Your search

This study measured the receptive communication skills of 14 adults with significant intellectual disability living in community group homes in Connecticut. Group home staff members rated the 14 participants using it 14-item rating scale sensitive to the adult living situation. These individuals appeared to have relatively stronger skills for comprehension of single-step in-context directions and the ability to recognise that particular tangible objects represented certain daily routines. These individuals were relatively, weak in identifying,familiar people in photographs and common objects in magazines. Among these participants, persons with profound intellectual disability mere rated to hate lower receptive communication skills than persons with severe intellectual disability. Clinical implications are discussed for human service providers and education professionals.

This study utilized a rating scale and random sampling of Connecticut school speech—language pathologists about their preprofessional education and current knoWledge of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The participants had a minimal amount of preprofessional academic or clinical preparation in ASD, and no differences Were found in hoW speech—language pathologists Were trained over the past 30 years. School speech—language pathologists reported relatively stronger knoWledge of the general behavioral and communication characteristics associated With ASD and less knoWledge of educational assessment and intervention formats. Given the prevalence of schoolchildren With ASD, speech—language pathology graduate programs need to enhance their preprofessional curricula to provide school-based speech—language pathologists With specific training to meet the communication needs presented by children With ASD. © 2004, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.

The purpose of this study is to provide a microanalysis of differences in adaptive functioning seen between well-matched groups of school-aged children with autism and those diagnosed as having Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified, all of whom functioned in the mild to moderate range of intellectual impairment. Findings indicate that the major area of difference between children with autism and those with Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified, was expressive communication; specifically, the use of elaborations in syntax and morphology and in pragmatic use of language to convey and to seek information in discourse. Linear discriminant function analysis revealed that scores on just three of these expressive communication item sets correctly identified subjects in the two diagnostic categories with 80% overall accuracy. Implications of these findings for both diagnosis and intervention with children with Autism Spectrum Disorders will be discussed.

This article reviews a range of social communication interventions that have been developed for students with autism at the preschool, school age, and adolescent level. Adult-mediated and peer-mediated methods that use highly structured, child-centered, and hybrid methods are examined. Programs that provide information on generalization and maintenance are identified. A set of recommendations for programs that would seem to be most appropriate for students with Asperger syndrome is presented.

The management of children with auditory processing disorders requires a multifaceted approach involving audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and educators. We are still at the genesis of our understanding of APDs.

Speech and prosody-voice profiles for 15 male speakers with High-Functioning Autism (HFA) and 15 male speakers with Asperger syndrome (AS) were compared to one another and to profiles for 53 typically developing male speakers in the same 10- to 50-years age range. Compared to the typically developing speakers, significantly more participants in both the HFA and AS groups had residual articulation distortion errors, uncodable utterances due to discourse constraints, and utterances coded as inappropriate in the domains of phrasing, stress, and resonance. Speakers with AS were significantly more voluble than speakers with HFA, but otherwise there were few statistically significant differences between the two groups of speakers with pervasive developmental disorders. Discussion focuses on perceptual-motor and social sources of differences in the prosody-voice findings for individuals with Pervasive Developmental Disorders as compared with findings for typical speakers, including comment on the grammatical, pragmatic, and affective aspects of prosody.

Numerous variables contribute to the ultimate recovery of communication skills following neurological damage. This report provides a review of the literature pertaining to prognostic indicators and chronicles the recovery of communication skills in a 48-year-old man who sustained a left intracerebral hemorrhage over a 29-month period.

This article presents an introduction to psycholinguistic models of speech development. Two specific types of models are addressed: box-and-arrow models and connectionist or neural network models. We review some historical and some current models and discuss recent applications of such models to the management of speech impairment in children. We suggest that there are two ways in which a psycholinguistic approach can influence clinical practice: by directly supplementing a speech-language pathologist's repertoire of assessment and treatment approaches and by offering a new way to conceptualize speech impairment in children.

School-based speech-language pathologists from Connecticut responded to a random survey which had a twofold purpose, (1) to replicate a previous conclusion that clinicians' specific experience with traumatic brain injury (TBI) influences their knowledge of this subject, and (2) to explore the topic of pragmatic assessment and whether it is also influenced by specific TBI experience. Results indicate that Connecticut school clinicians favourably regard both their own knowledge of TBI and the contemporary issue of pragmatic assessment. Connecticut clinicians also report a relatively low degree of prior TBI training and clinical experience. Clinicians' degree of TBI training and clinical experience did not appear directly related to their reported competence in TBI knowledge and pragmatic assessment.

The title compound, C18H14N2S2, crystallizes as a pseudomerohedral twin, with four independent molecules in the asymmetric unit. The compound shows a combination of π-interactions and close-packing, with the planar maleonitrile and phenyl groups extending into pockets of neighbouring molecules. © 2005 International Union of Crystallography Printed in Great Britain - all rights reserved.

The structural properties of 1,1′-dibromoferrocene, [Fe(C 5H4Br)2, were investigated using single-crystal x-ray diffraction. It was found to crystallize in the non-centrosymmetric space group P21. Despite of the steric demand of the two bromine substituents, the two cyclopentaldienyl (Cp) rings were found to exhibit an eclipsed conformation in the solid state. The conformational arrangement found in compound seems not to be the result of general electronic preference within this class of compounds, but has to be attributed to crystal packing effects in the solid state.

The structure of p-anisolecarbonitrile, C8H7NO, was determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction at 100 K. It crystallizes in the monoclinic space group P21/c with two crystallographically independent molecules in the asymmetric © 2004 International Union of Crystallography Printed in Great Britain - all rights reserved.

We have isolated a 1.6 kb clone from a cDNA library made from the olfactory rosettes of th Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). The clone contains a 1200 bp, open reading frame (name OSC) which codes for a protein with 400 amino-acid residues (Oscp). The mRNA corresponding to OSC is strongly expressed in the olfactory rosettes and weakly expressed in gills but is expressed in only these two tissues. This suggests that Oscp may have a specific and important role in olfaction. The sequence of Oscp suggests that it is not globular. Predictions show only a small fraction of alpha-helix. Oscp is hydrophilic but with the number of positively charged residues equal to the number of negatively charged residues. No closely similar protein can be found on the basis of homology searches or hydrophobicity comparisons. However, a 44 residue segment (G300 through K343) is significantly homologous to a segment of alpha-lactalbumin (G51 through K94). The similarities include the 19 residues of the "alpha-lactalbumin-lysozyme C signature," the ten residues of the Ca2+ binding elbow and the four cysteine residues which provide two key disulfide links in alphalactalbumin and lysozyme C. Two more Cys residues are also very similarly placed. We conclude that the gene OSC codes for a unique protein which most likely contains a specific site for binding Ca2+ and plays a unique role in the signal pathway of olfaction in salmon.

We tested the efficacy of DNA barcodes in identifying mayfly species primarily from the northeastern United States and central Canada. We sequenced a 630-base-pair segment of the mitochondrial gene, cytochrome c oxidase 1 (COI), from 1 individual of each of 80 species to create a reference sequence profile. We used these reference sequences to identify 70 additional specimens representing 32 of the species that were in the profile. DNA barcodes correctly identified 69 of the 70 test specimens. The sole exception was an individual identified morphologically as Maccaffertium modestum that showed deep genetic divergence from other M. modestum specimens. Mean sequence divergence within species was 1%, whereas mean divergence among congeneric species was an order of magnitude greater (18%). We conclude that DNA barcoding can provide a powerful tool for mayfly species identification. © 2005 by The North American Benthological Society.

We observed 16 instances of caching behavior by Northern Saw-whet Owls in southern Connecticut between 30 October and 29 March over a 23-year period 1982 to 2004. Caches consisted of a single prey item in 13 instances and two prey items in three instances. Prey was cached either directly beneath the owl or from 5-28 cm distant, always on the same branch on which the owl was roosting. Observations of cached prey marked in the morning suggested that it was consumed after 14:30 in the afternoon of the same day. Such a delay indicated a true cache rather than delayed feeding.

We collected prey remains from 25 Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) territories across Arizona from 1977 to 1988 yielding 58 eyrie-years of data. Along with 793 individual birds (107 species and six additional genera), we found seven mammals and nine insects. In addition, two nestling peregrines were consumed. We found a larger dependence upon White-throated Swifts (Aeronautes saxatalis) and birds on migration in northern Arizona, while in southeastern and central Arizona average prey mass was greater and columbiforms formed the largest dietary component. In northern, central, and southeastern Arizona, 74, 66, and 56 avian prey taxa, respectively, were recorded. We used capture-recapture modeling to estimate totals of 111 ± 9.5, 113 ± 10.5, and 86 ± 7.9 (SE) avian taxa taken in these same three areas. These values are counterintuitive inasmuch as the southeast has the richest avifauna. For the entire study area, 156 ± 9.3 avian taxa were estimated to be taken by peregrines.