Genetic and environmental risks for specific language impairment in children.

Specific language impairment (SLI) is the term used to refer to unexplained difficulties in language acquisition in children. Over the past decade, there has been rapid growth of evidence indicating that genes play an important part in the aetiology of SLI. However, further progress in elucidating t...

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Main Author: Bishop, D
Format: Journal article
Language:English
Published: 2001
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author Bishop, D
author_facet Bishop, D
author_sort Bishop, D
collection OXFORD
description Specific language impairment (SLI) is the term used to refer to unexplained difficulties in language acquisition in children. Over the past decade, there has been rapid growth of evidence indicating that genes play an important part in the aetiology of SLI. However, further progress in elucidating the role of genes in causing SLI is limited by our lack of understanding of the phenotype. Studies to date have been hampered by the fact that we do not know whether SLI should be treated as a discrete disorder or a continuous variable, let alone which measures should be used to identify cases, or how many subtypes there are. Recent research suggests that theoretically motivated measures of underlying processes may be better than conventional clinical diagnoses for identifying aetiologically distinct types of language impairment. There has been a tendency for researchers to embrace parsimony and look for a single cause of SLI-or in any event, to identify different subtypes, each with a different single cause. Research is reviewed that suggests that may not be a fruitful approach to SLI, and that an approach in terms of multiple risk and protective factors, which is widely adopted in medicine, is more realistic.
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spelling oxford-uuid:9dca8bc6-dc5c-4cb7-b6f9-78494798c4cc2022-03-27T00:45:39ZGenetic and environmental risks for specific language impairment in children.Journal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:9dca8bc6-dc5c-4cb7-b6f9-78494798c4ccEnglishSymplectic Elements at Oxford2001Bishop, DSpecific language impairment (SLI) is the term used to refer to unexplained difficulties in language acquisition in children. Over the past decade, there has been rapid growth of evidence indicating that genes play an important part in the aetiology of SLI. However, further progress in elucidating the role of genes in causing SLI is limited by our lack of understanding of the phenotype. Studies to date have been hampered by the fact that we do not know whether SLI should be treated as a discrete disorder or a continuous variable, let alone which measures should be used to identify cases, or how many subtypes there are. Recent research suggests that theoretically motivated measures of underlying processes may be better than conventional clinical diagnoses for identifying aetiologically distinct types of language impairment. There has been a tendency for researchers to embrace parsimony and look for a single cause of SLI-or in any event, to identify different subtypes, each with a different single cause. Research is reviewed that suggests that may not be a fruitful approach to SLI, and that an approach in terms of multiple risk and protective factors, which is widely adopted in medicine, is more realistic.
spellingShingle Bishop, D
Genetic and environmental risks for specific language impairment in children.
title Genetic and environmental risks for specific language impairment in children.
title_full Genetic and environmental risks for specific language impairment in children.
title_fullStr Genetic and environmental risks for specific language impairment in children.
title_full_unstemmed Genetic and environmental risks for specific language impairment in children.
title_short Genetic and environmental risks for specific language impairment in children.
title_sort genetic and environmental risks for specific language impairment in children
work_keys_str_mv AT bishopd geneticandenvironmentalrisksforspecificlanguageimpairmentinchildren