Pronominal reference skills of second and fourth grade children with language impairment

Lizbeth H. Finestack, Marc E. Fey, Hugh W. Catts

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

18 Scopus citations

Abstract

Pronominal referencing was evaluated in a sample of 569 children comprising four diagnostic subgroups: typical language (TL), specific language impairment (SLI), nonspecific language impairment (NLI), and typical language with low nonverbal IQ (LNIQ). Participants generated oral narratives in second grade and again in fourth grade. The narratives of the females in the TL group included a significantly higher rate of pronominal references than the narratives of both the males in the TL group and the females in the NLI group. A higher percentage of complete pronominal references was found in the TL group compared to the SLI group. These findings suggest that pronominal referencing measures are not sensitive enough to differentiate school-aged children with typical language development from those with language impairment. Learning outcomes: The reader will: (1) become familiar with narrative language measures and (2) learn how groups of children with varying language and cognitive profiles perform on measures of referential cohesion.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)232-248
Number of pages17
JournalJournal of Communication Disorders
Volume39
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2006
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This study was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (1-P50-DC02726) and center grant #HDO258 from the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development. We also thank Bruce Tomblin, Paula Buckwalter, Marlea O’Brien, Connie Ferguson, Jodi Schwartz, Amy Kundel, and Kelli Stanfield. Portions of the results reported in this manuscript were presented at the 2005 ASHA Convention, Philadelphia.

Copyright:
Copyright 2008 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

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