The purpose of this research was to compare selected speech and paralinguistic skills of speakers with Williams syndrome (WS) and typically developing peers and to demonstrate the feasibility of providing preexisting databases to students to facilitate graduate research. In a series of three studies, conversational samples of 12 adolescents with…

This study examined the use of literate language features (LLFs) in the oral narratives of African American and Caucasian American preschoolers residing in either low- or middle-income homes to determine whether differences existed as a result of age or household income. The oral narratives of 96 preschoolers enrolled in public school programs and…

This study determined whether using photographic stimuli displaying different ethnicity (African American vs. Caucasian American) influenced preference, word count, and number of content units produced by African American or Caucasian American participants. Six photograph pairs depicting common scenes were developed, differing only by model…

Parents and their children with severe expressive impairments may have limited successful communicative exchanges due to each partner's difficulty in recognizing and responding to communicative behaviors of the other. This study examined the communicative functions and modes of communication that received contingent responses in 20 dyads of…

This exploratory study examined the effects of Interactive Metronome (IM) when integrated with a traditional language and reading intervention on reading achievement. Forty-nine school-age children with language and reading impairments were assigned randomly to either an experimental group who received the IM treatment or to a control group who…

The current study compares the productivity (number of responses) and the typical responses to taxonomic and slot-filler prompts in 39 African American children from low-income backgrounds and a diverse group of 21 children from middle-income backgrounds. The authors tested the hypothesis that socioeconomic status would exert a global influence on…

This study investigated the effects of a scaffolded-language intervention using cloze procedures, semantically contingent expansions, contrastive word pairs, and direct models on speech abilities in two preschoolers with speech and language impairment speaking African American English. Effects of the lexical and phonological characteristics (i.e.,…

In the United States, bipolar disorder is an increasingly common diagnosis in children, and these children can present with severe behavior problems and emotionality. Many studies have documented the frequent coexistence of behavior disorders and speech-language disorders. Like other children with behavior disorders, children with bipolar disorder…

This study examined and compared patterns of errors in the oral definitions of newly learned words. Fifteen 9- to 11-year-old children with language learning disability (LLD) and 15 typically developing age-matched peers inferred the meanings of 20 nonsense words from four novel reading passages. After reading, children provided oral definitions…

This study describes the backgrounds, diversity training, and professional perspectives reported by 154 Colorado speech-language pathologists in serving children from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds. The authors compare the results of the current survey to those of a similar survey collected in 1996. Respondents reported…

Twenty 10- to 18-year-old children and adolescents with varying degrees of hearing impairment (HI) and hearing aids (HA), ranging from mild-moderate to severe, produced picture-elicited narratives in a spoken and written version. Their performance was compared to that of 63 normally hearing (NH) peers within the same age span. The participants…

This study considered the efficacy of a differentiated approach to vocabulary instruction for learners with word-finding difficulties (WFD) in the speech and language pathologist's room. Using a pretest-posttest design to study treatment outcomes, 10 second graders with WFD received first semantic-based vocabulary instruction (S) and then…

The majority of students who are deaf or hard of hearing currently receive educational services in general education settings. Trends that have led to this shift in placement as well as potential benefits and barriers are presented. A unique partnership between the Washington State Center for Childhood Deafness and Hearing Loss (formerly the…

The purpose of this article is to provide basic guidelines to successfully establish a support group for caregivers of persons with dementia. Support groups should provide its members with a community of support, as well as coping and management strategies to improve daily function of loved ones. This should improve the care provided, and the…

The purpose of this study was to explore the parent adaptation process for parents of children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). Professionals widely recognize the importance of parental involvement in achieving successful outcomes for children with disabilities, however, few studies have explored parents' views and perspectives, in…