In the present study, we further examined (see Kamhi & Catts, 1986) the phonological processing abilities of language-impaired (LI) and reading-impaired (RI) children. We also evaluated these children's ability to process spatial information. Subjects were 10 LI, 10 RI, and 10 normal children between the ages of 6:8 and 8:10 years. Each subject was administered eight tasks: four word repetition tasks (monosyllabic, monosyllabic presented in noise, three-item, and multisyllabic), rapid naming, syllable segmentation, paper folding, and form completion. The normal children performed significantly better than both the LI and RI children on all but two tasks: syllable segmentation and repeating words presented in noise. The LI and RI children performed comparably on every task with the exception of the multisyllabic word repetition task. These findings were consistent with those from our previous study (Kamhi & Catts, 1986). The similarities and differences between LI and RI children are discussed.

The present study examined (a) the relative impact visual and phonetic factors have on learning phoneme-grapheme correspondences, and (b) the relationship between measures of visual and phonological processing and children's ability to learn novel phoneme-grapheme correspondence pairs. Participants were 20 children with reading disabilities (RD), 10 normally achieving children matched for mental age (MA), and 10 children matched for reading age (RA). The children ranged in age from 5 years 2 months to 9 years 3 months. All children completed a phoneme-grapheme learning task consisting of four novel correspondence pairs, a visual processing task, and five measures of phonological processing. The MA and RA groups learned the four correspondence pairs in significantly fewer trials than the RD group. The RD group had the least difficulty learning the correspondence pair with different phonemes and graphemes and the most difficulty learning the correspondence pair with similar phonemes and graphemes. Performance on the learning task was significantly correlated to performance on the visual processing task and the five measures of phonological processing. Performance on the phonological processing task of short-term memory was the best predictor of overall performance on the learning task. Although children with RD were able to learn the four novel correspondence pairs, their processing deficiencies affected how readily they learned each of the correspondence pairs.

The purpose of the present study was to further examine speech production abilities of young poor readers. Fourteen poor readers and 14 age-matched nondisabled subjects were taught to produce four novel, multisyllabic nonsense words. A recognition task was part of the training procedure. Retention of the words was also probed. The poor readers took significantly longer than the nondisabled children to produce three of the four words. The recognition data indicated that encoding limitations, rather than speech production limitations, were primarily responsible for the longer acquisition times. Speech production deficiencies seemed to account for only a small portion of the difficulty the poor readers experienced learning the novel words. The data are consistent with previous research that has documented encoding limitations in poor readers.

Sensory integration (SI) intervention is used with children with a wide range of learning and developmental challenges. Research both supports and questions the constructs of SI and the efficacy of SI intervention. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to facilitate an understanding of SI theory and intervention; delineate strategies that can enhance language, learning, and academic success for students; and provide suggestions for ways to contribute to our knowledge through further research in school settings.

In this study, the trial-by-trial acquisition procedures developed by Gholson, Eymard, Morgan, and Kamhi (1987) were used to examine analogical reasoning processes in school-age language-impaired (LI) children and normal age peers. Subjects were 16 LI and 16 normally developing children between the ages 6:4 and 8:9 years. Half of the subjects heard only verbal presentations of the problems, whereas the other half heard the verbal presentations while simultaneously viewing physical demonstrations of the problems. The LI children who heard only verbal presentations of the problems took significantly longer to acquire the problem solutions than the other LI children and the normal children in both conditions. There were no differences in children's performance on the transfer task. Theoretical and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.