DIAGNOSIS OF SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT

该临床研究中心的本项目关注最初在幼儿园发现的儿童语言障碍的诊断和病程问题。我们在上一个资助期间的目标涉及语言障碍的稳定性和恢复问题，研究了不同的诊断系统和诊断标准。语言障碍的测量和诊断有三种方法。一种方法是使用传统的口语理解和产生的心理测量方法。这将与其他两种具有非常不同的理论基础的诊断方法进行对比。一种措施是基于强制性的时态用法，并受到当代语言学理论的启发。另一种是来自认知心理学，使用非工作重复任务来测量语音或工作记忆。尽管他们的理论上的差异，这两种替代方法已被证明是敏感的语言障碍。这些不同的测量方法已经并将继续被用来描述在学年期间的语言障碍的过程。利用这些措施，本项目将关注语言障碍在多大程度上可以在青春期解决或保持稳定。将确定语言障碍恢复或持续的个体差异，并评价这些差异的预测因素。从这个项目中获得的语言测量和诊断也将作为伦纳德和卡茨项目的变量。

This Project of this Clinical Research Center has been concerned with issues of diagnosis and course of language impairment among children who were initially identified in kindergarten. Our objectives during the last funding period concerned issues of stability of and recovery from language impairment investigated different diagnostic systems and standards for diagnosis. Three approaches to the measurement and diagnosis of language impairment have been employed. One approach has used traditional psychometric measures of spoken language comprehension and production. This will be contrasted with two other diagnostic approaches that have very different theoretical bases. One measure is based upon obligatory tense usage and is motivated by contemporary linguistic theory. The other derives from cognitive psychology and uses a non-work repetition task to measure phonological or working memory. Despite their theoretical differences, each of these two alternative approaches has been shown to be sensitive to language impairment. These different measurement approaches have been and will continue to be used to describe the course of language impairment during the school years. Using these measures, this project will be concerned with the extent to which language impairments may resolve by adolescence or alternatively remain stable. Individual differences in recovery or persistence of language impairment will be identified and predictors of these differences will be evaluated. The language measures and diagnoses obtained from this project will also serve as variables for Projects by Leonard and Catts.