Social and behavioural difficulties in children with language impairment

This paper examines the secondary social and behavioural difficulties of a large cohort of children attending language units in England. In stage 1 of the study, 242 children with language impairments were assessed on a measure of peer competence, a behavioural measure, a cognitive measure and also using teacher opinion of emotional/behavioural status in school year 2 (age 6-7). A year later, 214 of the children were followed up at age 7-8 years. The group is examined as a whole and in terms of subgroups according to type of language impairment. While the group pattern for behavioural difficulties showed that children in language units do not generally have clinical-level behavioural problems, the scores were significantly different by subgroup, with children exhibiting mainly expressive difficulties showing the least secondary behavioural problems and children with mixed expressive and receptive problems showing the greatest increase in behavioural scores from stage 1 to stage 2. Children with complex receptive and complex language impairments were the most likely to score over the clinical threshold when examined by frequency and these children were also rated as having more marked social difficulties with peers than the other subgroups. Agreement between questionnaire score and teacher opinion was high. Patterns of social and behavioural impairment showed no associations with gender or cognitive ability. The implications of the findings are discussed in relation to other studies on social or behavioural impairment in this population.