THE ABILITY OF CHILDREN WITH LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT TO MANIPULATE TOPIC IN A STRUCTURED TASK

This study investigated the way in which 10 children with specific lan guage impairment (SLI), 10 typical children of similar chronological a ges (CA), and 10 typical children at similar levels of language functi oning (LS) maintained topics that were introduced to them by an adult investigator. Two different types of topics were introduced in interac tion with each child. One topic type involved verbal introduction of a n object; the other involved verbal introduction of an event. Although most subjects in all groups contributed appropriate utterances in res ponse to the examiner's topics, subjects with SLI contributed more ina ppropriate utterances than subjects in either of the other groups. Chi ldren with SLI demonstrated particular difficulty with verbal topics w hen compared with the CA and LS peers.