for students with Autism/PDD

Children diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) made significant gains in receptive and expressive language after using Fast ForWord Language.

Children diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) made significant gains in their oral language skills after using Fast ForWord Language. One-third of the children were diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder- autism, two-thirds were diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder- not otherwise specified. The improvements seen for the two diagnoses were similar.

Methodology
A group of children ranging in age from 5 to 13 years old had their language skills assessed with the Test of Language Development (TOLD) or the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF).

Measures

• The CELF - a comprehensive language test widely used to measure a child's ability to understand words and sentences, follow directions, recall and formulate sentences, and understand relationships between words and categories. It is designed for ages 6-21, yet the subtests differ by age. Overall performance on this test is indicated by a measure called the Total Language Score. It is based upon a combination of the receptive and expressive language measures.
  
• The TOLD - a comprehensive test of language skills used to assess a child's listening, organising, speaking, semantics and syntax skills. It is designed for ages 4-12, yet the subtests differ by age. The Listening Quotient corresponds to receptive language skills while the Speaking Quotient corresponds to expressive language skills.

Source
Merzenich, M. M., Saunders, G., Jenkins, W. M., Miller, S., Peterson, B. & Tallal, P. (1999). In S. H. Broman & J. M. Fletcher (Eds.), The changing nervous system: Neurobehavioral consequences of early brain disorders. New York: Oxford University Press.

More Information
For more information about this research study, please refer to the full report.