Third person pronoun errors by children with and without language impairment

Research findings have been mixed about pronoun case problems in the language-learning profile of children with specific language impairment (SLI). This study (N= 36) extended previous findings and located a number of error patterns using detailed error analyses. Results indicated that the children with expressive SLI produced more errors with third person singular (3Psg) pronouns than did their age-level peers, but they did not make more errors than their MLU-matched peers. Error patterns were similar in the children with SLI and their language-level peers. The most frequent type of error was the substitution of the objective case for the nominative case. More errors were made on the feminine pronoun, she, than on the masculine pronoun, he. Implications for theories and clinical practice were explored.

As a result of this activity, the reader will (1) learn how children with SLI compare to their peers in producing third person pronouns, (2) learn the most common types of pronoun errors made by the children matched for mean length of utterance (MLU), and (3) evaluate how the findings relate to two current theories: one from typical language development and one from the area of SLI.