Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University / Language development has been studied for many years. The beginning vocabularies are easy to count ana record. As tne child grows and moves about, his speaking vocabulary increases very rapidly. Some estimates suggest that a minimum speaking vocabulary at six years would include three thousand words. New words have come into children's speaking vocabularies as a result of modern technology since World War II. Lists of spontaneous vocabulary furnish material for teachers and text book writers. The purpose of this study is to analyze two lists recorded in 1954 and 1955. An attempt has been made to classify the new list. The lists were compared with three existing lists, Rinsland, International Kindergarten Union and Gates.

There is high comorbidity between reading disabilities and mathematical learning difficulties, yet the reasons behind this comorbidity has not been determined. Research, however, have suggested some correlates including linguistic abilities and executive functioning skills that influence mathematical skills. A comprehensive examination of how these factors relate to mathematical ability has not been determined. This study aims to investigates the possible influence of cognitive functioning, verbal skills, and reading skills, on the arithmetic competency of second and third graders with reading disabilities between the ages of 78 and 102 months. The data utilized in this study were from a longitudinal project which evaluated the effectiveness of various reading intervention programs. The first objective of this present study was to explore how performance on basic and advanced mathematical concepts related to verbal skills and reading skills. The results generally did not illustrate any differences in the way these constructs related to the mathematical concepts. The second objective of the study was to analyze the influence of verbal skills, reading skills, and cognitive functioning skills, on the mathematical ability in children, and to develop a parsimonious model of mathematical ability for children with reading disabilities. Various models were assessed using path analyses. The two-construct model of verbal skills and mathematical skills was determined to be the best model describing the mathematical skills of children with reading disabilities. Supplementary analyses were conducted which clarified the various constructs’ relationship to specific mathematical concepts. These analyses provided understanding to the impact of verbal skills, as well as other constructs’, influence on specific mathematical concepts. The findings of this study have important educational implications and provide insight on more effective methods for developing the mathematical skills of children with reading disabilities. Finally, these findings foster future research in determining more effective interventions methodologies for children with reading disabilities.

The theoretical part of the diploma is focused on the analysis of particular areas and concepts related to children's recitation regarding the first level of primary school. The first half of the practical part looks into primal motivation resulting into the decision to dedicate oneself to recitation, as well as the method of text selection by children and their reasons for preference of poetry to prose. The method of controlled interview was used for researching child reciters at the first level of primary school. The same method was applied to research methods of management, preparation and evaluation of children's reciter by adults who work with and assess the reciter. The second half of the practical part offers and describes examples of both group and individual approaches to a particular text.

Elever ska få möjlighet att utveckla sina muntliga förmågor. Syftet med studien är att undersöka muntlighetskulturen i klassrummet med utgångspunkt i lärares sätt att formulera frågor i helklassundervisning. Vi fokuserar därför på att undersöka lärarens roll när det kommer till den muntliga miljön vid ett undervisningstillfälle. För att uppnå studiens syfte gjordes två ljudinspelade observationer där elevernas svarsfrekvens observerades samt att lärarnas frågor analyserades i efterhand och kategoriserades med öppna- och slutna frågor. Sedan kategoriserades samtliga frågor med hjälp av begreppet frihetsgrader. Observationerna gjordes i två olika klasser, båda i årskurs 5. Vi observerade två lärare under två svensklektioner. Resultatet visar att 33 av 40 elever fick chansen att svara på frågor under lektionerna. Lärarnas strategier för att fördela frågor påverkade fördelningen av frågorna. Analysen av frågorna visar att eleverna har möjlighet att svara fritt på 14 av 49 frågor som ställdes under observationerna. Resultatet framhäver att lärarens frågor påverkar muntligheten i klassrummet, lärares tekniker för formulering av frågeställning och tekniker för att avgöra vem som ska svara på frågan är av stor vikt och något lärare bör reflektera över vid planeringen av undervisningen.

The goal of the diploma thesis is to map the relationship between two intelligence tests for children based on comparison of selected verbal subtests used on pre-school children. The thesis deals with the verification of the so-called Flynn effect in relation to the different age of S-B IV. test and IDS test. The theoretical section describes the intelligence as a concept, individual approaches to its research and diagnostics, including specifics of working with children in this age group. Different tests of intelligence designed for children are presented with more attention paid to the tests used in the research. The theoretical part also deals with the development period of pre-school children, speech and issues with an obsolescence of the tests. In the empirical section of the thesis, the data from 30 children that have undergone the tests are processed using correlation and regression analyses. Conclusions based on the statistical analyses are developed further in an empirical section while the study revealed the following surprising findings. A significant relationship between the S-B IV. test and IDS test has not been found and there was no confirmation of the Flynn effect hypothesis. The discussion section focuses on the reflection of the research conclusions including the limitations of...

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Ce travail de thèse cherchait à étudier les compétences verbales chez les individus atteints de Troubles du Spectre Autistique, en se concentrant en particulier sur l'impact du traitement sur le développement de ces compétences, ainsi que sur l‘explication comportementale de la grammaire générative. Notre première étude comparait l'effet du traitement comportemental et du traitement pluridisciplinaire sur les aptitudes verbales des enfants avec TSA en milieu naturel. Les effets du traitement ont été évalués par l'analyse de résultats à des tests standardisés évaluant le vocabulaire commun, le vocabulaire spatial, la syntaxe et le raisonnement non – verbal, et en comparant le nombre d'enfants qui avaient intégré dans le milieu ordinaire (sans aménagement particulier). Les participants avec les meilleurs scores aux tests standardisés et dont les vitesses d'apprentissage atteignent ou dépassent la norme appartenaient au groupe ayant bénéficié d‘un traitement comportemental intensif précoce. C'est aussi dans ce groupe que se trouvait le plus fort pourcentage de participants ayant intégré le milieu ordinaire sans soutien particulier. Nous avons également exploré la façon dont les caractéristiques des enfants pourraient influencer l‘effet du traitement. Nos résultats indiquent que l'âge de début de traitement avait un effet que sur les vitesses d'apprentissage des compétences verbales et cela uniquement pour les participants ayant bénéficié d‘un traitement comportemental intensif. Nous avons aussi exploré la possibilité d'une relation entre la sévérité des symptômes à l'âge de 4-5 ans et les vitesses d'apprentissage et la sévérité des symptômes après environ 4ans de traitement comportemental intensif. L'analyse des données révèle que la gravité des symptômes à l'âge de 4 à 5 ans seraient prédictifs de la sévérité des symptômes qui seraient observés quelques années plus tard. Enfin, nous avons effectué un suivi et comparé les vitesses d'apprentissage après en moyenne 2 ans et après en moyenne 4 ans de traitement comportemental intensif. Une variabilité importante a été observée dans l'évolution des taux d'apprentissage d'un participant à un autre. Enfin, afin de mieux appréhender cette hétérogénéité, nous avons étudié la vitesse d'acquisition des compétences d'enfants avec TSA ayant bénéficié d‘un traitement comportemental intensif pendant en moyenne 4 ans. L'analyse des courbes d'apprentissage indique qu'il y aurait deux types d'apprenants ; des apprenants rapides et des apprenants lents, et cela in dépendamment de l'âge de début de traitement. Notre étude comparative a montré que si le traitement comportemental intensif résultait en des gains plus importants au niveau des aptitudes verbales des enfants atteints de TSA que le traitement multidisciplinaire, toutes les compétences verbales n‘étaient pas affectés de la même manière . En effet, les améliorations au niveau du vocabulaire sont plus importantes que celles observées pour la grammaire. Nous nous sommes attachés dans la deuxième partie de cette thèse à tenter d‘appréhender ces compétences grammaticales dans le cadre comportemental au sein d‘une population avec et sans troubles autistiques. Pour ce faire, nous avons utilisé des consignes réduites au strict minimum, des procédures d‘apprentissage des séquences et de Matching to Sample afin d‘apprendre aux participants à répondre à des stimuli. Ces réponses à ces stimuli étaient considérés comme analogues à certaines de compétences verbales complexes, notamment les relations syntaxiques, et les classes de mots (par exemple, les noms, les adjectifs, les verbes). / The current thesis aimed at investigating verbal skills in individuals with ASD, focusing in particular on the impact of treatment on the development of these skills, as well as attempting to contribute to a more complete behavior analytic explanation of complex generative language.Our first study aimed at comparing the effect of behavioral treatment and multi disciplinary treatment on the verbal skills of children on the autism spectrum in natural settings. Treatment outcome was assessed by analyzing the results to standardized tests evaluating common vocabulary, spatial vocabulary, syntax and non-verbal reasoning and by comparing the number of children who had been mainstreamed into regular classrooms without the help of an aide. Participants with the best test scores on the standardized tests and whose learning rates reached or exceeded normal learning rates of language skills belonged to the group that received early intensive behavioral treatment. It is also in this group that we find the highest percentage of participants who were mainstreamed without special support. We also set to explore how child variables could influence treatment outcome. Our results indicated that age of intake had an effect only on the learning rates of verbal skills and that only for participants who received intensive behavioral treatment. In addition, we explored the possibility of a relation between the severity of symptoms at the age of 4-5 years and the learning rates and the severity of symptoms after approximately 4 years of intensive behavioral treatment. Data analysis revealed that severity of symptoms impairing the development and interfering communication at the age of 4 to 5 years were predictive of the severity of the symptoms that would be observed a few years later. We also conducted a follow up and compared the learning rates after on average of 2 years of intensive behavioral treatment and after on average 4 years of treatment. Significant variability was observed in the evolution in learning rates from one participant to another. Finally, in an attempt to better understand this heterogeneity, we studied the rate of skill acquisition over a 4-year period of children on the autism spectrum who received intensive behavioral treatment. The analysis of the learning curves indicated that there were two types of learners, fast learners and slow learners and that, regardless of age of onset of treatment.Our comparative study showed that whilst intensive behavioral treatment resulted in more important gains in the verbal skills of children with ASD than multi disciplinary treatment, all verbal skills were not affected in the same way. Indeed the gains in vocabulary were more important than the ones in grammar. We thus set in the second part of this thesis to conduct a behavioral analysis of the development of complex verbal skills in the typically developing population but also in the population on the autism spectrum. We used minimal verbal instructions, and matching to sample and sequence training procedures to develop responding to stimulus classes. These were considered analogous to complex verbal skills, namely syntactic relations and classes of verbs, nouns or adjectives.