Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research · 2003 · 317 citations · 28 references
Language DevelopmentAtypical Language DevelopmentLinguistic MarkersEducationEarly Childhood LanguagePsycholinguisticsChild LanguageLanguage AcquisitionCognitive DevelopmentSchool-age LanguageLanguage DisordersLanguage StudiesSpeech And Language DisordersSpecific Learning DisorderSpecific Language ImpairmentPotential Positive MarkersRehabilitationLanguage DisorderChronological AgePediatricsYoung ChildrenLinguistics
The study aimed to examine multiple marker types simultaneously to compare markers and evaluate marker combinations for identifying SLI. The authors administered four linguistic and processing tasks—past tense, noun plurals, nonword repetition, and digit recall—to 32 5‑year‑old children with SLI and 32 age‑matched controls to assess marker performance. SLI children performed significantly worse than controls on all four tasks, with nonword repetition and past tense showing the highest accuracy, and stepwise discriminant analysis identifying them as the best markers for detecting SLI.
Thirty-two 5-year-old children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 32 chronological age (CA) controls completed 4 tasks that were considered potential positive markers for SLI. Children's performance on 2 linguistic tasks (past tense and noun plurals task) and 2 processing tasks (nonword repetition and digit recall) were examined. This approach allowed the examination of more than 1 type of marker simultaneously, facilitating both comparisons between markers and also the evaluation of combinations of markers in relation to identifying SLI. Children with SLI performed significantly worse than CA controls in all 4 marker tasks. Specificity/sensitivity analysis of the 4 marker tasks revealed nonword repetition and the past tense task to have the best overall accuracy at the 25th and 16th percentile. Finally, stepwise discriminant analysis revealed nonword repetition and past tense marking to be the best markers for identifying young children with SLI.
28