Number Skills and Knowledge in Children With Specific Language Impairment.

Abstract

The number skills of groups of 7 to 9 year old children with specific language impairment (SLI) attending mainstream or special schools are compared with an age and nonverbal reasoning matched group (AC), and a younger group matched on oral language comprehension. The SLI groups performed below the AC group on every skill. They also showed lower working memory functioning and had received lower levels of instruction.Nonverbal reasoning, working memory functioning, language comprehension, and instruction accounted for individual variation in number skills to differing extents depending on the skill.These factors did not explain the differences between SLI and AC groups on most skills.

Impact of Language Abilities on Exact and Approximate Number Skills Development: Evidence From Children With Specific Language Impairment

“…for a longer period of time than their age-matched peers (Cowan et al, 2005;Donlan et al, 2007;Fazio, 1994Fazio, , 1996Koponen et al, 2006). Nonetheless, the language components which were used Number Skills in Children with SLI 8 to perform these tasks were not clearly identified.…”

“…Children with SLI have a less developed store of arithmetic facts than that of age-matched children (Cowan et al, 2005;Fazio, 1996), a difference which persists during development. For instance, Fazio (1996Fazio ( , 1999 found that children with SLI evaluated at the age of 7 were still less efficient three years later.…”

“…For example, Fazio (1996) demonstrated that 7-year-old children with SLI count up to 42 on average while agematched children count up to 85, and the counting sequence of children with SLI was equivalent to that of younger children matched for language. The ability of the children with SLI to manipulate the verbal counting sequence is also less developed than that of their peers matched for chronological age, as indicated by a difficulty to count up from a given number to any other given number and to count backwards (Cowan, Donlan, Newton, & Lloyd, 2005;Donlan, Cowan, Newton, & Lloyd, 2007;Fazio, 1996;Koponen, Mononen, Rasanen, & Ahonen, 2006). Despite the limitation of their verbal counting sequence, children with SLI know however that one and only one number word must be assigned to each counted object in a set, and that the number word applied to the last object in the set represents the quantity of objects of the set (Camos, Fayol, Lacert, Bardi, & Laquière, 1998;Fazio, 1994).…”

Processamento fonológico e desempenho em aritmética: uma revisão da relevância para as dificuldades de aprendizagem

“…Estas crianças apresentam prejuízo na linguagem oral e inteligência não-verbal dentro ou superior à média (Cowan, Donlan, Newton, & Lloyd, 2005). Apesar das difi culdades apresentadas por essas crianças serem, por defi nição, específi cas na linguagem, o desempenho na matemática também é prejudicado (Donlan, 2007).…”

“…Na tarefa de comparação de algarismos multidígitos, o grupo SLI também teve desempenho de acordo com o esperado para sua faixa etária. Cowan et al (2005) investigaram o processamento numérico de crianças SLI entre 7 e 9 anos de idade com o objetivo de investigar as especifi cidades das difi culdades da matemática dessas crianças. As correlações entre os testes de matemática, como contagem e transcodificação, com as tarefas de compreensão oral de linguagem foram maiores que as correlações das tarefas aritméticas com a memória de trabalho (medida por uma tarefa de repetição de pseudopalavras).…”