title: Identifying risk for specific language impairment with narrow and global measures of grammar.
abstract: In this study, we ask (1) whether measures of the developmental level of the tense/agreement morphemes used by children have diagnostic value, as has been found for tense/agreement consistency; and (2) whether global measures of accuracy can be applied to children four and five years of age. The spontaneous speech samples of 112 four- and five-year-olds with specific language impairment (SLI) or typical language were analyzed. Group differences were seen for the developmental level of the children's tense/agreement morpheme use, but diagnostic accuracy did not reach acceptable levels, in contrast to a measure of tense/agreement consistency applied to the same data. A global measure of grammatical accuracy was found to be useful, but more appropriate for screening children already viewed as at risk for language difficulties. These findings suggest that an extended period of tense/agreement inconsistency may be more central to SLI than alternative measures related to tense/agreement morphology.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University , West Lafayette, IN , USA.
authors.forename: Sofía M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Souto
authors.forename: Laurence B
authors.initials: LB
authors.lastname: Leonard
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Deevy
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D007807:Language Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012660:Semantics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Diagnostic accuracy; grammar; language disorders; specific language impairment