The role of social cognition and prosocial behaviour in relation to the socio-emotional functioning of primary aged children with specific language impairment.
For primary students with SLI, poor social-cognition skills - not language ability - predict teacher-reported socio-emotional problems.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Bakopoulou et al. (2016) compared social-cognition skills in primary students with specific language impairment (SLI) to two control groups. They gave kids tasks that tested understanding of others' thoughts and feelings. Teachers also filled out rating scales about each child's socio-emotional problems in class.
What they found
Students with SLI scored lower than both control groups on every social-cognition task. Teachers rated these same students as having more socio-emotional difficulties. Surprisingly, language ability did not predict these problems - only poor social-cognition scores did.
How this fits with other research
Grzadzinski et al. (2016) found similar results with autism spectrum disorder - social-cognition deficits predicted real-life social problems regardless of verbal IQ. This pattern suggests social-cognition issues drive social difficulties across different developmental disorders.
Cardillo et al. (2023) showed kids with ADHD only struggled on social-perception tasks when they required combining audio and visual cues. Unlike SLI students who showed broad social-cognition deficits, ADHD students' problems were tied to attention and theory-of-mind demands.
Dahlgren et al. (2010) discovered children with severe speech impairments only showed theory-of-mind deficits on language-heavy tasks. This creates an apparent contradiction with Ioanna's findings - but Ioanna used multiple social-cognition measures while SvenOlof used only verbal tasks, explaining the difference.
Why it matters
When you see a student with SLI acting out or struggling socially, check their social-cognition skills before assuming it's just frustration from language problems. Target perspective-taking and emotion recognition directly - these skills drive classroom behavior more than vocabulary level. Simple social stories and role-play activities may reduce teacher-reported problems more than extra language drills.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Children with language impairments often experience difficulties with their socio-emotional functioning and poorly developed prosocial behaviour. However, the nature of the association between language impairment and difficulties with socio-emotional functioning remains unclear. The social cognition skills of a group of primary-aged children (6-11 years old) with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) were examined in relation to their teachers' ratings of socio-emotional functioning. SAMPLE: Forty-two children with SLI were individually matched with 42 children for chronological age and non-verbal cognitive ability, and 42 children for receptive language ability. The children all attended mainstream primary schools or one Language Unit. METHODS: Four aspects of social cognition were directly assessed: emotion identification, emotion labelling, inferring the causes of emotions, and knowledge of conflict resolution strategies. The children's socio-emotional functioning was assessed using the Strengths and Difficulties questionnaire (SDQ), a standardised measure, completed by their teachers. Associations between children's performance on tasks of social cognition and children's socio-emotional functioning were explored. RESULTS: Significant group differences were found for all social cognition tasks. The SLI group was rated to experience significantly more problems with socio-emotional functioning by their teachers than both control groups, indicating problems with all aspects of socio-emotional functioning. Social cognition and prosocial behaviour, but not language ability, predicted teacher-rated behavioural, emotional and social difficulties for the SLI group. CONCLUSION: The results challenge current understanding of socio-emotional functioning in children with SLI by pointing to the crucial role of social cognition and prosocial behaviour. Factors other than expressive and receptive language play a role in the socio-emotional functioning of children with SLI.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2016 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2015.12.013