Trianna Oglivie Abstracts

Trianna Oglivie Abstracts

Trianna Oglivie
Ph. D. Student
Cognitive Science GIDP Minor

Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders
Madison, Wisconsin
June 16-18, 2016

Receptive Language Deficits are Common in Specific Language Impairment

Authors: Trianna Oglivie, Marja-Liisa Mailend, & Elena Plante

BRIEF ABSTRACT

This study was designed to examine the prevalence of receptive language deficits in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and the ability to identify these deficits via different receptive language tests. Three tests of receptive language were administered to 78 children, half with SLI.

72% of children in the SLI group were identified as having receptive language deficits on at least two of the tests. Tests varied in their sensitivity to low SES status. These results suggest that receptive deficits may be much more prevalent in SLI than typically thought.

FULL ABSTRACT

Purpose: This study was designed to examine the prevalence of receptive language deficits in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and the ability to identify these deficits via different receptive language tests.

Method: The performance of 39 children with SLI and 39 age- and sex-matched typically developing children was examined on three receptive language tests: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-4th Edition (PPVT-4; Dunn & Dunn, 2007); The Grammatical Understanding subtest of the Test of Language Development-Primary, 3rd Edition (TOLD-GU; Newcomer & Hammill, 1997); and The Shirts & Shoes Test (Plante & Vance, 2011).

Results: The degree of receptive score difference varied widely for the set of tests. Using cut-off scores, derived from linear discriminant analyses, 72% of children in the SLI group were identified as having a receptive language deficits on at least two of the tests.

Conclusion: The results of this study demonstrate that receptive language deficits are present for a clear majority of children with SLI and not simply a characteristic of children with a more severe language impairment. However, the prevalence of in receptive deficits is not consistent enough to discriminate children with SLI from their typically developing peers on the tests used in this study.