ABSTRACT
The emergence of communication and language skills is a h ~ ~ a r k of child development. Once these skills begin to appear at the end of the first year of life, most children follow a similar developmental path toward adult language skills, that is, from intentional communication and the production of single words to the generation of semantic relations and syntactic forms ( A d ~ s o n , 1996; Berko-Gleason, 1996). m e n language and communication skills do not emerge during early childhood, as is the case for most children and youth with severe mental retardation, there are specific long-term effects on development that continue across the life span. Not only are children with severe mental retardation unable to communicate through conventional means, their intellectual and soc i~-emot ion~ development, as well as their educational achievements, are si compromised (Romski, Sevcik, & Adamson, 1997).
