Psycholinguistic markers for specific language impairment (SLI)

In this study 160 children, aged 11 years with a definite history of specif ic language impairment (SLI), completed four tasks that could be potential positive psycholinguistic markers for this impairment: a third person singu lar task, a past tense task, a nonword repetition task, and a sentence repe tition task. This allowed examination of more than one type of marker simul taneously, facilitating both comparisons between markers and also evaluatio n of combinations of markers in relation to identifying SLI. The study also provided data regarding the markers in relation to nonverbal IQ, made use of new normative data on all tasks, and examined marker accuracy in relatio n to Current language status. The results show that markers vary in accurac y, with sentence repetition (a previously unused marker) proving to be the most useful. This psycholinguistic marker shows high levels of sensitivity (90 %), specificity (85 %), and overall accuracy (88 %), as well as being a ble to identify the majority of children whose current language status fall s in the normal range despite a history of SLI.