This study used the largest and youngest cohort of hearing impaired (HI) children to investigate the effect age at implantation had on the trajectories of expressive and receptive language, and externalizing behavior problems. In addition, the temporal relationship between language and externalizing behavior problems was examined in children implanted before and after the age of 2. Univariate latent difference score analyses were conducted to test the effect of age at implantation on each trajectory and bivariate difference score analyses were conducted to test the temporal effect between language and externalizing behavior problems. Results showed that age at implantation had an effect on the initial level and growth of expressive and receptive language trajectory and an effect on the initial level of externalizing behavior problems. Expressive language was found to have an influence on the changes in externalizing behavior problems for both groups, children implanted before and after the age of 2. However, the relationship between receptive language and externalizing behavior problems differed between the two age groups. The effect was bidirectional for the younger group but unidirectional for the older group, with externalizing behavior problems influenced the change in receptive language. Future research and potential interventions to improve behavior difficulties in deaf children are discussed.

The main purpose of this paper was to construct and try out a test that could measure the size of both the receptive and productive vocabulary. This was a joint project, done by three students at the C-level in English in 1997. Before the test was constructed the students looked into previous investigations and different test methods used. The project group chose the Yes/No method as their test format. 23 students in their second year of their education at a theorectical programme in upper secondary school and 16 adult students at Komvux took the test in this paper. The results of the test taken by the students showed that it is impossible for a language teacher to construct a reliable and valid test for measuring vocabulary size using the Yes/No method.

Language skills developed in early childhood are important for literacy and communication in childhood as well as future adult literacy skills and health. Certain demographic characteristics and parent-child interaction skills have been identified through previous research as being influential in child language development. Parental stress has also been associated with child language outcomes. This study aims to explore whether parents’ interactive relational skills, measured by an observational method, are significantly related to children’s verbal outcome, while controlling for demographic variables and parental stress. Participants included mothers of children aged 4-6 who completed measures of parental interaction quality, parental stress, and demographic characteristics. Their children competed a language skill measure. Results indicated that even when controlling for demographic variables and parental stress, the relationship between parent-child interaction quality and child language outcomes remained significant. These findings suggest that increasing positive parent-child interaction skills may be beneficial for increasing children’s language skills.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder characterized by atypical development in the domains of social, emotional, language and cognitive functioning in the first few years of life. Research indicates an associated phenomenon of sensory processing abnormalities in the ASD population (Baker, Lane, Angley, & Young, 2008), and specifically auditory domain (Tecchio et al., 2003) which may relate to language deficits (Baranek, David, Poe, Stone & Watson, 2006). This study researched the effect of auditory sensory abnormalities on language in young children with ASD (n = 118), specifically receptive and expressive language and prosody. A specific subdomain of auditory abnormalities, sensory seeking, was found to be predictive of expressive language (β = .30, p=.009), perhaps due to a focus on auditory stimuli to the exclusion of expressive language interaction. There was no significant effect for receptive language (β = .16, p=.16) and prosody (β = -.09, p=.493).

To date, no studies have established the relationship between early communication characteristics for young children with significant disabilities and later language development. This study characterized communication for toddlers (n = 60) fitting this profile and their parents prior to a language intervention utilizing an observational coding scheme and tested whether child and parent communication characteristics were predictive of performance on oral language measures. Language transcripts were coded for child mode and pragmatic function and parent response to the utterance child utterances. Results indicated that children used contact gestures, answering and commenting at the highest rates relative to other communication characteristics. Parents utilized a related response type for 52% of child utterances. Hierarchical regressions revealed that sophisticated gesture usage, word usage, and sophisticated function rate were predictive of expressive oral language performance. Sophisticated gesture usage, sophisticated function rate, and parent MLU were predictive of receptive oral language performance.

In Texas, the majority of first time college students use the community college as an entry point into higher education. However the number of students who eventually transfer to a four-year university and in particular to the state’s flagship institution, is not comparable to the amount of students who enter the system of higher education through the community college. Using the Transfer Receptive Culture framework (Jain, Herrera, Bernal, & Solorzano, 2011) and through the experiences of seven community college transfer students, this study examines the transfer culture at a Texas public university. This study aims to contribute to the literature by examining the first study that looks into the institutional culture necessary to transfer to an elite university such as Transfer Student University. Findings suggest that the university should improve the outreach, orientation /transition programs, academic/social support services, as well as support the creation of a transfer student community on campus. / text

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder characterized by atypical development in the domains of social, emotional, language and cognitive functioning in the first few years of life. Research indicates an associated phenomenon of sensory processing abnormalities in the ASD population (Baker, Lane, Angley, & Young, 2008), and specifically auditory domain (Tecchio et al., 2003) which may relate to language deficits (Baranek, David, Poe, Stone & Watson, 2006). This study researched the effect of auditory sensory abnormalities on language in young children with ASD (n = 118), specifically receptive and expressive language and prosody. A specific subdomain of auditory abnormalities, sensory seeking, was found to be predictive of expressive language (β = .30, p=.009), perhaps due to a focus on auditory stimuli to the exclusion of expressive language interaction. There was no significant effect for receptive language (β = .16, p=.16) and prosody (β = -.09, p=.493).

This study examines knowledge of grammar by receptive bilinguals (RBs) - heritage speakers who describe themselves as capable of fluent comprehension in Labrador Inuttitut (an endangered dialect of Inuktitut), but of little or no speech production in it. Despite the growing research on incomplete acquisition, RBs have yet to be studied as a specific population. Participants (8 fluent bilinguals, 17 RBs, 3 low-proficiency RBs) performed a morpheme comprehension task and a grammaticality judgment task. General measures of their comprehension and production abilities included a story retelling task as an overall assessment of comprehension, a vocabulary test, an elicited imitation task, and a production task. This data was complemented by language behaviour interviews. The results showed that RBs have good, though not perfect, comprehension and basic vocabulary, but speech production is very difficult for them. They have grammatical knowledge, but it is incomplete: Knowledge of some structures is robust, and their comprehension is fluent (past vs. future contrast, aspectual morphemes); others are missing (temporal remoteness degrees); and yet for others (case and agreement), RBs have the category and know its position in the word structure, but have difficulty connecting the features with the morphemes expressing them. These findings explain the significant asymmetry between comprehension and production in RBs: In comprehension, incomplete knowledge may result in loss of some aspects of meaning, but in many cases it can be compensated for by pragmatic knowledge and extralinguistic context, while in production, it can result in the selection of an incorrect morpheme or inability to select a morpheme. Low-proficiency RBs have partial comprehension, small vocabulary, and almost no production. They do not understand most functional morphemes; however, they show knowledge of the basic properties such as the position of the obligatory agreement marker on the verb. This study provides data on an understudied language and an understudied population at the extreme end of unbalanced bilingualism. The findings have implications both for the psycholinguistics of bilingualism and for language revitalization, especially in the context of a language shift in indigenous language communities, where RBs are often the last generation to have competence in the indigenous language.

This study examines knowledge of grammar by receptive bilinguals (RBs) - heritage speakers who describe themselves as capable of fluent comprehension in Labrador Inuttitut (an endangered dialect of Inuktitut), but of little or no speech production in it. Despite the growing research on incomplete acquisition, RBs have yet to be studied as a specific population. Participants (8 fluent bilinguals, 17 RBs, 3 low-proficiency RBs) performed a morpheme comprehension task and a grammaticality judgment task. General measures of their comprehension and production abilities included a story retelling task as an overall assessment of comprehension, a vocabulary test, an elicited imitation task, and a production task. This data was complemented by language behaviour interviews. The results showed that RBs have good, though not perfect, comprehension and basic vocabulary, but speech production is very difficult for them. They have grammatical knowledge, but it is incomplete: Knowledge of some structures is robust, and their comprehension is fluent (past vs. future contrast, aspectual morphemes); others are missing (temporal remoteness degrees); and yet for others (case and agreement), RBs have the category and know its position in the word structure, but have difficulty connecting the features with the morphemes expressing them. These findings explain the significant asymmetry between comprehension and production in RBs: In comprehension, incomplete knowledge may result in loss of some aspects of meaning, but in many cases it can be compensated for by pragmatic knowledge and extralinguistic context, while in production, it can result in the selection of an incorrect morpheme or inability to select a morpheme. Low-proficiency RBs have partial comprehension, small vocabulary, and almost no production. They do not understand most functional morphemes; however, they show knowledge of the basic properties such as the position of the obligatory agreement marker on the verb. This study provides data on an understudied language and an understudied population at the extreme end of unbalanced bilingualism. The findings have implications both for the psycholinguistics of bilingualism and for language revitalization, especially in the context of a language shift in indigenous language communities, where RBs are often the last generation to have competence in the indigenous language.

Naming refers to encountering a new word and subsequently being able to use it both expressively and receptively. Sometimes, this can happen in as little as a single experience. Several recent studies have explored factors that influence the acquisition of naming in adults. However, these studies used familiar stimuli for which the participants already had names. In these studies, preexisting stimulus-response relations with the stimuli could have impeded the acquisition of new names for some participants. In contrast, the present study used unfamiliar ("arbitrary") stimuli. In addition, an equivalence test was used to validate the findings because some theorists have claimed that naming is required for equivalence. The results revealed some advantages to teaching naming with arbitrary stimuli. Interestingly, a subset of participants had high scores on equivalence tests without having high scores on expressive tests. This indicates that, contrary to naming theory, naming may not be necessary for equivalence and match-to-sample tests may not be the best test of equivalence. These findings support the independence of the expressive and receptive repertoires both in the development of naming and equivalence.