SPATIAL COGNITION IN LANGUAGE-IMPAIRED CHILDREN

Limited research evidence is available concerning the spatial abilitie s of children with specific language impairments. This paper reports a study of the ability of such children to use plan drawings. The parti cipants were 23 language-impaired (LI) children (12 from special board ing schools, II from language units within mainstream primary schools) , whose performance was compared with that of 23 non-language-impaired (NLI) children. The children were matched for age, their overall age range being between 7;0-11;11 (mean age 8;6). Tasks involved the produ ction and utilisation of plan drawings of a model house. With one exce ption, results indicated that the LI children showed no deficit in abi lity on such tasks, and indeed out-performed their NLI peers on many o f them. Implications of these findings are discussed.