The fact that only 21 studies met our criteria means that there is relatively little evidence supporting the language intervention practices that are currently being used with school-age children with language disorders. We outline significant gaps in the evidence and discuss the implications for clinical practice in schools.

Lacking adequate research-based evidence, clinicians must rely on reason-based practice and their own data until more data become available concerning which service delivery models are most effective. Recommendations are made for an expanded research agenda.

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The retrieval of words from lexical memory was investigated in kindergarteners, first graders, third graders, and adults. Subjects named color slides depicting 100 stimulus pictures. Picture naming latency was the dependent variable. Results of multiple regression analyses indicated that the codability of pictorial representations of a concept and the frequency of the concept's label contributed to the prediction of naming latency. The effects of these sociolinguistic variables were relatively constant across all age-groups. The results support a model of vocabulary growth in which the lexicons of both children and adults in a language community are internally structured and accessed along parameters that reflect the salience of concepts and linguistic events in the environment.

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