TEACHER-IDENTIFIED ORAL LANGUAGE DIFFICULTIES AMONG BOYS WITH ATTENTION PROBLEMS

Teachers evaluated the language functioning of 95 boys, aged 6.5 to 13 .8 years, identified as having attention problems (AP, n = 30), learni ng disability (LD, n = 33), or average achievement (AA, n = 32). The t hree groups did not differ significantly (p > .05) in their frequency of articulation problems. Significantly (p < .05) more AP boys were ra ted as having pragmatics problems than both of the other groups. AP bo ys were also viewed as having a higher frequency of receptive/expressi ve language problems than were AA boys, but not compared with LD boys. LD and AA boys did not differ in their ratings for pragmatics problem s, but more LD than AA boys were perceived as having receptive/express ive problems. The average incidence of all types of language problems was highest for the AP boys at 42% with poor pragmatics representing t heir most frequently rated language difficulty. AP boys' pragmatics di fficulties seemed to be characterized by greater difficulty in maintai ning than initiating a conversation compared with the other two groups . This difficulty was positively associated with the teachers' ratings of the AP boys' impulsivity.