Oral language and narrative skills in children with specific language impairment with and without literacy delay: A three-year longitudinal study

A 3-year longitudinal study of the language performance of children from poverty was designed to address the problem of separating children with a specific language impairment (SLI) from low-scoring normal children in the borderline area on the continuum of language performance where normal ends and abnormal begins. Two approaches to definition were compared: an experimental approach (using story-retelling, rote-memory ability, and invented-morpheme learning) and a traditional approach (using standardized-test discrepancy scores). Results indicated that 6 of 34 children tracked from kindergarten through second grade appeared to be SLI at the end of the study. The best kindergarten predictor for the outcome status of these 6 children was a combination of the score on the Oral Vocabulary subtest of the TOLD-2P and the score on a combination of the experimental tasks. The best single kindergarten predictor of the academic status of the 15 children in the study who received academic remediation was story-retelling. Children’s scores on the experimental and standardized tests of language performance and nonverbal intelligence were profiled over the 3 years of the study, and patterns of change in many instances reveal the lifting of the early influences of poverty.

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Concurrent and Construct Validity of Oral Language Measures With School-Age Children With Specific Language Impairment

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/1092-4388(2011/10-0213) ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 54 (6) ◽

pp. 1597-1608 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

LaVae M. Hoffman ◽

Diane Frome Loeb ◽

Jayne Brandel ◽

Ronald B. Gillam

Keyword(s):

Construct Validity ◽

Language Impairment ◽

Oral Language ◽

Specific Language Impairment ◽

School Age Children ◽

School Age ◽

Specific Language ◽

Language Measures

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Auditory perception and word recognition in Cantonese-Chinese speaking children with and without Specific Language Impairment

Journal of Child Language ◽

10.1017/s0305000915000604 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 44 (1) ◽

pp. 1-35

Author(s):

JOANNA C. KIDD ◽

KATHY K. SHUM ◽

ANITA M.-Y. WONG ◽

CONNIE S.-H. HO ◽

TERRY K. AU

Keyword(s):

Word Recognition ◽

Language Impairment ◽

Phonological Processing ◽

Oral Language ◽

Specific Language Impairment ◽

Auditory Perception ◽

Spoken Word Recognition ◽

Spoken Word ◽

Neighborhood Density ◽

Specific Language

AbstractAuditory processing and spoken word recognition difficulties have been observed in Specific Language Impairment (SLI), raising the possibility that auditory perceptual deficits disrupt word recognition and, in turn, phonological processing and oral language. In this study, fifty-seven kindergarten children with SLI and fifty-three language-typical age-matched controls were assessed with a speech-gating task to measure spoken word recognition, psychophysical tasks to measure auditory Frequency Modulation (FM) detection and Frequency Discrimination (FD), and standardized psychometric tests of phonological processing and oral language. As a group, children with SLI took significantly longer than language-typical controls to recognize words with high neighborhood density, perhaps reflecting subpar phonological representations. FM, but not FD, was significantly worse in SLI. However, while both poorer speech-gating performance and poorer auditory thresholds (FM) were evident in SLI, spoken word recognition did not mediate any relation between auditory perception and either phonological processing or oral language.

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