Abstract
Aspects of the discourse of 5 language-impaired children and 5 children with no language impairment, aged approximately 9 years, were compared. A film and a story sequence were utilised to elicit narratives on which, measures of cohesion, tense and pronouns were appraised. Measures of cohesion refer to the ability to indicate appropriately the relations of meaning with regard to situational context. Measures of tense include aspects of tense range and tense continuity. Measures of pronouns refer to the anaphoric use of pronouns with non-ambiguous referents. The group of language-impaired children was found to be significantly poorer on measures of cohesion and pronominal usage than the normal children, whereas a significant difference between the two groups was not revealed on measures of tense. Possible factors accounting for these findings were discussed and implications for the diagnosis and therapy of the older language-impaired child were considered.
Highlights
A significant difference between the Ε and C groups was found on measures of semantic cohesion and ambiguous pronoun usage
The present research has shown that a consideration of language beyond the single sentence level is relevant as it has highlighted differences between the Ε and C groups
This implies the need for diagnosis and therapy of expressive language disorders in the older child to be considered with reference to discourse
Summary
To examine aspects of the communicative ability as revealed by discourse, of a group of older language-impaired children and to compare the communicative ability of this group with that of non language-impaired children of the same age range. Measures of Tense - the appropriate use of complex tenses, as well as tense range and tense continuity. Measures of Pronouns - the anaphoric use of third person pronouns with non-ambiguous referents. Two groups of subjects (Ss) comprising an experimental (E) group of 5 language-impaired children and a control (C) group of 5 non languageimpaired children were used. The Ε Ss had language problems predominantly of an expressive nature as assessed by the speech therapists attached to the two remedial schools from which the Ss were selected. Ss were receiving speech therapy at the time of testing
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