Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

Nowadays, people use the internet for searching anything they are interested in, even medical terms. Unfortunately, it is possible to find on the internet a lot of labels that would indicate the same impairment. For an impairment like specific language impairment (SLI) there is no agreement upon the label that would fit most on the child’s difficulties. This essay would give an overview of the importance of using one specific label which would refer to a certain condition and present a few labels that are currently being used.
Diagnostic labeling As it is seen from the literature, diagnostic labels have advantages and disadvantages on identifying the individual’s difficulties. For Bishop (2013), by giving the person a diagnostic

Researchers talk about several characteristics that people with SLI would have, which are given using both exclusive and inclusive criteria. Begging with the exclusive criteria, children with SLI would not have any deficits in other areas, such as hearing sensitivity, social and affective status, motor skills and as it is already said non-verbal intellect (Rice, 1996). Moreover, according to Leonard (1987) children with SLI have been provided with largely ordinary linguistic experience. One of the inclusive criteria of SLI is the discrepancy between language and non-verbal skills (DSM-IV-TR). Another criterion for Reed (2005) is that children with SLI have difficulties with aspects of language form such as

It is essential to gather this information and identify the components of diagnostic criteria as well. The diagnostic criteria are three, evidence of significant language impairment, cognitive referencing and exclusionary criteria and will be further studied. The criteria of the evidence of significant language impairment, is the procedure in which the information about the child’s language is being gathered and being evaluated. There is a crucial debate on whether should therapists and researchers use standardized tests or non-standardized ones, while assessing a child. If the tests should be standardized then which ones should be used (Bishop, 2013)? Each researcher can focus on specific aspects of language when assessing the language abilities of a child. On DSM-IV-TR, it is given the score of 1 or 1.5 SD below the population mean as a result of impairment. This criterion may in fact be arbitrary and not suitable for the identification of language impairment. Additionally, there are cases, where children are being referred as a language difficulty, while professionals cannot find such evidence, through the tests (Law et al. 2011). For Cohen et al. (1998), we should be more careful in identification of language problems, since it is possible that a language problem may look