The oral syntactic proficiency of learning disabled students: a spontaneous story sampling analysis.

A comprehensive analysis of syntactic complexity was performed on spontaneously generated oral stories obtained from 93 learning disabled (LD) and normally achieving (NA) students, 14 to 16 each at 8:0-9:11 (years:months), 10:0-11:11, and 12:0-13:11 age levels. Syntactic complexity was measured using a structural constituent analysis and a T-unit analysis. In direct contrast to the extant LD literature, the results revealed almost identical rates of correct usage and extremely similar patterns of usage between the LD and NA subjects on all measures. Post-hoc analyses indicated that three syntactic structures were used by a significantly greater percentage of NA subjects than LD students. The significance of these findings is discussed with respect to: (a) previous and current characterizations of syntactic abilities of LD students; and (b) the importance of differentiating between statistical and clinical significance for the meaningful interpretation of research data.