Conversational replies of children with specific language impairment.
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.
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Leonard
D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007100:Imitative Behavior; D007223:Infant; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D014705:Verbal Behavior