The ability of Learning Disabled Spellers to abstract spelling patterns was compared to two groups of normal spellers; Poor and Good. One hundred and eighty children were studied: 20 Good Spellers, 20 Poor Spellers, and 20 Learning Disabled Spellers at each age level from 8 to 10 years. Patterns were investigated using three tests; two multiple choice tests, one with nonsense words and one with real words, and a dictation test using nonsense words. The Learning Disabled Spellers showed little ability to abstract patterns at ages 8 and 9 but made considerable improvement from 9 to 10. The performance of the Learning Disabled Spellers was significantly below that of both the Good and Poor Spellers and quite distinct from the Poor Spellers. Error analyses suggest that the responses of the Learning Disabled Spellers are characteristic of those of younger, normal children.

Two forms of an imitation task designed to elicit eleven language behaviors were presented to 32 language impaired children (mean age 7;4, mean MLU 2.9). The tasks differed in terms of the presence or absence of contextual support. To determine how well the imitation tasks could predict spontaneous productions, a multiple regression analysis was performed using the children's spontaneous productions of each behavior as the criterion variable and responses to the same behaviors on each imitation task plus age, sex, MLU, and a measure of memory as predictor variables. The major finding was that predictions of spontaneous production varied among the eleven language behaviors. Additionally, the presence of contextual support had little effect.

Child language acquisition studies have suggested that some object complement constructions are acquired relatively early compared to other complex constructions. Traditionally, instruction of hearing-impaired students in object complement structures is reserved for intermediate and advanced levels due to their relative syntactic complexity. However, data from 82 basic-level, hearing-impaired college students indicated marked learning of these structures after 10 hours of instruction. Upon investigation of the relative difficulty of four grammatical components of object complements (complement markers, personal pronouns, tense inflection, and word order), tense marking in the complement was found to be the most difficult. We suggest that, in addition to traditional transformational descriptions of syntactic complexity, data on first and second language acquisition be considered when deciding on a sequence of instruction for hearing-impaired students.

This study examined the onset and acquisition of language comprehension and production in a language delayed child through the analysis of a daily diary kept from 2;5 to 3;10, in order to determine whether such data might contribute to our understanding of normal language development. The onset of both comprehension and production was substantially delayed, yet both underwent word spurts that approximated the normal rate of acquisition. The gap between comprehension and production was also greater than that found in normal children. The existence of the normal spurts was interpreted as indicating biologically determined milestones that are vital in the acquisition process. It is suggested that clinical intervention should set these milestones as goals of therapy.