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Towards a typology of specific language impairment
Author(s) -
Cundall David
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
child: care, health and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.832
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1365-2214
pISSN - 0305-1862
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2214.2006.00652_6.x
Subject(s) - specific language impairment , conceptualization , typology , psychology , population , developmental psychology , linguistics , cognition , cognitive psychology , demography , geography , sociology , philosophy , archaeology , neuroscience
Towards a typology of specific language impairment.
Van Weerdenburg M. , Verhoeven L. & Van Balkom H.(2006)Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry,47,176–189.Background The population of children with specific language impairments (SLI) is heterogeneous. Objective To examine this heterogeneity more closely, by identifying and describing subgroups within the population of children with SLI in the Netherlands. Method A broad battery of language tests and language‐related cognitive tests were administered to 147 6‐year‐old and 136 8‐year‐old children with SLI. Results Factor analysis revealed four factors indicating four distinct linguistic domains for both age samples: (i) lexical‐semantic abilities; (ii) auditory conceptualization; (iii) verbal sequential memory; and (iv) speech production. These empirical findings were further validated by the positive correlations found between the language factors and the judgements of teachers and speech therapists. Finally, a cluster analysis revealed four distinct clusters of SLI children for each sample with specific language profiles based on the four clusters. Conclusions The language problems that emerged from the two samples of children with SLI could be described as falling into four types. Based on these language types, four subgroups of children with SLI could be distinguished, each with a separate profile. Some subgroups had severe problems on one specific type of language problem; others had severe problems in more than one type of language problem when compared with the other subgroups in the same age sample. The different profiles may indicate a more dynamic approach is needed in intervention, considering the presence of both compensating and restricting factors within each child with SLI.