Predictors of Quality of Speech and Slow Information Processing in Persian Children with Special Language Impairment (SLI)

In this study we intend to compare the quality of speech and the speed of information processing of Persian children with SLI with the mean of their age-matched peers. In this analytical-descriptive study, 11 children between 5 to 10 years old among 31 children who referred to USWRS clinics were screened and diagnosed as SLI children. The SLI children and their eleven agematched peers as the control group met the inclusion criteria to participate in this research. Both groups of children were assessed and compared using data taken from “Persian Specific Language Impairment Battery”, “Samples of Connected Speech” as well as “Auditory and Visual-Linguistic Processing Speed Tasks”. The results indicated that SLI children had lower performance in different sub-tests of SLI Battery and in connected speech features such as number of content words, function words, MLU and inflectional morphemes as compared to the means of their age-marched peers. They had also slower information processing speed in both visual as well as auditory tasks as compared to the means of their age-matched peers. There was also correlation between the quality of speech features and the speed of both auditory and visual processing. The results of this study indicated that language impairments of SLI children are not just at the morphological level. The slow processing information hypothesis and correlation between features of connected speech and slow information processing are confirmed.