and cognitive needs of a preschooler. The speech-language pathologist would have asked other professionals to assist in assessment of this child. The psychologist would have completed some testing in the home with the SLP providing help in interpreting the child's responses. The educational specialist would have invited the SLP to observe the child in a diagnostic preschool setting to assess the child's ability to understand and communicate in an unfamiliar environment with peers. The team, including the parents, the SLP, psychologist, and educational specialist would have met to share the information they had gathered about the child's communication, behavior, and potential for success in school. The SLP would have acted as a case manager and listed the strengths and weaknesses each participant identified for the child. When the list was complete, the SLP would have presented consistent areas of strength and weakness reported across contexts. The team members would have developed statements of their performance expectations for the child.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Symbolic play in normal and language-impaired children.

The symbolic play of 15 normally developing (CA, 16-22 months) and 15 language-impaired children (CA, 32-49 months), whose productive language skills were at the single-word utterance level, was compared. Symbolic play was assessed formally through the Symbolic Play Test and informally through the observation of spontaneous play. The language-impaired children were found to be developmentally advanced when compared to the language-matched normal children in the level and direction of their symbolic play. Relative to age norms, however, the language-impaired children evidenced deficits in symbolic play. Thus, their linguistic and symbolic play abilities were not equally impaired. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the relationship between symbolic play and language and for the nature of specific language impairment.

Early lexical acquisition in children with specific language impairment.

This study examined the characteristics of early lexical acquisition in children with specific language impairment. Sixteen unfamiliar words and referents were exposed across 10 sessions to language-impaired and normal children matched for level of linguistic development. Posttesting revealed similar comprehension-production gaps in the two groups of children. In addition, both groups showed greater comprehension and production of words referring to objects than words referring to objects than words referring to actions. However, the language-impaired children's object word bias was not as marked as that of the normal children. For both groups, words containing initial consonants within the children's production repertoires were more likely to be acquired in production than words containing consonants absent from the children's phonologies. A similar tendency was not seen for comprehension.

Phonological constraints on the sentence productions of language-disordered children.

Effects of phonological and syntactic structure on the sentence productions of language-disordered school children (mean age = 6:2 years) were investigated. The syllabic complexity of target sentences as well as clause embedding significantly contributed to sentence inaccuracy (omission, substitution, addition, and transposition errors). Phonological complexity in lexical items disrupted syntactic performance in a quantitative fashion. Whereas the syntactic constructions determined the patterns of errors, added phonological complexity simply increased the errors within the patterns. The causal interrelationships between children's syntactic and phonological disorders are discussed in terms of a theory of general organizational deficit.

Mimicry versus imitative modeling: facilitating sentence production in the speech of the retarded.

Two methods of language instruction administered to mentally retarded subjects at the two-word stage of language development were investigated. Subjects of the mimicry training group imitated Agent-Action-Object (AAO) constructions immediately after presentation, while subjects of the imitative modeling group first heard the AAO presentation and later produced the AAO construction in response to a verb question. Imitative modeling subjects achieved as many correct AAO responses during training and more correct responses on a generalization task and in a free play setting. They also displayed more novel response behavior (selective imitations) and spontaneously corrected productions. The results support the use of modeling procedures for inducing language production in the retarded.