Cognitive Strengths and Weaknesses in Language-Impaired Children

Abstract

The hypothesis-testing abilities of 15 language-impaired and 15 normally developing children matched for mental age were investigated using discrimination-learning tasks. The subjects in both groups were presented with two sets of discrimination-learning problems. One set of problems featured explicit input concerning the correct response choice. The other set of problems featured nonexplicit input. The results revealed both differences in the performance of the MA-matched and language-impaired children and differences in performance on the two types of problems. The children in both groups solved more of the explicit input problems than the nonexplicit input problems. In addition, the MA-matched children performed significantly better than the language-impaired children, particularly on the nonexplicit problems. The findings suggested that the language-impaired children exhibited deficits in solving discrimination-learning problems. The deficits exhibited by the language-impaired children seemed related to deficits in their ability to encode information.