RESPONSE LATENCY AND VERBAL COMPLEXITY - STOCHASTIC-MODELS OF INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES IN CHILDREN WITH SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENTS

Within-subject statistical modeling techniques were employed to invest igate individual differences in the extent to which two possible indic ators of processing time predicted changes in utterance complexity dur ing spontaneous discourse for 10 children ages 7;1 to 10;1 with specif ic language impairments (SU) who differed in receptive language abilit ies. The two indicators of processing time that were modeled were resp onse latency and the use of a specific discourse marker (Verbal Pause) that provided children with additional time to respond. Longer respon se latencies were not a strong predictor of increased utterance length For any of the children. However, results indicated that children wit h better receptive skills used substantially more verbal pauses than c hildren with both expressive and receptive deficits and that the use o f these pauses was a strong predictor of increased utterance length fo r children with better comprehension skills.