Word skills of children normal and impaired in communication skills and measures of language and speech development.
Results from two related investigations are reported, one using 60 normal language learners, ages 3-5 and one using 34 children with communication disorders, ages 5.4-8.5. Tasks involving the sequential recall of words from five categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions) were given to the subjects in each investigation, thus providing an opportunity to compare group performances. A hierarchy of recall strengths of words from different categories and the organizational pattern of scores was determined for each group. Each group's word category scores were used as independent variables in regression analyses to predict scores from a battery of language tests and a test of phonology. The results were anticipated to be capable of contributing to descriptions of children's mental dictionaries, have implications for word category differences in normal and impaired language learners, and clinical relevance. Comparisons of the word recall accuracy of skills of children from each group revealed that the younger normal Ss had word scores equal to the older language and speech impaired children. However, the hierarchy of word category strengths and the patterns of organization within each group's mental dictionary were essentially the same in both groups. Word category scores predicted language and speech scores in both investigations, but the prediction was stronger in the children having impaired language or speech.
Sommers
R K
RK
Kent State University, OH 44242.
Kozarevich
M
M
Michaels
C
C
D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007804:Language Development; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D014825:Vocabulary