Children with specific language impairment (LI) have deficits on some
nonverbal tasks, but it is not clear if these are related to specific
visuospatial deficits or to more general deficits in processing
strategies. Children with LI were given two visuospatial tasks that we
have shown to be sensitive to strategy use as well as specific processing
deficits. In Study 1, children with LI (N = 29, ages 6 to 12
years) performed significantly worse than typically developing children
(N = 26) on the Hierarchical Forms Memory task. In Study 2,
children with LI (N = 15; ages 9 to 12 years) performed
significantly worse than typically developing children (N = 40)
on the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure task. Children with LI were less
accurate and tended to use a fairly piecemeal (immature) strategy when
copying the figure and were less likely to draw the core rectangle in a
more integrated fashion during the immediate memory condition. These
results suggest children with LI have subtle deficits on visuospatial
tasks that may be more indicative of limitations associated with
processing load and planning than of specific visuospatial processing
deficits (JINS, 2006, 12, 465–474.)