Referential communication abilities of learning-disabled, language-learning-disabled, and normal school-age children.

Area of Science:

• Child Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics

Background:

• Referential communication skills develop progressively in typically developing children.
• Previous studies show communication is harder with associated word-pair referents than dissimilar ones.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate referential communication abilities in children with learning disabilities.
• To compare learning-disabled, language-learning-disabled, and normally achieving children's performance.

Main Methods:

• Children communicated about pictured referents using distinguishing clues.
• Tasks involved related and unrelated picture pairs, and clue evaluation.
• Participants were matched for receptive vocabulary age.

Main Results:

• Few significant differences were observed between the groups in referential communication tasks.
• Performance was comparable across learning-disabled and normally achieving children.

Conclusions:

• Vocabulary and concept development appear fundamental to referential communication.
• Learning disabilities may not significantly impair referential communication when vocabulary is matched.