Differential Diagnosis of Specific Language Impairment – SLI

Abstract

The article focuses on the subject of differential diagnosis of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and compares the symptoms of other developmental disorders such as: developmental aphasia and speech retardation. Specific language impairment is defined as child’s difficulties in mastering language skills when no other intellectual deficits, hearing impairments or unfavorable environmental conditions are detected. The review of contemporary study reveals a more frequent occurrence of this disorder among boys. The percentage of children with SLI is between 3 and 6 of the whole population. Due to the adoption of various diagnostic criteria in different countries, the accurate data is not specified and may vary. The difficulties in differential diagnosis of SLI are due to uneven and varied character of symptoms. Thanks to the cooperation between numerous specialists from various fields, including speech therapists and psychologists, a precise analysis of child’s skills can be conducted. In order to provide reliable and comprehensible diagnosis, it is necessary to use proper diagnostic tools. Due to similarities between SLI symptoms, developmental aphasia and speech retardation, most specialists aiming to provide diagnosis adopt etiology or the time the developmental disorders occurred as a differential criterion. The other criterion is to distinguish specific symptoms and compare them to those that are characteristic to particular disorders. The aim of this work was to present the difficulties in conducting differential diagnosis among children with specific language impairment, reveal distinctions in abnormalities among those people and compare them with other language disorders.