Assessment of fetal breathing movements using three different ultrasound modalities.

Twenty-five consecutive women in the third trimester of pregnancy were studied to determine the presence or absence of fetal breathing movements using three different ultrasound imaging techniques. Using real-time B-mode observation of the fetal trunk as the standard, image-directed pulsed wave Doppler insonation of the umbilical vein confirmed the presence of breathing movements with a sensitivity of 100% and the absence of breathing movements with a specificity of 100%. The sensitivity and specificity of color Doppler imaging of the fetal naso- and oropharynx for the presence or absence of fetal breathing movements were 96% and 100%, respectively. In the current study, the detection of fetal breathing movements by three different ultrasound modalities was virtually interchangeable.

Interobserver reliability using the Phonetic Level Evaluation with severely and profoundly hearing-impaired children.

This study examines whether observers reliably categorize selected speech production behaviors in hearing-impaired children. A group of experienced speech-language pathologists was trained to score the elicited imitations of 5 profoundly and 5 severely hearing-impaired subjects using the Phonetic Level Evaluation (Ling, 1976). Interrater reliability was calculated using intraclass correlation coefficients. Overall, the magnitude of the coefficients was found to be considerably below what would be accepted in published behavioral research. Failure to obtain acceptably high levels of reliability suggests that the Phonetic Level Evaluation may not yet be an accurate and objective speech assessment measure for hearing-impaired children.

Prenatal diagnoses in unilateral empty renal fossa.

Six cases of unilateral empty renal fossa diagnosed by obstetric sonography are described. The anomalies reported (ectopic kidney, cross-fused ectopic kidney, and unilateral renal agenesis) have not yet been described in the prenatal literature, to our knowledge, in fetuses that are otherwise normal. The study also demonstrates that, in spite of their nonvital in utero role, single kidneys may show compensatory hypertrophy.

Comprehension of social-action games in prelinguistic children: levels of participation and effect of adult structure.

We currently lack a systematic approach to examine the emergence of social-action games during the prelinguistic period of development. Although social-action games have been identified as being an important part of prelinguistic development, a systematic approach to examine their emergence has been lacking. Further, research has yet to analyze how contextual variables affect a child's comprehension and participation during these action routines. Results of the present study document changes in the development of social-action games in 29 normally developing subjects from 9 to 15 months and support a developmental hierarchy of social-action game participation. The results also reflect the effect of adult structure on the subject's level of performance and reveal a significant relationship between adult contextual support and child performance. The implications of the findings are summarized.

Assessing communicative intents in young children: low structured observation or elicitation tasks?

This longitudinal study examines the effectiveness of two different assessment methodologies, low structured observation and structured elicitation tasks, to obtain communicative intents from 35 sensorimotor children. The subjects, 9 months of age at the onset of the study, were observed under the two experimental conditions every 3 months, for a 15-month period. The results reveal differences between the two approaches that vary according to the age of the child and eliciting context. The implications of the findings are examined.

Responses to requests in the dialogues of mothers and their stage 1 children.

The development of conversation requires children to learn to relate their utterances to utterances from other speakers. This investigation examined one method in which children relate their utterances to preceding utterances in conversation, namely, response utterances to request utterances. Late Stage 1 children's responses were examined for their pragmatic and semantic relationships to five types of requests used by mothers. Conditional (child responses to mother's requests) and unconditional (child responses following mother's utterances) probabilities were generated using the lag sequential analysis. The level of significant difference between the conditional and unconditional probabilities was determined with the binomial distribution. The results indicate that the children produced contingent linguistic responses to the mothers' requests based on the pragmatic intent of the requests--specifically, those requesting semantic information, clarifying a misunderstood remark, and requesting agreement or disagreement with a proposition. Further, the children's responses to the mothers' requests for semantic information provided the appropriate semantic information requested by the mothers. The children produced contingent nonlinguistic responses to the mothers' requests for an action to be performed, whereas contingent nonlinguistic or linguistic responses following the mothers' requests for attention failed to achieve significance. These findings indicate that responses to requests are important in the development of early contingent speech and provide one means for structuring conversation with Late Stage I children.

Spontaneous imitations of Down's syndrome children: a lexical analysis.

This study describes the spontaneous imitations produced by four Stage 1 Down's syndrome children. The imitative speech of the children was compared to their spontaneous productions to determine whether words imitated are different from those produced spontaneously. The findings suggest that Down's children are similar to normal-language learners in that they selectively imitate model utterances during this linguistic stage.

Relational meaning encoded in the two-word utterances of stage 1 Down's syndrome children.

This study explored the early two-word utterances from four Down's syndrome children to determine if they encode the same relational meanings as children developing language normally. Nine semantic categories were established to classify the subject's two-word constructions. Absolute and proportional frequencies of relational types were then used to analyze the relational meanings. The results reveal that this classification system accounts for a combined 79% of the two-word utterances expressed by these Down's subjects. It is suggested that Down's children demonstrate as much diversity in their use of relational meanings as normals at the same linguistic stage. These findings are discussed with respect to what Down's children know about the world as they begin to produce two-word combinations.