The parental questionnaire FTF (Five to Fifteen) was given to parents of 76 children (mean age 11 years) diagnosed with ADHD. About half of the children had at least once been referred to a speech- and language pathologist. Most of them had not received any intervention or follow-up. A factor analysis identified six problem areas, which explain close to 75% of the total variation: Cognitive Skills, Motor/Perception, Emotion/Socialisation/Behaviour, Attention, Literacy Skills and Activity Control. The majority of the children had pragmatic problems, which are associated with some of the core aspects of the ADHD symptoms, especially inattention and impulsiveness. Communication and language comprehension caused these children many more problems than expressive language. Problems of reading and writing were very frequent. IQ-score was associated with maths and reading/writing. Additional items reflecting language skills, in particular language comprehension and pragmatics, were also found in other domains in the FTF, mainly in Executive functions, Learning and Social skills. Problems with language and pragmatics thus seem to be associated with the typical problems with learning and social skills in children with ADHD.

Aim: To investigate the possibility of identifying children at risk for language impairment based on a new screening instrument to assess communication and language skills at 18 mo of age. Methods: At 18 mo, 58 children were assessed with a screening instrument for communication and language consisting of a professional assessment and a parents' questionnaire. Students of speech and language pathology, well trained in child language assessment, carried out the professional assessment, which was based on observations of play behaviour, interaction and expressive and receptive language skills. Of the 58 children, 43 attended a follow‐up assessment of language skills at 54 mo of age. Results: Nine children were considered to be at risk for language impairment at 18 mo and 10 children were evaluated as being at risk at 54 mo. A significant positive correlation was found between the professional evaluations at 18 mo and the language tests at 54 mo. Verbal comprehension and pretend play correlated significantly with the results on the language tests. Conclusion: A professional screening of communication and language at 18 mo of age is worthwhile for predicting problems in language development. The results further show that language comprehension and pretend play rather than expressive skills should be emphasized.

This paper explores language intervention for children with specific language impairment in Sweden. The elicitation strategies, style of interaction and language production used by speech and language pathologists (SLPs) were analyzed in two conditions, free conversation and training of grammar. In training, the grammatical targets were used significantly more often by the SLPs, but not by the children. In the free conversations the children talked more and had significantly higher mean length of utterance in words and the SLPs linked significantly more to the child's focus. The two conditions represent different, but complementary approaches to language intervention.

This study investigated lexical aspects of verb knowledge in Swedish children with specific language impairment (SLI). The type of verbs studied were those of placement, a semantic area with a language-specific differentiation in Swedish. It was hypothesized that owing to their cross-linguistic uncommonness, these verbs cause difficulties for children with SLI, that these problems are more marked in production than in comprehension, and that children with SLI show less change over time than controls. Ten children with SLI and 10 language-matched controls participated in an acting-out task testing the comprehension and production of four different verbs of placement. The children were tested on two occasions, with a 6-month interval. The groups did not differ in their performance on the comprehension task at either testing. In production, the children with SLI had significantly more difficulties in choosing the correct verb than the controls at the second testing. The controls performed significantly better on production at the second testing than at the first, whereas the children with SLI did not enhance their performance between testings. This indicates that children with SLI have lexical problems and that these problems do not diminish with time. The results are related to the results from studies of second-language learners of Swedish who often have difficulties in the usage of these verbs. The results are also related to the results from studies of the corresponding semantic field in English- and Dutch-speaking children with SLI. The comparisons show some interesting differences, depending on the type of learner and the language learned. The approach adopted seems promising. Studies of lexical specificity in children with SLI would give interesting information, useful both for the development of clinical assessment instruments and for our understanding of lexical acquisition in these children.

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