Toddlers and Preschoolers with SLI

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Toddlers and Preschoolers with SLI

• Chapter 3

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SLI?

• Definition
• Children with significant limitation in language
  development despite adequate hearing, cognition,
  or obvious neurological damage

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Normal Variation
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• 10th percentile is a plausible cutoff
• -1.25 Standard Deviation from mean
• 80 standard score
• Based on norm referenced testing

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Risk factors for Language Problems

• Birth factors
• Chromosomal syndromes
• Neurological conditions
• Sociological factors and environmental
  deprivation
• Prematurity
• Family history of communication problems

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Overview of SLI

• Delay vs. disorder
• Delay slow but in sequence, uniform, may catch
  up
• Disorder deviation in rate, sequence or
  component
• Impairment

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Subgrouping in SLI
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Nomenclature

• Specific language impairment (SLI)
• Specific language disability
• Developmental aphasia
• Developmental language disorders
• Expressive and/or receptive delay
• Slow expressive language development (SELD)

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Neurological Bases

• Neurological correlates and /or substrates for
  difficulties in language learning and performance

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Language Knowledge and Access to Language
Knowledge

• Difficulty in abstracting implicit language rules

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Cognitive Deficits

• Deficits in particular aspects of cognitive
  function?

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Information-Processing Deficits

• Processing stimuli
• Speed
• Working memory
• Processing auditory stimuli/phonological
  processing

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Language-Learning Environment

• Language stimulation or lack
• Use of Motherese
• Recasts used less frequently by mothers of
  children with SLI

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Genetic/Familial Bases

• Tendency to run in families

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Prevalence

• _at_2
• 10 -15
• Less than 50 words in vocabulary and no two word
  combinations
• _at_3
• 2-5 or 2-12 language delay
• Differences seen in syntax, morphology and/or
  phonology
• _at_4
• 6-9 difficulty with narrative skills
• Expressive syntax and morphological weaknesses

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• _at_5
• 6.7 to 7.5 with SLI
• Interpersonal interactions/psychosocial
  difficulties
• Paul's late bloomer research showed 25 percent
  still had language delays
• Need to look at narrative skills at 5

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Considerations and Implications

• Narrow language skills screened
• Complex sentences usage and narrative skill for
  preschool children
• Plateaus
• illusory recovery and relapse
• Matthew effect
• Risk for academic difficulties

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Spontaneous Recovery??

• Difficult to predict
• See chart page 102
• Vocabulary red flags page 103
• SLI clinical marker??
• Verb morphology
• Nonword repetition
• The more risk factors present in or associated
  with a young child point to the possibility of
  future language problems for the child. page
  105

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Language Characteristics of Children with SLI

• PHONOLOGY
• Phonological disorder may accompany other
  language disorders

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• SEMANTICS
• Areas of semantic difficulty
• Smaller vocabulary, slower growth
• Less lexical diversity
• Less knowledge about word meanings
• More exposures needed to learn new words
• Word finding difficulties

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• SYNTAX and MORPHOLOGY
• Shorter MLU
• Simple sentences, fewer transformations
• Omissions/confusions with obligatory elements
• Subject case marking problems
• Difficulty with verb morphology

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• Pragmatics and Discourse page 114
• Functions and intention
• Conversation and discourse
• Initiation
• Response
• Clarifying and repair
• Adapting messages/code switching
• Active/passive interaction
• Note page 115 (Black Hazen, 1990)

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• Socialization and Psychosocial Factors
• It seems that many children with SLI also have
  emotional or behavioral issues.
• Which one was actually first??

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• Narratives
• Stories are less informative and less mature.
• See chart 433

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Intervention

• Decisions
• It appears that speech Children with sound errors
  receive intervention at a greater rate that
  children with language problems.

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• Indirect intervention
• Caregiver training
• Increase opportunities for language learning
• Change types of response
• Increase frequency of response
• Direct intervention