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The use of four types of psychological state words (physiological, emotional, desire, and cognitive) during mother-child play sessions at ages 3, 4, and 5 years was examined in 30 children diagnosed with delayed expressive language at 24-31 months and 15 age-matched comparison children with typical development. The children's mean length of utterance, total words uttered, lexical diversity, and use of propositional complements were assessed. The late talkers used significantly more physiological state words at ages 3 and 4, but the two groups did not differ in their use of physiological state terms at age 5. The late talkers used significantly fewer cognitive words than the comparison children at each age. The mothers of the late talkers made significantly fewer references to cognitive states than the mothers of the comparison children at each age. The delay in the emergence of cognitive state words in the preschool years may affect other aspects of late talkers' cognitive and social development.

Examined use of psychological state words during mother-child play sessions at age 3 in 31 children diagnosed with delayed expressive language at 24-31 months and age-matched typically-developing comparison children. Children and mothers in the late talker group made more references to physiological states and fewer references to cognitive states than children and mothers in the typically-developing comparison group. (Author/VWL)

Compared the oral narrative skills of 31 school-aged children diagnosed at 24 to 31 months with expressive language delay with those of 23 typically-developing peers. Suggests that the use of narrative structure may be a specific area of underachievement for late talkers, in addition to their continuing weakness in syntactic and lexical abilities, relative to typically developing peers from the same socioeconomic background. (Author/VWL)

Topic choice, topic synchrony, and utterance function during mother-child play sessions at age 3 were examined in 32 late talkers and 21 comparison children, matched at intake on age, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal ability. Late talkers and comparison children did not differ in number of utterances, topic initiation, topic synchrony, use of commands, reaction to commands, or conversational fillers. (Author/VWL)

Longitudinally compared the production of syllable shapes in 10-minute spontaneous speech samples of 20 children with expressive specific language impairment (SLI-E) and 15 typically developing (TD) peers from 24 to 36 months of age. Results are discussed. (Author/VWL)

Investigates communicative intent in 31 toddlers who were slow to talk and 32 normally developing toddlers matched on SES, age, and nonverbal cognitive ability. Communicative intent was studied during free play, both with the mother and with an unfamiliar examiner. Late talkers relied more on nonword vocalization, gestures, and gesture/oral combinations than their normally developing peers. (Author/JL)

Phonetic skills and vocabulary size were investigated in 37 toddlers identified with specific expressive language impairment and 20 comparison toddlers. Results indicate significant differences in numbers of consonant types and tokens, although the most frequently present consonants were consistent across groups. No predictive relationship emerged between phonetic repertoire or vocabulary size and age-3 language outcome, although delayed children had poorer outcomes. (Author/MSE)

Describes a follow-up study of 25 boys who had been diagnosed with Specific Expressive Language Delay (SELD) at 24 to 30 months of age. At three to four years, half of the boys continued to exhibit poor expressive language skills, suggesting that young children diagnosed with SELD are at considerable risk for continuing language problems. (33 references) (JL)

Analysis of data from the first six months of acquisition of English as a second language by a Japanese five-year-old illustrated the role of modular "chunking" and coupling in the second language acquisition process, apparent in the child's pre-copula and copula referential utterances. (Author/CB)