Easily overlooked language disabilities during childhood and adolescence. A cognitive-linguistic perspective.

The population of individuals with LLD make up a heterogeneous group. The identification of individuals with LLD may vary depending on the type(s) and adequacy of the tests used. Assessment protocols for evaluating the language functioning of older school-aged and adolescent individuals are few and far between. This state of affairs necessitates speech-language pathologists to begin to develop a variety of informal tools to assess the higher level (and perhaps more subtle) language abilities of these individuals. Because language functioning entails the convergence of a variety of cognitive and linguistic processes, these informal protocols must be informed by the developmental literature so as to take into account both language-specific (e.g., lexical knowledge, syntactic structure, semantic complexity) and general cognitive processes. Careful task and process analyses must be done to characterize the language performance of any individual.