Dm. Boudreau et Nl. Hedberg, A comparison of early literacy skills in children with specific language impairment and their typically developing peers, AM J SP-LAN, 8(3), 1999, pp. 249-260
Although children with language impairments often experience difficulties l
earning to read and write, very little research has examined early developi
ng skills in this population. In this project, preschool children with spec
ific language impairment and peers matched for age, gender, and socioeconom
ic status were compared on measures of language, processing, and print-rela
ted skills. Results revealed that the children with language impairments pe
rformed more poorly than typical peers on tasks measuring knowledge of rhym
e, letter names, and concepts related to print. Despite poorer performance
of the group with SLI on narrative measures of linguistic structure, recall
of information, and total events included, no significant differences were
observed on inclusion of components identified as critical to overall plot
line. Findings suggest that difficulties extend across early developing sk
ills known to be important for both decoding and comprehension.