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'''== SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT =='''
General Identity and Prevalence
The largest proportions of children who demonstrate language delay or disorder do not have hearing impairment, cognitive impairment, or autism. Moreover, they show no gross signs of brain dysfunction, although minor brain dysfunction may be suspected or probable. Such children demonstrate language impairment as their single obvious developmental disability. For this reason, they are often given the diagnosis of specific language impairment (SLI). As Leonard (1998) points out, the diagnosis of SLI is one of exclusion; that is, alternative explanations for the child's failure to learn language have been sought and not found. A large-scale study found that, of over 6,000 five year-old children, over 7 percent could be considered specifically language impaired, based on actual linguistic and nonlinguistic test performance (Tomblin et al., 1997). Most of these children were still functioning below age expectations for language skills four years later (Tomblin, Zhang, Buckwalter, & O'Brien, 2003).
Not all studies that have examined children with SLI have used the same criteria to identify the disorder (Tager-Flusberg & Cooper, 1999). This fact has confounded interpretation of the many studies that have examined such children's functioning. Currently, the conventional criteria for identification of SLI include the following (Leonard, - 1998): language test scores falling below 1.25 standard deviations -from the mean, a performance IQ of at least 85, normal hearing as assessed by screening at conventional levels, a negative recent history of otitis media (middle ear infections), no evidence of obvious neurological dysfunction, intact oral-motor structure and function, and grossly normal patterns of social interaction. To this, he urges the use of descriptive measures to define SLI (Leonard, 2003): deficits in finite verb morphology (use of the past tense, third-person-singular marker, and copular and auxiliary verb forms), nonword repetition, and phoneme discrimination tasks. These added features are proposed not so much to define the disorder in order to qualify children for services as to ensure that re-searchers a -e studying the same groups of children.
=== Language Profiles of Children ===
With Specific Language Impairment
From "Late Talker" to Language Impaired: The Early Course of SLI
In general, studies of the language abilities of children with SLI suggest that their linguistic development is best characterized as delayed in quality rather than deviant, though this characterization is still disputable. Most appear to begin life as "late talkers,"
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