Discourse Errors in Students with Learning Disabilities and Their Normally Achieving Peers

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Abstract
Children with learning disabilities were compared to their normally achieving peers on various discourse errors measured by clinical discourse analysis (CDA) (Damico, 1980). A conversational interaction between each subject and an experimenter was audiotaped for later transcription and analysis of discourse errors. The subjects were 12 children with learning disabilities and 12 non-learning-disabled (NLD) children ranging in age from 8 to 11 years. The results of this investigation suggest no significant difference between the groups of children in the total number of discourse errors. Significant differences were observed between the learning disabled and the non-learning-disabled groups and the male and female groups when specific error types were considered. The categories of poor topic maintenance, need for repetition, and failure to provide information were the major discriminators between the subjects with learning disabilities and the non-learning-disabled subjects. The group with learning disabilities also made significantly more quantity and relation errors than the NLD group.