Semantic Representation in Children with Specific Language Impairment

Objectives: The objective of this research is to overcome the unsuitableness of accessing the semantic representation of language by using linguistic methods targeting children with language disorder. This research is intended to compare linguistic semantic representation and visual semantic representation by targeting a specific language impairment (SLI) group, a chronological age (CA)-matched group, and a language ability (LA)-matched group. Methods: Fifteen children (aged 4-6 years) in the SLI group, 15 in the CA group, and 15 in the LA group participated in the research. To assess semantic representation in the three groups, 'explaining the meaning' and 'expressing with a picture' were performed. Results: In the expressing the meaning task, the SLI group was significantly lower in linguistic semantic representation than the CA group. In the percentage of response types, functional response was significantly higher than relational, physical, and classificational responses and relational and physical responses were significantly higher than classificational responses. In the expressing with a picture task, the SLI group's visual semantic representation was significantly lower than CA. In addition, even though the SLI group's correct response score was higher than LA, SLI tended to omit typical characteristics of items, unlike LA. There was a positive correlation between performance on explaining the meaning and expressing with picture tasks. Conclusion: The results of the present study suggest the possibility that children with SLI have difficulties in semantic representations visually as well as linguistically. When considering this and prior research, we cannot deny that linguistic semantic representation and visual semantic representation actively interact.