Literate Language Features in Spoken Narratives of Children With Typical Language and Children With Language Impairments.

PURPOSE

This study focused on literate language features in spoken narratives of school-age children with typical language development and school-age children with language impairments (LI).

METHOD

The spoken narrative retellings from male and female children aged 7 to 10 years were analyzed. The samples yielded scores for the literate language features of conjunctions, elaborated noun phrases, mental and linguistic verbs, and adverbs. A general language performance measure (number of different words) also was studied.

RESULTS

Group membership main effects were statistically significant for conjunctions and elaborated noun phrases, with effect sizes ranging from small to moderate. No statistically significant differences were obtained for age level or gender. Correlations between scores for number of different words and scores for the literate language features were low to moderate.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS

The measures of conjunctions and elaborated noun phrases differentiated children with LI from those with typical language. When the number of different words was normalized for sample length, support for its use as a general language performance measure was not obtained.