No abstract

Prader-Willi syndrome was initially identified in 1956. Since then, a majority of the literature pertaining to Prader-Willi has focused on the medical and genetic aspects of the syndrome. There has been limited information available regarding the speech and language abilities of children with Prader-Willi. This study investigated the communicative development of 18 children with the syndrome, ranging in age from 8:8 to 17:1. A number of evaluative procedures were used to evaluate the subjects' spontaneous speech, articulation, and receptive and expressive language abilities, as well as their voice, fluency, oral mechanisms, hearing, and their developmental histories. A variety of communicative deficiencies were found in the children's speech, language, voice, and fluency.

No abstract

In Brown’s (1973) classic studies of language development, he found that irregular past tense verbs developed rather early in the developmental sequence. Several other researchers have also noted this early development of irregular verb forms. However, other researchers and clinicians have suggested that irregular verbs continue developing much later into the school-age years. The purpose of this study was to gain a preliminary view of children’s development of 49 irregular verbs. One hundred and twenty children between 3:0 and 9:0 were examined as they responded to a picture of the target verb with a sentence-completion task. It was found that some irregular verbs (e.g., hit) were correctly produced by the three year olds, but other irregulars (e.g., bent) were still not mastered by age 9. A preliminary order of development of the irregular verbs and possible clinical implications are offered.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether stutters and nonstutterers differed in latency of vocalization onset as a function of auditory and visual stimulus presentations. Twelve adult stutterers and 12 adult nonstutterers were compared for phonation onset latency under conditions of visual, right ear auditory, and left ear auditory cueing. Analysis of the data indicated that (a) overall phonation onset time did not differ significantly between the groups, (b) no significant differences were found for phonation onset time under conditions of combined auditory cueing, (c) stutterers were significantly slower for /pae/when auditory cueing was presented to either the left or right ear, (d) stutters were significantly slower for /pae/ and /bae/ when the values were combined for the left ear, and (e) there were not significant differences between stutterers' and non nonstutterers' phonation onset times under visual cueing. The results are interpreted to implicate a possible role of auditory system functioning in stutterers' motor control for speech tasks such as phonation onset.