May 9 – Julia L. Evans: Embodied representations and cognitive problem solving in specific language impairment

The term Specific Language Impairment (SLI) refers to a group of children who have difficulty acquiring and using language in the absence of hearing, intellectual, emotional or neurological impairments. Despite performance in the normal range on nonverbal IQ tests, children with SLI consistently evidence deficits on a range of nonverbal cognitive tasks.

Studies of cognitive problem solving in children SLI suggest that these children may be working with mental representations that are more grounded in nature, require greater resources to manipulate and result in a greater vulnerability to external perceptual features of the tasks than the more abstract representations of typically developing peers.