Specific Language Impairment: Evaluation and detection of differential psycholinguistic markers in phonology and morphosyntax in Spanish-speaking children.

The team tested 60 Spanish-speaking kids. Half had Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Half were same-age peers with typical language.

Each child completed three quick tasks: repeat a made-up word in a sentence, pick the picture that matches a spoken sentence, and say "pa-ta-ka" as fast as possible for ten seconds.

The goal was to see if this mini battery could flag SLI without long tests.

The three tasks together caught a large share of kids with SLI and correctly cleared a large share of typical kids.

Kids with SLI stumbled most on the made-up word task and the fast "pa-ta-ka" drill. These two items gave the clearest red flags.

Chou et al. (2010) and Scalzo et al. (2015) also link weak phonology to poor reading in kids with intellectual disability. The new study widens the pattern: phonology problems mark SLI even when IQ is normal.

Poppes et al. (2016) found autistic kids show stagnant phonological working memory. Faso et al. (2016) add that a ten-second oral-motor speed test picks up similar phonology trouble in a different clinical group. The tasks look different but both tap the same underlying bottleneck.

Berument et al. (2005) and Sasson et al. (2022) proved you can adapt screens for deaf or non-verbal adults with ID. This paper does the same for young Spanish speakers—showing good screens travel across languages and ages when you keep them short and concrete.

If you serve bilingual families, you now have a five-minute screener that needs no special tools. Use the made-up word task and the "pa-ta-ka" speed drill during intake. A low score tells you to refer for full speech-language testing instead of waiting months. You can also track these two tasks weekly in therapy to see if phonology gains spill over into broader language growth.