Receptive Language Skills in Slovak-Speaking Children With Intellectual Disability: Understanding Words, Sentences, and Stories
Publication: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
Volume 61, Number 7
Pages 1731-1742
Abstract
Purpose
The study aims to describe receptive language skills in children with intellectual disability (ID) and to contribute to the debate on deviant versus delayed language development. This is the 1st study of receptive skills in children with ID who speak a Slavic language, providing insight into how language development is affected by disability and also language typology.
Method
Twenty-eight Slovak-speaking children participated in the study (14 children with ID and 14 typically developing [TD] children matched on nonverbal reasoning abilities). The children were assessed by receptive language tasks targeting words, sentences, and stories, and the groups were compared quantitatively and qualitatively.
Results
The groups showed similar language profiles, with a better understanding of words, followed by sentences, with the poorest comprehension for stories. Nouns were comprehended better than verbs; sentence constructions also showed a qualitatively similar picture, although some dissimilarities emerged. Verb comprehension was strongly related to sentence comprehension in both groups and related to story comprehension in the TD group only.
Conclusion
The findings appear to support the view that receptive language skills follow the same developmental route in children with ID as seen in younger TD children, suggesting that language development is a robust process and does not seem to be differentially affected by ID even when delayed.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
Volume 61 • Number 7 • July 2018
Pages: 1731-1742
PubMed: 29872836
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
History
- Received: Jan 23, 2017
- Revised: May 30, 2017
- Accepted: Feb 8, 2018
- Published in issue: Jul 13, 2018
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