THE COUNTING ABILITIES OF CHILDREN WITH SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT - A COMPARISON OF ORAL AND GESTURAL TASKS

This study examined the counting abilities of preschool children with specific language impairment compared to language-matched and mental-a ge-matched peers. In order to determine the nature of the difficulties SLI children exhibited in counting, the subjects participated in a se ries of oral counting tasks and a series of gestural tasks that used a n invented counting system based on pointing to body parts. Despite de monstrating knowledge of many of the rules associated with counting, S LI preschool children displayed marked difficulty in counting objects. On oral counting tasks, they showed difficulty with rote counting, di splayed a limited repertoire of number terms, and miscounted sets of o bjects. However, on gestural counting tasks, SLI children's performanc e was significantly better. These findings suggest that SLI children h ave a specific difficulty with the rote sequential aspect of learning number words.