Michael W. Casby

The Development of Play in Infants, Toddlers, and Young Children.

The developmental domain of play is critical to early intervention efforts. It often may be one of the few areas that can be reliably and validly observed in infants, toddlers, and young children with, or suspected of having, developmental disabilities. It is imperative that professionals involved in early intervention efforts have a deep and broad knowledge and understanding of play. This article, the first in a two-part series, presents a comprehensive, illustrative review of the development of play in infants, toddlers, and young children.

Symbolic play and early communication development in hearing-impaired children☆

This study investigated the relationship between symbolic play and language performance for young hearing-impaired children. Subjects included 20 hearing-impaired youngsters ranging in age from 38 months to 69 months. The children were placed in two ordinal communication groups. Placement in one of the communication levels was dependent upon information concerning the number of spontaneous expressive communication units the child produced. The experimental task consisted of three predetermined play themes in which the child previously displayed functional play. A nonconventional item was then included, and the play behaviors were observed for the occurrence of symbolic play under a spontaneous or modeled condition. The results indicate a significant difference in symbolic play between the two ordinal communication levels. Additionally, there was a strong positive relationship observed between the variables of symbolic play and early communication development.

Symbolic play performance and early language development

The object-substitution symbolic play abilities of young children at three early language levels (i.e., MLU Stage Pre I, Early Stage I, and Late Stage I) were compared. In addition, the relationship between early language performance and object-substitution symbolic play was investigated. Results support the view that symbolic play performance is related to early language development, and in particular to the beginnings of combinational language (i.e., early syntax). Children at the combinatorial level of language development demonstrated significantly more representational ability than children at the single-word level.

Developmental Assessment of Play A Model for Early Intervention

This article is the second in a two-part series. It presents an integrated overview of the construct of play and its development in infants, toddlers, and young children. The author describes developmental levels of play ranging from early sensorimotor— exploratory to symbolic play involving complex and planned multischeme sequences. In addition, functional components of symbolic play—agent, instrument, and scheme—are specified. Finally, the author presents a developmentally based, descriptive, and criterion-referenced protocol for the dynamic assessment of play in infants, toddlers, and young children.

National Data Concerning Communication Disorders and Special Education

With its passage of the Education of the Handicapped Act (PL 94–142) and its amendments, Congress mandated that an annual report be submitted presenting information regarding the progress made in t...

A Pragmatic Perspective of Repetition in Child Language

The contention that repetition may be used for a variety of communicative functions is supported with data from a longitudinal study of one child. Repetitions were identified from videotapes and then classified according to the communicative function being expressed. Additionally, discourse profiles were identified for various communicative functions being expressed via repetition.

An examination of the relationship of sample size and mean length of utterance for children with developmental language impairment

Mean length of utterance (MLU) is a frequently used measure of the expressive language of young children. The suggested conventional, contemporary, clinical practice is to calculate it from a language sample of a minimum of 50 to100 contiguous intelligible utterances. This practice places considerable strain on professionals working with young children with language disorders, for it is often impractical to devote the time needed to collect, transcribe, and analyse the recommended number of utterances. This research investigated the consistency of MLU calculated across language samples of different sizes for the same children. Transcripts of expressive language samples of research participants with developmental language impairment were analysed, with MLU being calculated on samples of varying sizes. The language samples ranged from 10 to 150 utterances. Measures of statistical differences and consistency of MLU across the various language samples were examined. Results demonstrate that, on the whole, one can reliably and efficiently determine MLU on much smaller language samples than that typically recommended, although, not surprisingly, there may be notable individual differences attesting to the vicissitudes of MLU.

An Intervention Approach for Naming Problems in Children

The existence of naming difficulties among children with language learning problems has been well-documented in the literature, yet there is, at present, little research that addresses intervention...

A protocol for the assessment of prelinguistic intentional communication

This article presents a protocol for the assessment of prelinguistic intentional communication with young and/or severely language-impaired children. A set of tasks and scoring procedures are presented for the elicitation of proto-declarative and proto-imperative behaviors. Data are presented that attest to the reliable utilization of this protocol.

Simple Switch Modifications for Use in Augmentative Communication

Procedures for the construction of a switch assessment device and the adaptation of battery-operated toys are described. These devices and modifications have proven to be useful in assessment and i...