Identifying Language Comprehension Impairment in Preschool Children

Abstract

This study examined the validity of 3 discourse comprehension measures for preschool children and the ability of a combination of them to classify children with and without language impairment. Thirty-seven children with typical language and 12 children with language impairment completed 3 measures of oral story comprehension: the Joint Story Retell task, the Expectancy Violation Detection task, and comprehension questions. Discriminant analyses revealed that each measure successfully classified pre-identified groups. The clinical combination of all 3 measures resulted in 96% accurate identification of the language status of this cohort. Results support these procedures as valid measures of discourse comprehension and monitoring and provide preliminary evidence that their combination can be validly employed for identifying young children with language comprehension impairment.