The verbal production, social interaction, and play behavior of the language impaired preschool child

Abstract

The communication ability and play behavior of a group of preschool language impaired children were examined during three free play interactional situations: the child with a teacher, the child with a peer, the child with primary caregiver. The sample population of 12 children were all classified as mentally retarded on standardized tests of intelligence and were functioning more than one year below their chronological age in expressive and receptive language ability. Six of the children came from a bilingual background where at least one of the members of their families spoke Spanish to them.;Verbal production was measured by the total word count, expressed in either Spanish or English, during each dyadic situation. Social initiation and responsivity to social interaction was evaluated by a Scale of Social Interaction devised by this researcher. Levels of symbolic play were measured by the functional, constructive, and dramatic play schema developed by Smilansky. Interactive play was analyzed in accordance with Parten's categories of play.;A 2 Way-Analysis of Variance revealed that verbal production for the bilingual child-parent situation was statistically significant (p {dollar}<{dollar}.01). The 6 language impaired preschool children from a bilingual household spoke considerably more with their parents than the group of monolingual language impaired children. The monolingual child-peer situation elicited the greatest mean total number of words of all the dyadic experiences. Expressive language behavior varied for each child across interpersonal situations.;The child-peer session stimulated the greatest diversity of social behaviors and accounted for the highest mean number of verbal initiators. The bilingual teacher and the parents offered a similar linguistic and social environment for the the subjects with questions predominating as the principal source of interactive overture. Although the play behavior of most of the children revealed serious cognitive deficits in mental representation, three of the children in the study engaged symbolic play episodes. Solitary play reached a statistically significant level (p {dollar}<{dollar}.01) during the child-peer interaction.;This study demonstrated the clinical importance of observing language impaired children interact with a variety of dyadic partners in a familiar, free play setting.