[Diagnosis and differentiation of children with language development disorders. What role can be attributed to intelligence?].
BACKGROUND
Specific language impairment (SLI) is defined as a developmental disorder in which language comprehension and the child's ability to use expressive spoken language is markedly below the appropriate level for his or her mental age. The intelligence of SLI children is in the normal range, while their language abilities are impaired. "Normal intelligence", the defining feature of SLI is questioned in this study.


METHODS
Using IDIS (an inventory of diagnostic information in language impairment), we examined 138 children aged 5 and 6 years with severe language impairment; 108 SLI and 30 LI children. Various indicators of speech and language such as articulation, the ability to discriminate sounds, lexicon, grammar and pragmatic abilities but also auditory and visual perception, auditory and visual memory, fine and gross motor function were assessed.


RESULTS
The performance of the SLI children was significantly higher in most of the tests than that of the LI children. Factor analysis showed that the two groups also differed in the structure of performance. Auditory short-term memory was reduced in most children irrespective of intelligence.


CONCLUSIONS
We propose the retention of the differentiation of subgroups of developmental speech and language disorders depending on the level of intelligence.
Keilmann
A
A
Klinik und Poliklinik für Kommunikationsstörungen der Universität Mainz.
Braun
L
L
Schöler
H
H
D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D042241:Early Diagnosis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D007361:Intelligence Tests; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000145:classification* / Q000175:diagnosis*; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D011379:Prognosis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000379:methods*; D012307:Risk Factors; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013062:Speech Articulation Tests; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000145:classification* / Q000175:diagnosis*; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires