A Cross-Cultural,Cross-Linguistic Comparison of Language Abilities of 7- to 8- and 12- to 13-Year-Old Children with Learning Disabilities

Abstract

This study compared relative strengths and weaknesses in the language abilities of German and American learning disabled and academically achieving children. To assess language abilities, the 11 major diagnostic subtests of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Functions (CELF) were administered in the English version or in an idiomatic German translation. Subjects were (a) 15 German and 15 American 7- to 8-year-old children with learning disabilities and 15 academically achieving German and American age-level controls and (b) 15 German and 15 American 12- to 13-year-old children with learning disabilities and 15 academically achieving German and American age-level controls. German and American children with learning disabilities performed significantly poorer than their age-level controls on semantic, syntactic, auditory memory, and word retrieval tasks. The majority of the language tasks also differentiated the two age levels (7- to 8- and 12- to 13-year olds). On all but one of the tasks, German and American 12- to 13-year-olds with learning disabilities performed either poorer than or similar to the 7- to 8-year-old academic achievers. The findings concur with previous observations of language delays among children and adolescents with learning disabilities. The observations tentatively suggest cross-cultural and cross-linguistic similarities in the language disorder syndrome associated with learning disabilities.