Children with SLI have difficulty understanding and/or producing language. It is a ‘pure’ impairment – there is no obvious reason for these difficulties, such as an underlying medical or neurological condition.
Professor Bishop argues that despite the high instances of SLI in the population, it does not receive the national attention or research interest that dyslexia and autism do. While she suggests a number of factors for this apparent disregard, her
particular concern lies with the issue of ‘professional prestige’.She fears that as mental health sits with medicine and child
development with psychology, they will be far more attractive areas for research funders than SLI, which sits with speech &
language therapy.
She explains this in her most recent paper by analysing research rates for neurodevelopmental disorders:
Professor Bishop found several developmental disorders that were hugely under-researched (taking severity, frequency and other relevant factors into consideration). These included developmental dyscalculia (difficulty with mathematics and calculations), developmental coordination disorder (difficulties with normal motor coordination), and speech-sound disorder (difficulty with speech sounds past a certain age). These disorders affect some fundamental child developmental skills – speech, language, movement and numeracy. Certainly there is an argument that these deserve more research than relatively rarer disorders.
If you are concerned that your child may have SLI, ITS can be of help. See https://integratedtreatmentservices.co.uk/ for more information about contacting us for an informal chat.
Written on behalf of Integrated Treatment Services. ITS is a private Speech and Language Therapy service based in Leicestershire and the East Midlands. It specialises in providing highly-skilled Speech and Language Therapists, but also associates with other therapeutic professionals, including Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists, Psychologists and Arts Therapists.
Further Information
Baird, G., Simonoff, E., Pickles, A., Chandler, S., Loucas, T., Meldum, D. & Charman, T. (2006). Prevalence of disorders of the autism spectrum in a population cohort of children in South Thames: the Special Needs and Autism Project (SNAP). Lancet, 368 (9531), 210-5.
BishopBlog: http://deevybee.blogspot.com/
Oxford Study of Children’s Communication Impairments (OSCCI): http://psyweb.psy.ox.ac.uk/oscci/
Tomblin, J., Records, N., Buckwalter, P., Zhang, X., Smith, E. & O’Brien, M. (1997). Prevalence of specific language impairment in kindergarten children. Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research, 40 (6), 1245-60.
