Speed of processing in children with specific language impairment

The aim of the present study was to investigate the speed with which childr en with specific language impairment (SLI) respond on a range of tasks. Sev enty-seven third-grade children participated in 10 different tasks (involvi ng a total of 41 conditions), including nonlinguistic and linguistic activi ties. Mean response times (RTs) of children with SLI (n = 29) increased as a function of mean RTs of children with normal language (NLD, n = 29) under each of three different regression models; children with SLI responded mor e slowly across all task conditions, and also when linguistic and nonlingui stic tasks were analyzed separately. Children with nonspecific language imp airment (NLI) were also included (n = 19). The results were similar to thos e for children with SLI, but the degree of slowing was greater The results of the group analyses support the hypothesis that speed of processing in ch ildren with SLI is generally slower than that of children with normal langu age. However, some children with SLI do not appear to show deficits of this type.