The ability of children with language impairment to manipulate topic in a structured task

This study investigated the way in which 10 children with specific language impairment (SLI), 10 typical children of similar chronological ages (CA), and 10 typical children at similar levels of language functioning (LS) maintained topics that were introduced to them by an adult investigator. Two different types of topics were introduced in interaction with each child. One topic type involved verbal introduction of an object; the other involved verbal introduction of an event. Although most subjects in all groups contributed appropriate utterances in response to the examiner's topics, subjects with SLI contributed more inappropriate utterances than subjects in either of the other groups. Children with SLI demonstrated particular difficulty with verbal topics when compared with the CA and LS peers.