The Diagnostic Significance of Sentence Repetition for Language-Impaired Children

Abstract

The procedure of sentence repetition, described in this study, would seem to provide a valuable, simple tool to assess the linguistic performance of a language-impaired subject. It enables the performance of each individual subject to be compared with his own previous production. It provides a means for observing and analyzing any shift in production under the other two conditions which the subject may make. As such, the procedure enables the interviewer to examine and assess the grammatical performance and to infer or hypothesize about each subject’s linguistic competence. Further recommendations might involve the comparison of children who are culturally disadvantaged with those diagnosed as language-impaired. A possible difference might be the former’s ability to shift production when a correct model is presented for repetition. Another implication might involve the possible correlation of a subject’s ability to produce structures in the sentence repetition task with test scores on various standardized language tests.