The management of cohesion in written narratives in students with specific language impairment: Differences between childhood and adolescence

Abstract

The goal of this study was to investigate the management of cohesion by children and adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI) when writing a narrative in a communicative situation. Twelve children with SLI (from 7 to 11 years old) and 12 adolescents with SLI (from 12 to 18 years old) were chronological age-matched with 24 typically developing (TD) children and 24 TD adolescents. All participants attended mainstream classes: children in elementary schools and adolescents in middle and high schools. Analyses of cohesion focused on both density and diversity of connectives, punctuation marks and anaphors. Results attested that children with SLI were greatly impaired in their management of written cohesion and used specific forms previously observed in narrative speech such as left dislocations. By contrast, and not expected, the management of written cohesion by adolescents with SLI was close to that of their TD peers. The communicative writing situation we set up, which engaged participants to take into account the addressee, also made possible for adolescents with SLI to manage cohesion in writing.