Assessment of linguistic abilities in Italian children with specific language impairment

This study aims to describe in detail the linguistic skills of a large group of SLI participants. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of age-related effects on their linguistic performance and to whether a linguistic assessment of a narrative task can capture language impairments that might not be adequately pointed out by standardized neuropsychological tests assessing linguistic functions. The narratives produced by 62 children diagnosed with SLI with mixed expressive-receptive disorders were compared to those provided by a group of 195 children with Typical Language Development matched for chronological age and level of formal education. Furthermore, an age-related groups' performance analysis has been performed in order to determine possible correlations between patients' ages and types of language impairment. The SLI participants produced an amount of words comparable to that produced by the control group, albeit in a simpler fashion, as their narratives were teeming with omissions and/or substitutions of bound and free morphemes. These data suggest that the domains of morphosyntax and syntax were particularly impaired.