B. Brinton et al., PARTICIPATION IN COOPERATIVE LEARNING ACTIVITIES BY CHILDREN WITH SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT, Journal of speech language and hearing research, 41(5), 1998, pp. 1193-1206
This study examined the involvement of children with specific language
impairment (SLI) in a cooperative group task. Subjects consisted of 6
target children with SLI (ages 8;10 to 12;5), 6 target children march
ed for chronological age (CA), and 6 target children with similar lang
uage skills (IS). Each target subject interacted with 2 peers of the s
c me age and gender. This resulted in 54 subjects participating in 18
triadic interactions (each involving 1 target subject and 2 partners).
Each triad of children worked together to build a cardboard periscope
. Verbal and nonverbal collaborative activity were analyzed during the
interactions. All members of the CA and LS triads were highly collabo
rative and worked and talked together while assembling the periscope.
Four of the children with SLI played very minor roles in the cooperati
ve work within their triads. Their verbal contributions were limited,
and their nonverbal activity was minimal. When children with SLI did c
ollaborate in building the periscope, they performed less specialized
tasks than did their partners.