Mental state verb use in play by preschool-age children who stutter and their mothers.

Introduction: Preschool-age children use mental state verbs (MSVs; e.g., think, know) to reference thoughts and other cognitive states.

Expository Discourse Production in School-Age Children across Two Scaffolded Tasks.

School-age children encounter expository discourse daily in the classroom, and skilled understanding and production of expository language is critical for academic success. The purpose of this study was to compare children's production of two types of expository discourse, generation and retell, while employing a scaffolded note-taking procedure to assist children in developing their samples. Twenty-six typically developing children, 9 to 12 years of age, participated in the study.

Cognitive Flexibility for Semantic and Perceptual Information in Developmental Stuttering.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine cognitive flexibility for semantic and perceptual information in preschool children who stutter (CWS) and who do not stutter (CWNS). Method Participants were 44 CWS and 44 CWNS between the ages of 3;0 and 5;11 (years;months). Cognitive flexibility was measured using semantic and perceptual categorization tasks.

Visual exogenous and endogenous attention and visual memory in preschool children who stutter.

Purpose: Attention develops gradually from infancy to the preschool years and beyond. Exogenous attention, consisting of automatic responses to salient stimuli, develops in infancy, whereas endogenous attention, or voluntary attention, begins to develop later, in the preschool years. The purpose of this study was to examine (a) exogenous and endogenous attention in young children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS) through two conditions of a visual sustained selective attention task, and (b) visual short-term memory (STM) between groups within the context of this task.

Word learning from context in school-age children: relations with language ability and executive function.

Purpose: Although school-age children learn most new word meanings from surrounding context, the joint roles of language ability and executive function (EF) in the word learning process remain unclear. This study examined children's acquisition of word meanings from context in relation to oral language ability and three EF skills (working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility). Method: Typically developing school-age children completed measures of language and EF, then read and listened to short stories containing unfamiliar target words.

Lexical diversity and lexical skills in children who stutter.

Purpose: Numerous "small N" studies of language ability in children who stutter have produced differing conclusions. We combined test and spontaneous language data from a large cohort of children who stutter (CWS) and typically fluent peers, gathered from independent laboratories across the US, to appraise a variety of lexical measures.

Method: Standardized receptive and expressive vocabulary test data and spontaneous language samples from 99 pairs of CWS (ages 25-100 months), and age-, gender-, and SES-matched children who do not stutter (CWNS) were compared.

Phonological and Semantic Contributions to Verbal Short-Term Memory in Young Children With Developmental Stuttering.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the verbal short-term memory skills of children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS) in 2 experiments, focusing on the influence of phonological and semantic similarity. Method Participants were 42 CWS and 42 CWNS between the ages of 3;0 and 5;11 (years;months). In Experiment 1, children completed the phonological similarity task, in which they listened to lists of phonologically similar and dissimilar words and then repeated them when signaled to do so.

Executive function and childhood stuttering: Parent ratings and evidence from a behavioral task.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the executive function (EF) abilities of preschool children who do (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS) using a parent-report questionnaire and a behavioral task.

Method: Participants were 75 CWS and 75 CWNS between the ages of 3;0 and 5;11 (years; months). Parents rated their children's EF abilities using the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Preschool Version (BRIEF-P; Gioia, Espy, & Isquith, 2003).

Explicit and Implicit Verbal Response Inhibition in Preschool-Age Children Who Stutter.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine (a) explicit and implicit verbal response inhibition in preschool children who do stutter (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS) and (b) the relationship between response inhibition and language skills.

Method: Participants were 41 CWS and 41 CWNS between the ages of 3;1 and 6;1 (years;months). Explicit verbal response inhibition was measured using a computerized version of the grass-snow task (Carlson & Moses, 2001), and implicit verbal response inhibition was measured using the baa-meow task.

Semantic-syntactic partial word knowledge growth through reading.

Purpose: Incidental reading provides a powerful opportunity for partial word knowledge growth in the school-age years. The extent to which children of differing language abilities can use reading experiences to glean partial knowledge of words is not well understood. The purpose of this study was to compare semantic-syntactic partial word knowledge growth of children with higher language skills (HL group; overall language standard scores of 85 or higher) to that of children with relatively lower language skills (LL group; overall receptive or expressive standard score below 85).

Past tense marking in the spontaneous speech of preschool children who do and do not stutter.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to identify whether different patterns of errors exist in irregular past-tense verbs in children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS).

Method: Spontaneous language samples of thirty-one age- and gender-matched pairs of children (total N=62) between the ages of 24 months and 59 months were analyzed.

Results: Results indicated that children who do and do not stutter over-regularize irregular past-tense verbs (i.

Orthographic word knowledge growth in school-age children.

Purpose: Natural reading experiences provide an opportunity for the development of orthographic word knowledge as well as other forms of partial word knowledge. The purpose of this study was to compare the orthographic word knowledge growth of school-age children with relatively low language skills (LL group) to that of age- and gender-matched peers with high language skills (HL group).

Method: Thirty-two children, 16 per group, read stories containing rare words 3 times, 2-3 days apart.

Relationships among linguistic processing speed, phonological working memory, and attention in children who stutter.

Unlabelled: Relatively recently, experimental studies of linguistic processing speed in children who stutter (CWS) have emerged, some of which suggest differences in performance among CWS compared to children who do not stutter (CWNS). What is not yet well understood is the extent to which underlying cognitive skills may impact performance on timed tasks of linguistic performance. The purpose of this study was to explore possible relationships between measures of linguistic processing speed and two aspects of cognition: phonological working memory and attention.

Speech disruptions in relation to language growth in children who stutter: an exploratory study.

Unlabelled: Young children with typical fluency demonstrate a range of disfluencies, or speech disruptions. One type of disruption, revision, appears to increase in frequency as syntactic skills develop. To date, this phenomenon has not been studied in children who stutter (CWS).

The development of language and literacy: evaluating the stereotypes.

People hold many stereotypes about the development of language and reading. We review current data concerning three stereotypes: (1) Girls learn language faster than boys; (2) Biological factors determine the time course of language acquisition; and (3) Dyslexia is a visual problem involving the reversal of letters. In each case, recent data leads to a different picture of the acquisition of language and literacy and deepens our understanding of the processes involved.

Frequency of verb use in young children who stutter.

Unlabelled: Several recent studies have suggested that young children who stutter (CWS) tend to show depressed lexical performance relative to peers. Given the developmental literature as well as several studies of verb processing in individuals who stutter, verbs may pose a particular challenge for this group. The purpose of the present study was to examine verb use in CWS.

Nonword repetition skills in young children who do and do not stutter.

Unlabelled: The purpose of this study was to assess the nonword repetition skills of 24 children who do (CWS; n = 12) and do not stutter (CWNS; n = 12) between the ages of 3;0 and 5;2. Findings revealed that CWS produced significantly fewer correct two- and three-syllable nonword repetitions and made significantly more phoneme errors on three-syllable nonwords relative to CWNS. In addition, there was a significant relationship between performance on a test of expressive phonology and nonword repetition for CWS, but not CWNS.

CIU and main event analyses of the structured discourse of older and younger adults.

Unlabelled: Correct information unit (CIU) and main event analyses are quantitative measures for analyzing discourse of individuals with aphasia. Comparative data from healthy younger (YG) and older (OD) adults and an investigation of the influence of stimuli type would considerably extend the usefulness of such analyses. The objectives were (a) to compare discourse ability of younger and older healthy adults, and (b) to investigate influence of stimuli type on performance.

The single exposure: partial word knowledge growth through reading.

A critical aspect of the assessment of children's word learning processes is the examination of word knowledge growth over time. The purpose of this study was to examine the types of partial word knowledge (PWK) growth that occurred from 1 exposure to unfamiliar words in text, taking into account the roles of part of speech and individual language skills. Sixth-grade children with normal language read stories containing unfamiliar nouns and verbs.