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Performance on nonlinguistic visual tasks by children with language impairment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2008

JENNIFER WINDSOR ,
KATHRYN KOHNERT ,
AMANDA L. LOXTERCAMP  and
PUI-FONG KAN
JENNIFER WINDSOR*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
KATHRYN KOHNERT
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
AMANDA L. LOXTERCAMP
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
PUI-FONG KAN
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Jennifer Windsor, Department of Speech–Language–Hearing Sciences, 115 Shevlin Hall, University of Minnesota, 164 Pillsbury Dr. S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55455. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The performance of 8- to 13-year-old monolingual English-speaking children with language impairment (LI) on seven nonlinguistic tasks was compared with two groups of typically developing children, monolingual English-speaking children, and proficient Spanish–English sequential bilingual children. Group differences were apparent, with a key finding that the LI group was observably slower than both typical groups in mental rotation and arithmetic, and also slower than the typical monolingual group in odd man out, pattern matching, and form completion. Overall, the response time (RT) increased equivalently across groups as task difficulty increased. Chronological age and perceptual–motor speed contributed to task performance, especially for the shorter tasks. RT trajectories across the 6-year age span showed that task RT decreased with age, but with greater variability for longer tasks that may also be more vulnerable to the effect of experience.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , April 2008 , pp. 237 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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