Relations among verbal and nonverbal cognitive skills in normal language and specifically language-impaired children

1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 205-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Adelaida Restrepo ◽  
Linda Swisher ◽  
Elena Plante ◽  
Rebecca Vance
1988 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 459-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda Y. Terrell ◽  
Richard G. Schwartz

The play behavior of 10 language-impaired children was observed. Their performances in play were compared to those of 10 normal-language children matched for chronological age as well as to those of 10 normal-language children matched for mean length of utterance. The children were observed as they played spontaneously with a standard group of toys and as they played with objects that required object transformations for successful play. The chronological age-matched normal subjects showed a trend toward performance of more object transformations in play than either the language-impaired or younger normal-language children. Additionally, although object transformations were observed in both segments, all children performed more object transformations with objects than with toys.


1992 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecile C. Spector

Language-impaired children and adolescents, in general, have been found to have significantly poorer comprehension of humor than their peers with normal language development. This paper discusses sources of difficulty for these students in understanding the various aspects of humor and describes general and specific techniques for remediating comprehension deficits.


1985 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne E. Bernstein ◽  
Rachel E. Stark

A group of specifically language-impaired (SLI) children was compared with a matched group of non-SLI children (i.e., children displaying normal language) on tests of speech perception and language ability. The tests were administered longitudinally at times separated by an interval of 4 years. Initially (i.e., Time 1), the groups differed significantly in discrimination, sequencing, and rate processing of and serial memory for synthesized /ba/ and /da/ stimuli. At Time 1, age effects were also observed among both groups of children. That is, performance improved as a function of increased age. At follow-up (i.e., Time 2), performance was at or near ceiling for subjects in both groups, indicating that perceptual development occurred in both groups of children. Results are discussed in relation to the hypothesis that perceptual deficits play a causal role in specific language impairment.


1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence B. Leonard

Conversational replies were examined in two groups of children with comparable vocabularies and speech limited to single-word utterances: children with specific language impairment, ages 2:10 to 3:6 (years:months); and children, ages 1:5 to 1:11, who were developing language normally. In interactions with adults the language-impaired children produced a greater number and variety of replies to both questions and statements than the normal-language children. The findings suggest that language-impaired children can serve as responsive conversationalists when syntactic skill is not a factor and that comprehension, world knowledge, and/or experience with conversations permit considerable variability in conversational skill even within the same level of expressive language ability.


1981 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean M. Rizzo ◽  
M. Irene Stephens

The purpose of this study was to investigate the comprehension abilities of children with impaired expressive language and to obtain information on the interrelationships among tests of comprehension. Forty preschool children, 20 with normal language and 20 with impaired expressive language, were given a set of auditory comprehension tests. As a group, the language-impaired children demonstrated deficits in comprehension when compared to the normal-language children. However, both groups scored near the ceiling on several tests, and on most tests that did differentiate the two groups, the mean scores of both groups were above the norms. Standardization samples in a number of these tests may make corresponding norms of limited value when applied to performances of middle-class white children. An analysis of responses to selected groupings of analogous items revealed that a preschool child's correct response to a linguistic stimulus in one instance provides no assurance that the child will respond similarly to the stimulus in another linguistic environment with different task demands and different foil alternatives, In addition, the large majority of correlations among the tests were nonsignificant, indicating that it is not clinically appropriate to regard these measures of language comprehension as equivalent.


1982 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Bruck

ABSTRACTCognitive, academic, first language, and second language abilities of language impaired children attending French immersion programs were assessed in kindergarten and in grade 1. After two years of instruction in a second language the linguistic and cognitive skills of these children were similar to a comparable group of language impaired children who were educated in their first language. The language impaired children were also acquiring proficiency in second language skills, although not to the same levels of proficiency as French immersion children with normal first language abilities. The results are discussed in light of current theories of optimal language of instruction.


1993 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Evelyn Moore ◽  
Judith R. Johnston

ABSTRACTThis study investigated possible developmental asynchrony in children with specific language impairment (SL1). This was accomplished by comparing the development of temporal expressions of past reference in two linguistic domains. Verb tense and temporal adverbs served as representatives of the morphological and lexical domains. A cross-sectional design was used with four groups of subjects (N = 48) from 3 to 5 years old. Three groups had normal language and one group had impaired language. Results indicated that the performances of SLI children were similar to those of their 3-year-old language peers on the verb tasks and similar to the 4-year-olds on the adverb tasks. Such differential delays provide direct experimental evidence for asynchronous language development in SLI children.


1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 1329-1338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Ellis Weismer

Hypothesis-testing abilities were assessed using a modification of the discrimination-learning paradigm employed by Nelson, Kamhi, and Apel (1987) that was designed to minimize the short-term memory demands of the task. Sixteen language-impaired and 16 normal-language children in kindergarten and first and second grades participated in the study. The languageimpaired children solved significantly fewer problems than normal-language controls equated on cognitive level, but the two groups used similar hypothesis types to solve the problems. Type of verbal feedback provided during the hypothesis testing task (explicit vs. nonexplicit) did not significantly affect the performance of either group. These results are interpreted as indicating that language-impaired children demonstrate inefficient use of problem-solving strategies that cannot be attributed solely to memory difficulties. Issues surrounding the investigation of language-impaired children’s cognitive abilities are discussed.


1989 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence B. Leonard

ABSTRACTTheories of language learnability have focused on “normal” language development, but there is a group of children, termed “specifically language-impaired,” for whom these theories are also appropriate. These children present an interesting learnability problem because they develop language slowly, the intermediate points in their development differ in certain respects from the usual developmental stages, and they do not always achieve the adult level of language functioning. In this article, specifically language-impaired children are treated as normal learners dealing with an input that is distorted in principled ways. When the children are viewed from this perspective, Pinker's (1984) theory can account for many of the features of their language.


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