Social difficulties and victimization in children with SLI at 11 years of age

Abstract

Specific language impairment is sometimes thought to be associated with concurrent difficulties in the area of social and behavioral development (N. Botting and G. Conti-Ramsden, 2000; D. P. Cantwell and L. Baker, 1987; M. Fujiki, B. Brinton, and C. Todd, 1996; S. Redmond and M. Rice, 1998). The present study follows a group of 242 children, initially studied at age 7 years when they attended language units in England, and assesses their social and behavioral status at age 11 years. In total, 64% of the children were found to have scores on the Rutter behavioral questionnaire (M. Rutter, 1967) of 9 or above (clinical threshold); 34% scored over the threshold for the Strengths and Difficulties questionnaire (R. Goodman, 1997); and 39% scored below average on the Peer Competence subscale of the Harter Perceived Competence Scale (S. Harter and R. Pike, 1984). On further analysis, these generalized difficulties were characterized mainly by poor social competence. In addition, 36% of the cohort were at risk of being regular targets for victimization compared to 12% of a comparison sample of typically developing peers. Few associations were found between social outcome and other measures, including nonverbal intelligence, overall linguistic skill, gender, and longitudinal measures taken previously. Importantly, however, pragmatic language difficulties measured on the Children's Communication Checklist (D. V. M. Bishop, 1998) were most strongly related to poor social outcome and to expressive language related to victimization.