Prior to Brown's (1973) introduction of mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm), child language researchers and speech-language pathologists used mean length of utterance in words (MLUw) as a measurement of a child's gross language development. After Brown (1973) and others documented MLUm to be a measure which was correlated with the development of morphological and syntactic skills in young children, the practice of counting MLUm became more widely used and accepted. In the present study, MLUw and MLUm scores of 40 language transcripts from typically-developing, English-speaking children between the ages of 3;0 and 3;10 were compared. Results indicated that MLUm and MLUw are almost perfectly correlated. This finding suggests that MLUw can be used as effectively as MLUm as a measurement of a child's gross language development.

This article uses data from an ethnographic study that examined the delivery of home-based services in early intervention. Participants were families with an infant or toddler with special needs, and professionals providing early intervention services to these and other families. The study examined an early intervention program that uses primarily a transdisciplinary approach to home-based service delivery. Perspectives on the delivery of services were elicited by ethnographic interviewing, participant observation of home visits, and the review of program structure, artifacts, and documents to determine what makes this program effective in the delivery of services. The data revealed that effectiveness of service delivery is dependent upon professionals creating a cultural environment that is similar in all homes during home visits. The discussion addresses the difficulty in defining and then implementing a family-centered service delivery model that takes individual differences into account.