Written narrative characteristics in adults with language impairment

Adults with language-based disabilities are known to have deficits in oral language; however, less is known about their written language skills. Two studies were designed to characterize the writing of adults with language-based disabilities.

In Study 1, 60 adults, 30 with language impairment and 30 with typical language, completed written narratives. Forty-one written language measures were analyzed. In Study 2, the measures that had the most potential for reliably indexing deficits were analyzed in an additional 77 adults.

Three measures that showed significant between-group differences and had robust effect sizes in Study 1, total number of verbs, 1-part verbs, and errors, were applied to the samples in Study 2. A group difference for percentage of errors was replicated in the second sample. A discriminant analysis identified 75% of the adults with language impairment and 30% of the adults with typical language as having an impairment based on the percent of written errors.

The writing task revealed consistent group differences in written errors and is clinically applicable in describing a client's writing. However, the number of written errors was not robust enough to identify whether an adult had a language impairment or not.