Language Deficiencies in Inner-City Children With Learning and Behavioral Problems

Abstract

The language skills of 27 learning disabled (LD), 27 behaviorally disordered (BD), and 26 normal achieving (NA) 6- to 9-year-old children were compared on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Revised (CELF-R). A series of ANOVA procedures for the CELF-R standard scores revealed significant differences between the NA group and both special education groups on all subtests, clusters, and the total language score, but no significant differences were found between the LD and BD groups. The behavioral deviancy of a language-deficient special education subgroup, a language-competent special education subgroup, and the NA group was compared on the Behavioral Evaluation Scale (BES). Analysis of variance for the BES total standard scores showed significantly higher behavioral deviancy for the language-deficient subgroup than the NA group, but no significant difference between the language-competent subgroup and the NA group.