Parents' Literacy Beliefs, Home Literacy Activities, and Children's Early Literacy Skills: Stability and Progress Approaching First Grade.

This study explores the stability and progress of parents' literacy beliefs and home literacy activities and their relationships with their children's early literacy skills in their last year of preschool. Participants were 50 preschool children ( = 61.44 months) and their parents.

Working adults' future occupational plans: the contribution of role characteristics, social support, and occupational self-efficacy.

School counselors' occupational plans were investigated in terms of the mediating role of occupational self-efficacy including three antecedents (role clarity, role autonomy, social support) on three outcomes (life satisfaction, job satisfaction, occupational plans) among 483 female Israeli school counselors, aged 26-69. High levels of the three antecedents were associated with high levels of occupational self-efficacy, which in turn was associated with high levels of life and job satisfaction and with counselors' plans to remain in their profession. The antecedents also demonstrated direct effects with job satisfaction.

Parental Writing Support and Preschoolers' Early Literacy, Language, and Fine Motor Skills.

The current study examines the nature and variability of parents' aid to preschoolers in the context of a shared writing task, as well as the relations between this support and children's literacy, vocabulary, and fine motor skills. In total, 135 preschool children (72 girls) and their parents (primarily mothers) in an ethnically diverse, middle-income community were observed while writing a semi-structured invitation for a pretend birthday party together. Children's phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, word decoding, vocabulary, and fine motor skills were also assessed.

Longitudinal Relations Between Parental Writing Support and Preschoolers' Language and Literacy Skills.

Parental writing support was examined over time and in relation to children's language and literacy skills. Seventy-seven parents and their preschoolers were videotaped writing an invitation together twice during one year. Parental writing support was coded at the level of the letter to document parents' graphophonemic support (letter-sound correspondence), print support (letter formation), and demand for precision (expectation for correcting writing errors).

Visual spatial skill: a consequence of learning to read?

Does learning to read influence one's visual skill? In Study 1, kindergartners from Hong Kong, Korea, Israel, and Spain were tested on word reading and a task of visual spatial skill. Chinese and Korean kindergartners significantly outperformed Israeli and Spanish readers on the visual task. Moreover, in all cultures except Korea, good readers scored significantly higher on the visual task than did less good readers.

Small wins big: analytic pinyin skills promote Chinese word reading.

The present study examined invented spelling of pinyin (a phonological coding system for teaching and learning Chinese words) in relation to subsequent Chinese reading development. Among 296 Chinese kindergartners in Beijing, independent invented pinyin spelling was found to be uniquely predictive of Chinese word reading 12 months later, even with Time 1 syllable deletion, phoneme deletion, and letter knowledge, in addition to the autoregressive effects of Time 1 Chinese word reading, statistically controlled. These results underscore the importance of children's early pinyin representations for Chinese reading acquisition, both theoretically and practically.

Presupposition and implication of truth: linguistic deficits following early brain lesions.

Twenty-four children (4-17 years) with unilateral left (N = 14) or right (N = 10) hemisphere damage and 24 age-matched controls were tested on their ability to presuppose the truth of factive sentences e.g., "Max knew that he locked the door," and to infer the truth or falsity of implicative sentences "Max remembered to lock the door.

Developmental apraxia of speech: III. A subtype marked by inappropriate stress.

Two prior studies in this series (Shriberg, Aram, & Kwiatkowski, 1997a, 1997b) address the premise that children with developmental apraxia of speech (DAS) can be differentiated from children with speech delay (SD) on the basis of one or more reliable differences in their speech. The first study compared segmental and prosody-voice profiles of a group of 14 children with suspected DAS to profiles of 73 children with SD. Results suggest that the only linguistic domain that differentiates some children with suspected DAS from those with SD is inappropriate stress.

Developmental apraxia of speech: II. Toward a diagnostic marker.

This second paper in a series on developmental apraxia of speech (DAS) (Shriberg, Aram, & Kwiatkowski, 1997a) reports findings from two studies. Study I compares speech and prosody-voice profiles of a group of 14 children with suspected DAS to profiles of 73 children with speech delay (SD). Results suggest that the only linguistic domain that differentiates some children with suspected DAS from those with SD is inappropriate stress.

Developmental apraxia of speech: I. Descriptive and theoretical perspectives.

Developmental apraxia of speech (DAS) is a putative diagnostic category for children whose speech errors presumedly (a) differ from the errors of children with developmental speech delay (SD) and (b) resemble the errors of adults with acquired apraxia of speech. The studies reported in this series (Shriberg, Aram, & Kwiatkowski, 1997a, 1997b) concern both premises, with primary focus on the first--that children with DAS can be differentiated from children with SD on the basis of one or more reliable differences in their speech error profiles. Immediate goals are to identify a diagnostic marker for DAS and to consider implications for research and clinical practice.

The use of spontaneous language measures as criteria for identifying children with specific language impairment: an attempt to reconcile clinical and research incongruence.

Criteria for identification of children as specifically language impaired (SLI) vary greatly among clinicians and researchers. Standardized psychometric discrepancy criteria are more restrictive and perhaps less sensitive to language impairment than is clinical judgment based on a child's language performance in naturalistic contexts. This paper examines (a) differences in groups of preschool children clinically diagnosed as SLI who were and were not identified as SLI through standard psychometric discrepancy criteria, and (b) the validity of quantitative measures of mean length of utterance (MLU), syntax, and pragmatics derived from a spontaneous language sample as criteria for discriminating clinically diagnosed preschoolers from normally developing preschoolers.

Comprehension and imitation of syntax following early hemisphere damage.

Twenty-five children with early left (LL = 16) or right (RL = 9) hemisphere damage and 25 age-matched controls were tested on their comprehension and imitation of complex coordinate, passive, and relative clause structures using a matched experimental design. The predominant deficit exhibited by left-injured children was one of significantly impaired imitation coupled with relatively preserved comprehension. For RL subjects the deficit was less pronounced in either comprehension or imitation.

Intellectual stability in children with unilateral brain lesions.

In this paper we report on the longitudinal stability of IQ in 26 children with unilateral left (LL N = 18) or right (RL N = 8) hemisphere damage. Results revealed (i) normal or near normal levels of intellectual performance in both LL and RL groups, and, (ii) hemispheric differences in the level and stability of intellectual performance. RL children achieved lower IQ scores than LL children and were more likely to decrease in VIQ over time.

Relationship between language and fluency in children with developmental language disorders.

The present investigation addresses two primary hypotheses: (a) that a subset of children with developmental language disorders exhibits significantly more disfluencies than other children with language disorders and (b) that differences between the disfluent and nondisfluent groups observed in fluency may be related to differences in language deficits. Spontaneous language samples from 60 preschool children with developmental language disorders were analyzed for frequency and type of disfluencies. Comparisons of the frequency of disfluencies across subjects revealed that a subset of 10 subjects exhibited significantly more disfluencies than the other subjects with language disorders.

The effect of very low birth weight and social risk on neurocognitive abilities at school age.

We tested the hypothesis that very low birth weight (VLBW < 1.5 kg) children would have significantly poorer neurocognitive abilities at school age than would normal birth weight full-term age mates, that differences would persist after control for neurologic impairment and social risk, and that VLBW would interact with social risk. Two hundred forty-nine VLBW children and a randomly selected sample of 363 normal birth weight age mates born 1977 through 1979 were tested at 8 years.

The validity of discrepancy criteria for identifying children with developmental language disorders.

Empirical data from two studies address the clinical validity of discrepancy criteria for identification of children with developmental language disorders (DLD). Study 1 involved 256 preschoolers clinically defined as DLD and meeting inclusionary criteria for normal hearing, intellectual, neurological, and psychiatric status. Application of alternative psychometrically derived discrepancy criteria identified only 40% to 60% of the clinically defined group as language disordered.

Mathematics performance in left and right brain-lesioned children and adolescents.

Children and adolescents with unilateral left- or right-hemisphere lesions were administered a standardized test of mathematics ability and a battery of experimental tests that examined the components of numerical and arithmetic processing. All lesioned groups showed at least marginally lower scores on the standardized test than the controls. More importantly, lesion-related deficits in performance were observed, especially for younger left-lesioned subjects (ages 7-12), on the verbal counting, digit matching, speeded addition, and written subtraction tasks; deficits among younger right-lesioned subjects were similar in nature, yet less pronounced than in the left-hemisphere group.

Neonatal auditory brainstem response failure of very low birth weight infants: 8-year outcome.

Fifty-six very low birth weight infants (less than 1.5 kg) were followed until 8 y of age to see if predischarge auditory brainstem response (ABR) results were predictive of neurobehavioral development. The results suggest that early ABR may predict subsequent performance on measures of intelligence quotient, language, and reading.

Effect of very low birth weight and subnormal head size on cognitive abilities at school age.

Background: We tested the hypothesis that very-low-birth-weight (less than 1.5 kg) infants with perinatal growth failure whose head size is not normal by eight months of age (corrected for prematurity) have significantly poorer growth and neurocognitive abilities at school age than very-low-birth-weight children with a normal head size at eight months. We also hypothesized that these differences would persist even after control for major neurologic impairment and perinatal and sociodemographic risk factors.