What can errors tell us about specific language impairment deficits? Semantic and morphological cuing in a sentence completion task.

The lexical retrieval ability of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with typical language development was compared. Fifty Hebrew-speaking children participated: 15 school-age with SLI, 20 typically developing, matched on age to the SLI group and 15 younger, typically developing matched on naming performance to the SLI group. Participants were tested in a sentence completion task with semantic cuing and with morphological cuing. SLI children performed poorer than the chronological-age group and similarly to the naming-matched group. Error patterns showed a qualitative difference between the SLI and naming-matched groups. The results suggest that lexical retrieval of children with SLI is delayed and qualitatively different from that of typically developing children.