Comprehension of Passive Structure: Study of Children with and without Specific Language Impairment

Objectives: Specific language impaired children, despite being normal in cognitive and neurological characteristics, and also normal levels of hearing, experience multiple problems in syntax comprehension. This study compared the passive comprehension as one of Syntactic Structures in Persian-speaking typically developing children and Specific language impaired children. Methods: 10 children with Specific language impairment, 10 typically developing children matched for age with Specific language impaired children, and 15 younger typically developing children responded to passive sentence comprehension using picture identification task. Results: The results of study revealed significant differences in comprehension of passive sentences in Specific language impaired children and age-matched typically developing children. The difference in Comprehension of passive sentences was not statistically significant in Children with Specific Language Impairment and younger typically developing children. There were significant differences in the comprehension of passive sentences between two typically developing children groups. Discussion: While age-matched typically developing children comprehend passive structure completely, it seems that Specific language impaired children and younger typically developing children still have not come to a full comprehension of the passive structure. Specific language impaired children compared with age-matched and younger typically developing children interpreted passive sentences mostly as active sentences.