Poor Social Outcomes Common among Children with Language Impairment

Nine years ago, Professors Martin Fujiki and Bonnie Brinton of the Department of Communication Disorders studied eight children with language impairment. Six of them were six years old, one was seven, and one was nine. All eight had difficulty understanding and producing language. Most of them also had difficulty making friends and interacting within groups. "It turns out that most kids with language impairment don't have friends; they're not well accepted," This may even be the case after their language problems are somewhat resolved, Fujiki explained. He recalled one child who made significant linguistic improvement, as measured by standardized testing. "But even this individual was not quite typical. She still had subtle problems in how she interacted with others."

In 2007, with the help of graduate student Megan Baldridge, Fujiki and Brinton contacted the original eight, five of whom are still in a Partnership school district where they participated in the original study.

At the November, 2007, ASHA conference, held in Boston, Massachusetts, Fujiki, Brinton, and Baldridge presented a poster session, "Social Outcomes of Children with SLI: Four Case Studies." discussing the social outcomes experienced by these children. Brinton and Fujiki also presented a seminar titled "Social Communication Interventions: Treatment Efficacy,"

"We did a series of studies documenting that these kids had few friends. We actually videotaped them on the playground and looked at them in cooperative learning," Fujiki explained. Fujiki reflected that in the follow up study, one of the students scored in the typical range in the follow-up tests, but still showed odd social behaviors like hugging people she didn't know. Another, who was aggressive as a young child, was now a bully on the playground but reserved and withdrawn with her teachers. Another of the five children wasn't able to continue with the study because she was expelled from school for fighting the week before the research began.

"Language is such an important part of our society, we use it for everything, and it is highlighted especially when you go to school; [a language impairment] is a big handicap in our culture," Fujiki shared. "If we communicated by music, playing instruments to communicate with each other, a lot of these kids would be just learning "Go Tell Aunt Rhodie" when everybody else around them was playing Bach concertos."

Language impairment may include problems like inadequate vocabulary, difficulty learning words, difficulty formulating sentences, or the inability to use language to interact. Language impairment, Fujiki noted, is different from speech disorders. Children with language impairment have difficulty communicating because of deficient language interaction skills, not necessarily because of a lisp, or stuttering. Children with language impairment may also experience difficulty in social communication. Fujiki gave the following example of one type of language interaction problem . A group of children might be having a conversation on football. The child with the language disorder might interrupt by saying, "So when are we going camping?" While people without disabilities do sometimes make off-topic comments, it is not nearly as common for them as it is for a child with a language disorder.

Although the students followed in the case studies have received and some are still receiving treatment for their language impairment, they are not treated at the BYU Speech and Language Clinic as part of the study. However, Fujiki acknowledged, "We do have treatments we develop and implement in our clinic here That is the ultimate goal-to develop treatment programs in order to be able to work with the kids to improve their social communication."

7 May 2008