Suzanne Flynn

How can you help children with moderate to severe autism become more effective communicators? Discover the Visual Immersion System (VIS), a practical, research-based intervention framework that taps into the strong visual processing skills many children on the spectrum have. You’ll learn how to use readily available resources – from photos and symbols to apps and software – to create a customised system of visual supports that boost seven key communicative functions. For each of the functions, you’ll get comprehensive how-to guidance on choosing tools and materials, conducting systematics instruction, collecting data, and assessing how well interventions are working. A must for SLPs, interventionists, and educators, the innovative VIS approach will ensure better communication and higher quality of life for children with autism. Why The VIS WorksUses visual supports, an approach that’s proven successful for children with autismStrengthens communication skills needed for learning and meaningful human interactionBuilds on evidence-based assessment and intervention procedures developed over decades at Boston Children’s HospitalIncorporates a wide range of low-tech and higher-tech optionsFlexible – can be used in home, school, or community settingsprovides clear, easy-to-use instructions on conducting interventionsIncludes guidance on generalising new communication skills

How does a biologically-programmed language faculty interact with language experience in the acquisition of language across the world? Bringing together linguistic theory, language typology, and cross-linguistic experimental results from parallel studies of development in language acquisition, this book reports new research on the nature of the human competence for language acquisition. It investigates the acquisition of complex sentence formation through relativization -a fundamental component of language knowledge- through systematic, formally explicit, hypothesis-driven experimental studies from English, French and Tulu (in the US, Belgium and India). It demonstrates that across languages, the course of acquisition shares basic properties in keeping with universals of a language faculty, while at the same time, in all languages, specific relativization forms are achieved through development. The results show the power of an approach to the study of language acquisition which bridges linguistic theory of Universal Grammar with real-time creation of a specific language by the child.

Explorations of language development in different types of learner populations and across various languages. This volume examines language development in different types of learner populations and across various languages. The contributors analyze experimental studies of child and adult language acquisition, heritage language development, bilingualism, and language disorders. They consider theoretical and methodological issues; language development in children, discussing topics that range from gestures to errors in person and number agreement; and development and attrition of (morpho)syntactic constructions in second language learners, bilinguals, and Alzheimer's patients. The approach is crosslinguistic in three senses of the word: the contributors offer analyses of acquisition phenomena in different languages; they consider crosslinguistic influence, or the potential effects of multiple languages on one another in the mind of the same speaker; and (in a novel use of the term, proposed by the editors), the chapters bring together theoretical and methodological approaches pertinent to the linguistics of language development in children, adults, and heritage speakers.