Pronominal reference skills of second and fourth grade children with language impairment

Pronominal referencing was evaluated in a sample of 569 children comprising four diagnostic subgroups: typical language (TL), specific language impairment (SLI), nonspecific language impairment (NLI), and typical language with low nonverbal IQ (LNIQ). Participants generated oral narratives in second grade and again in fourth grade. The narratives of the females in the TL group included a significantly higher rate of pronominal references than the narratives of both the males in the TL group and the females in the NLI group. A higher percentage of complete pronominal references was found in the TL group compared to the SLI group. These findings suggest that pronominal referencing measures are not sensitive enough to differentiate school-aged children with typical language development from those with language impairment.Learning outcomesThe reader will: (1) become familiar with narrative language measures and (2) learn how groups of children with varying language and cognitive profiles perform on measures of referential cohesion.