Assessment of inference ability in children with Developmental Language Disorder and typically developing peers
Published:
Dec 22, 2022
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine whether children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have difficulties in inferencing skills. Thirty children aged 5.1 - 6.5 years participated in the study, of which twenty were typically developing (TD) and ten with DLD. All children were assessed pre-experimentally with standardized and non standardised language tests. The experimental assessment included the administration of a task assessing inference skills, which was comprised of 20 multiple-choice short stories. The stories were presented orally to the children and they had to choose between three possible answers according to the questions they have been asked for. The results showed that the group of children with DLD had significantly lower scores in almost all of the stories (except for two) compared to the TD children. Moreover, statistically significant and strong positive correlation was found between inference skills and sentence repetition skills, which confirms the strong relationship between inference and morphosyntactic skills. It is concluded that children with DLD have difficulties in inference skills, as it is confirmed in the literature. The implications for assessment and intervention are discussed.
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Theodora, & Τάλλη Ι. (2022). Assessment of inference ability in children with Developmental Language Disorder and typically developing peers. Journal of Research in Education and Training, 15(2), 23–47. https://doi.org/10.12681/jret.24209
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