Syntactic Complexity Across Language Sampling Contexts in School-Age Children, Ages 8-11 Years.

Purpose: Syntax has been called the structural foundation of language, as its development allows for more efficient and effective communication. Complex syntax production is known to lag in children and adolescents with language impairment. Conversation, narrative, and expository language sampling contexts are recommended tools for the comprehensive assessment of school-age children, including syntactic abilities.

Developmental influence of unconjugated hyperbilirubinemia and neurobehavioral disorders.

Bilirubin-induced brain injury in the neonatal period has detrimental effects on neurodevelopment that persist into childhood and adulthood, contributing to childhood developmental disorders. Unconjugated bilirubin is a potent antioxidant that may be useful for protecting against oxidative injuries, but it becomes a potent neurotoxin once it crosses the blood brain barrier. Because bilirubin toxicity involves a myriad of pathological mechanisms, can damage most types of brain cells, and affects brain circuits or loops that influence cognition, learning, behavior, sensory, and language, the clinical effects of bilirubin-induced neurotoxicity are likely to be manifold.

Let's Talk: Review of Conversation Intervention Approaches for School-Aged Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Conversation skills are an important intervention focus for verbally fluent school-aged children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Three sets of approaches for supporting conversation skills are reviewed. Pragmatic language approaches focus on teaching the verbal and nonverbal skills needed to initiate and maintain conversations including strategies for recognizing and repairing communication breakdowns.

The influence of scale structure and sex on parental reports of children's social (pragmatic) communication symptoms.

The addition of social (pragmatic) communication disorder [S(P)CD] to the DSM-5 taxonomy has left clinicians and researchers searching for appropriate diagnostic measures. Factor analysis procedures examined the extent to which S(P)CD symptoms presented within the Children's Communication Checklist-Second Edition (CCC-2) represented a unique construct and whether these factors were influenced by children's sex. Parents of 208 children (males = 125 and females = 83) from a community-based sample completed the CCC-2.

Use of the Children's Communication Checklist-2 for classification of language impairment risk in young school-age children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Purpose: Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at elevated risk for language impairment (LI). This study examined the feasibility of using the Children's Communication Checklist-2 (CCC-2; Bishop, 2006) to classify risk for LI in young children, ages 5-8 years, with ADHD.

Method: Parents of 32 children with ADHD and 12 typically developing peers completed the CCC-2.

Language use in social interactions of school-age children with language impairments: an evidence-based systematic review of treatment.

Introduction: Pragmatic models were first applied to the treatment of children with language impairment in the late 1970s. Since that time, the study of language use has had considerable impact on language assessment and treatment. Despite the need to address pragmatic language skills clinically, there has been no systematic examination of the efficacy of treatments developed for this purpose.

Social knowledge in children with language impairments: examination of strategies, predicted consequences, and goals in peer conflict situations.

This study investigated social knowledge in school-age children, aged 8-12 years, with and without language impairment (LI and TD groups). A hypothetical peer conflict task was administered to examine the relationship among prosocial responses and parent/teacher ratings of children's social behaviours. Stimuli included 12 hypothetical peer conflict vignettes presented in an open-ended and forced choice condition.

Narrative organization skills in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and language impairment: application of the causal network model.

Studies suggest that the oral narratives of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are less organized than those of typically developing peers. Many studies, however, do not account for children's language abilities. Because language impairment (LI) is a frequent comorbid condition in children with ADHD, this exploratory study investigated language abilities and narrative organization skills in children with and without ADHD.

A state of double jeopardy: impact of prenatal alcohol exposure and adverse environments on the social communicative abilities of school-age children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

Purpose: This article is a retrospective examination of environmental risk, language performance, and narrative discourse data from a clinical database of school-age children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).

Method: A case-defined diagnostic approach for measuring and reporting the full spectrum of disabilities in children with prenatal alcohol exposure is presented. Demographic, environmental, language, and social communication (as reflected by narrative discourse) data are reported for a large cohort of children with FASD between the ages of 6;0 (years;months) and 12;0.

Social communication interventions for preschoolers: targeting peer interactions during peer group entry and cooperative play.

Some preschoolers with language impairment approach and manage peer interactions less effectively than typically developing peers. This article discusses assessment and intervention strategies for targeting preschoolers' social communication skills during peer entry and cooperative play situations. Essential features of effective interventions include identification of appropriate social communication targets, addressing and facilitating children's use of these targets during small group sessions with peers, and supporting generalization of newly acquired social communication behaviors to children's peer interactions within the classroom setting.

"Do I know what I need to do?" A social communication intervention for children with complex clinical profiles.

Purpose: Speech-language pathologists frequently address social communication difficulties in children with diverse clinical profiles. The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of a social communication intervention for a school-age child with a complex cognitive and behavioral profile secondary to diagnosis of a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

Method: A case study is presented to describe the implementation of the intervention targeting mental state verb production and social cognitive skills.

Evidence of contingency awareness in people with profound multiple impairments: response duration versus response rate indicators.

Evidence of contingency awareness in people with profound multiple impairments is often elusive due to numerous variables that impede learning and contribute to performance variability. Recent research has shown that measuring duration of responding rather than rate has promise for more accurate inferences. Duration measures of adaptive-switch use were obtained with 50 participants during empirical tests for contingency awareness.

Quantitative and qualitative documentation of early literacy instruction.

Quantitative and qualitative procedures were used in this pilot study to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a language and literacy instruction model for meeting the needs of children with impairments, delays, and differences in regular Head Start classrooms. Although the project addresses a variety of literacy domains, this article focuses on rhyming and letter naming. In the instruction model, children were exposed to motivating examples of rhyme and letter targets in different activity structures embedded across the curriculum.

Reading emotion cues: social communication difficulties in pediatric populations.

Speech-language pathologists frequently address social communication difficulties in children with diverse linguistic profiles. Of consequence to effective management of social communication skills is that some children with language disorders may also have difficulty understanding emotional cues. The ability to recognize and comprehend the emotional meaning of messages is accomplished through integration of linguistic cues (e.