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Diagnostic labels for children with primary, or otherwise unexplained, language disorders range across settings and within the scientific literature. Among other problems, this lack of agreement creates difficulty with the successful employment of evidence-based practice. This article reviews the evolving terminology and addresses issues of inconsistency with a particular focus on instructional opportunities for students in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD). The pedagogical approach of problem-based learning (PBL) is well suited to this challenge; a structured model for instruction is reviewed and specific guidelines for educators are suggested.

Purpose: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) appear to demonstrate deficits in attention and its control. Selective attention involves the cognitive control of attention directed toward a relevant stimulus and simultaneous inhibition of attention toward irrelevant stimuli. The current study examined attention control during a cross-modal word recognition task. Method: Twenty participants with SLI (ages 9-12 years) and 20 age-matched peers with typical language development (TLD) listened to words through headphones and were instructed to attend to the words in 1 ear while ignoring the words in the other ear. They were simultaneously presented with pictures and asked to make a lexical decision about whether the pictures and auditory words were the same or different. Accuracy and reaction time were measured in 5 conditions, in which the stimulus in the unattended channel was manipulated. Results: The groups performed with similar accuracy. Compared with their peers with TLD, children with SLI had slower reaction times overall and different within-group patterns of performance by condition. Conclusions: Children with TLD showed efficient inhibitory control in conditions that required active suppression of competing stimuli. Participants with SLI had difficulty exerting control over their auditory attention in all conditions, with particular difficulty inhibiting distractors of all types.

Purpose: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) appear to demonstrate deficits in attention and its control. Selective attention involves the cognitive control of attention directed toward a relevant stimulus and simultaneous inhibition of attention toward irrelevant stimuli. The current study examined attention control during a cross-modal word recognition task. Method: Twenty participants with SLI (ages 9-12 years) and 20 age-matched peers with typical language development (TLD) listened to words through headphones and were instructed to attend to the words in 1 ear while ignoring the words in the other ear. They were simultaneously presented with pictures and asked to make a lexical decision about whether the pictures and auditory words were the same or different. Accuracy and reaction time were measured in 5 conditions, in which the stimulus in the unattended channel was manipulated. Results: The groups performed with similar accuracy. Compared with their peers with TLD, children with SLI had slower reaction times overall and different within-group patterns of performance by condition. Conclusions: Children with TLD showed efficient inhibitory control in conditions that required active suppression of competing stimuli. Participants with SLI had difficulty exerting control over their auditory attention in all conditions, with particular difficulty inhibiting distractors of all types., Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have deficits in cognitive control processes often included in the general category of executive functions (Gillam, Montgomery, & Gillam, 2009; Hick, Botting, & Conti-Ramsden, [...]

Diagnostic labels for children with primary, or otherwise unexplained, language disorders range across settings and within the scientific literature. Among other problems, this lack of agreement creates difficulty with the successful employment of evidence-based practice. This article reviews the evolving terminology and addresses issues of inconsistency with a particular focus on instructional opportunities for students in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD). The pedagogical approach of problem-based learning (PBL) is well suited to this challenge; a structured model for instruction is reviewed and specific guidelines for educators are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]