Characteristics of Personalized Predictive-Inference and Effects of Two Inference Facilitating Tasks in Children with Specific Language Impairment

Lee, Jin Sook; Hwang, Mina

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2007;12(2): 160-181.

Jin Sook Lee^` , and Mina Hwang^`

이진숙(Jin Sook Lee)| 황민아(Mina Hwang)

ABSTRACT

The purposes of this study were to investigate 1) the characteristics of personalized predictive-inference (PPI) in children with specific language impairments (SLI), and 2) children’s PPI depending on two inference facilitating tasks, a general knowledge task and a premises recalling task.
Methods
Sixty-six children (22 SLI, 22 chronological age[CA]-matched, 22 language age[LA]-matched groups) were assessed with the PPI task. Each group was equally divided into two subgroups with the same characteristics in terms of the PPI performance, intelligence, and language age. One of the two subgroups had the general knowledge task while the other was given the premises recalling task. Then, all participants were assessed with the second PPI task.
Results
First, the SLI group showed significantly lower PPI performance than that of the CA-matched group. Second, the performance of the second PPI task of the SLI and LA-matched children appeared significantly higher after performing the first PPI task. Third, the SLI children showed significantly frequent errors of unrelated responses compared with the other groups.
Discussion & Conclusion
The results implied that children with SLI show more deficits in the PPI than other children. The inference facilitating tasks may be effective in improving PPI performance in children with SLI.