This paper discusses early intervention issues that all members of the early intervention team should become familiar with, including epidemiology; who should provide intervention services; and the importance of early identification and caregiver involvement for the efficacy of intervention services. (JDD)

Children identified as late talkers at 20-34 months of age were followed yearly throughout the preschool period. Data suggest that the longer a language delay persists, the less the chance of spontaneous recovery during the preschool period. Late-talking girls had less chance for spontaneous recovery than did late-talking boys. (Author/JDD)

Mothers in the Mother-Infant Communication Project (MICP), designed to facilitate caregivers' uses of communicative interaction strategies with their high-risk infants, scored better than comparison mothers on caregiving environment quality. Children of MICP mothers who received a group experience in addition to home visits performed better on…

This article discusses strategies for sampling communication and symbolic abilities in young children who are not yet talking or who are at early language stages, placing emphasis on caregiver involvement. The paper points out that profiling a young child's communication and symbolic abilities can contribute to the early identification of language…

This article discusses ways that early intervention team members can improve their communication, qualities of effective teams, roles that members assume on teams, a step-by-step process for creating a transdisciplinary team, verbal and nonverbal skills necessary for successful communicative interaction, and behaviors that serve as barriers to…

This article describes techniques, used in a family-centered early intervention project, that both assist in accomplishing the goals of the Individualized Family Service Plan process and create opportunities for families to display their present competencies and acquire new ones to meet the needs of their children with communication disorders.…

This study examined effects of training five parents to use Milieu Teaching procedures with their preschool-aged children with disabilities. Although modest levels of performance of the language teaching procedures were found for the group instruction condition, intensive feedback and coaching in the home were required to reach criterion level…

The article presents a software evaluation checklist developed by a teaching-research laboratory for severely handicapped students in New York City. In an introductory section, the use of laptop microcomputers in helping handicapped learners acquire, maintain, and generalize functional skills is described as the fifth ingredient of an integrated…

A research and demonstration computer center for severely handicapped autistic children, STEPPE-Lab, which uses computers as an augmentative communication and instructional system, is described. The article first reviews the keyboard, joystick, mouse, and drawing tablet as augmentative devices for helping communication disordered children interact…