The results of this study suggest that many adolescents with SLI have perceived impairments in executive functions that affect their performance in daily living. What remains to be determined is whether language and executive function impairments are co-morbid conditions or causally linked. Few assessment tools address the unique characteristics of adolescent clinical populations, including those with SLI. These findings suggest that self- and parent ratings of executive function may offer useful information for treatment planning. A greater understanding of the relation of executive functions to language has important implications for the timing and content of therapeutic intervention.

The results of this study suggest that many adolescents with SLI have perceived impairments in executive functions that affect their performance in daily living. What remains to be determined is whether language and executive function impairments are co-morbid conditions or causally linked. Few assessment tools address the unique characteristics of adolescent clinical populations, including those with SLI. These findings suggest that self- and parent ratings of executive function may offer useful information for treatment planning. A greater understanding of the relation of executive functions to language has important implications for the timing and content of therapeutic intervention.

This investigation was motivated by observations that when persons with dysarthria increase loudness their speech improves. Some studies have indicated that this improvement may be related to an increase of prosodic variation. Studies have reported an increase of fundamental frequency (F0) variation with increased loudness, but there has been no examination of the relation of loudness manipulation to specific prosodic variables that are known to aid a listener in parsing out meaningful information. This study examined the relation of vocal loudness production to selected acoustic variables known to inform listeners of phrase and sentence boundaries: specifically, F0 declination and final-word lengthening. Ten young, healthy women were audio-recorded while they read aloud a paragraph at what each considered normal loudness, twice-normal loudness, and half-normal loudness. Results showed that there was a statistically significant increase of F0 declination, brought about by a higher resetting of F0 at the beginning of a sentence and an increase of final-word lengthening from the half-normal loudness condition to the twice-normal loudness condition. These results suggest that when some persons with dysarthria increase loudness, variables related to prosody may change, which in turn contributes to improvement in communicative effectiveness. However, until this procedure is tested with individuals who have dysarthria, it is uncertain whether a similar effect would be observed.

One of the principal enterprises of publishers and equipment producers is the manufacture and sale of programs and teaching machines. Applications of these educational and training techniques are prevalent in education, special education, industry, and the military. Conflicting results have been obtained both within and among these areas. It is concluded that this lack of concordance is due both to the situation in which the technique is used and various programming technicalities. More control in future research concerning criterion tests, structuring of this situation, control groups, specification of objectives, motivational factors, and theoretical variables is recommended.

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