Numerous studies have shown that children identified with Language Impairment (LI) have marked difficulty with producing story narratives compared to their typically developing peers. One particular area of weakness seen in the narratives of children with LI is their ability to incorporate internal states, specifically internal response, internal plan, and emotion words. The current study examines five children with LI and their descriptions of mental and emotional states of characters in story narratives under spontaneous and prompted conditions. Participants produced story retells based on a series of wordless picture books taken from the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument. Story retells were elicited twice for each story, once with and once without verbal prompts. As expected, children produced more internal state story elements in response to prompts. As children produced more of these elements, however, their accuracy decreased, and the states they reported did not always reflect the story content. The children with LI showed limited understanding and ability to interpret the reactions, motivations, and emotions that characters experienced. However, verbal prompts did reveal children's current abilities and understanding of internal states.

The purpose of the present study was to compare feature retention patterns between children developing speech typically (TD) and children with phonological impairment (PI) and to discuss these findings in terms of characteristics, severity, and implication for the identification of developmental apraxia of speech (DAS). A second purpose was to determine if a relationship exists between phonological knowledge and feature retention. This study consisted of a PI group and a TD group of children, ages four to six. A 245-item speech sample was collected from each subject. Feature retention percentages as well as percent correct underlying representation (PCUR) were calculated for each child. Both PI and TD groups retained place the least, voice the most, with manner falling in between. These patterns corresponded with what past researchers found in studies of children with phonological impairment and children diagnosed with DAS. No significant correlation was found between PCUR and feature retention.

Health and feeding outcomes for preterm infants depend upon healthcare providers’ ability to recognize non-verbal signs of distress during bottle-feeding. Methods of training future providers’ to interpret feeding behavior in preterm infants are unclear. This study used a pre-test/post-test design to compare the effects of in- vivo simulation and video-simulation training on students’ knowledge of feeding abnormalities, clinical judgment, and documentation accuracy. Fifty-two graduate level speech-language pathology students were assigned to the in-vivo (N= 27) or video-simulation (N= 25) group. Results revealed that both methods proved beneficial for increasing knowledge and clinical judgment skills. Participants trained using video-simulation training documented a greater number of distress signs. The use of patient simulators to train graduate level speech-language pathology students to use correct clinical judgment for managing abnormal feeding behavior is efficacious.

Feeding disorder in young children is a growing concern, particularly feeding challenges with sensory and/or behavioral underpinning. These feeding disorders are characterized by food refusal, anxiety when presented with novel foods, failure to advance to textured foods, and inappropriate mealtime behaviors. The Positive Eating Program (PEP) was developed to remediate feeding disorders by providing rich experiences in food vocabulary, positive sensory nonfood and food activities, and structured and predictable through trials.

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The relation between discrimination of silent gaps and speech‐in‐noise perception was measured in 20 normal‐hearing listeners using speech‐shaped noise as both the gap markers and the noise source for speech testing. In the gap discrimination experiment, subjects compared silent gaps marked by 60 dB SPL 250‐ms noise bursts to standards of either 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, or 200 ms. The gap results were most similar to those reported by Abel [S. M. Abel, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 52, 519–524 (1972)] as ΔT/T decreased non‐monotonically with increased gap length. In a second experiment, the California Consonant Test (CCT) was administered at 50 dB HL via CD in three conditions: quiet, +10 S/N, and 0 S/N. Results from both experiments were correlated and the association between ΔT/T and CCT scores was generally negative. Listeners who discriminated the gaps with greater acuity typically had higher speech scores. The relation was strongest for the smaller gap standards at each S/N, or when performance for any gap duration was compared to the CCT results obtained in quiet.

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