Speech Act Responses of Language Impaired Children

Abstract

The present study was designed to replicate a study of normal children in grades one through three by Klecan-Aker et al. (1983), using a group of 12 language impaired (LI) children, aged 7;3 to 11;9 years. Seven questions designed to evoke specific speech acts were asked during structured dialogue, as children looked at four black-and-white pictures. Results indicated that the taxonomy of Klecan-Aker et al. (1983) was sufficient to handle the subjects' responses and that the ten categories could be reliably coded. For five of the questions, LI children produced the expected response at least 67% of the time. The lowest frequency of expected responses was for the question designed to evoke revisions, a result similar to that found by Klecan-Aker et al. (1983). As a group the LI children produced the expected responses more often than did the normal children studied by Klecan-Aker et al. (1983). Possible reasons for these results are discussed.