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This study examined Quick Incidental Learning (QUIL) of novel vocabulary by two groups of school-age children, those who were developing language normally and those who demonstrated a specific language impairment (SLI). The experimental items consisted of 20 words that referred to one of four semantic classes: object, attribute, action, and affective state. Videotaped stories were used to introduce the novel words, and word learning was measured by a picture-pointing task. For the normally developing children, the results documented a robust ability to learn words in the early school years. Comprehension gains were observed for all four word types, with the greatest gain made on the object labels. The children with SLI also demonstrated some word-learning ability, but their gain was significantly less than that of their normally developing peers. Although the general pattern of word effects was similar across the two groups, the children with SLI demonstrated a particularly low gain on words from the action class.

Research has shown that explicit awareness of the speech sound structure of language—that is, phonological awareness—is related to early reading development. The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of four measures of phonological awareness in predicting first grade decoding ability. Measures of phonological awareness at the beginning of first grade were found to be correlated with measures of decoding ability at the end of first grade. Correlations between decoding and phonological awareness were generally much higher than those obtained for measures of decoding and verbal and nonverbal intelligence. Discriminant analyses procedures indicated that several tasks identified good and poor decoders, with approximately 80% to 90% accuracy. The clinical implications of these data for the speech-language pathologist are discussed.

The case of a 29-year-old university student is used to discuss impairments in decoding skills in older students. Factors are reviewed that contribute to decoding unfamiliar words, such as phonological awareness skills, quality of visual orthographic images, type of decoding strategy used, and morphological awareness skills. The assessment and intervention procedures used with this student highlight the application of current literature when developing assessment and intervention programs for students from middle school and high school to the university level. Additionally, the need is emphasized to recognize and work with the special emotional needs of older students with reading impairments.

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