Professor Gina Conti-Ramsden discusses issues related to friendships in adolescents with SLI. These slides accompany the RALLI YouTube piece on this theme.

1. Friendships in adolescents with SLI

2.  Many parents ask themselves:
 Will my child with SLI grow up to have friends?

3.  Friendships are an important part of human
development
 We can share our views, thoughts and feelings with
friends
 Friends can provide companionship and can be a
source of support

4.  We know that children with SLI are sociable
 They want to interact with peers and have friends
 We also know that most children with SLI are
pro-social
 They are helpful and considerate to others

5.  But, we also know that some children with SLI
are not so readily accepted by peers
 They may not be so popular

6.  Not much is known about friendships when
children with SLI grow up and become
adolescents
 This motivated us to carry out a study of
friendships in teenagers with SLI

7. Participants in the
Manchester Language Study
 120 16-year-olds with  118 typically developing
SLI (TD) 16-year-olds

8. Friendships
 Example questions:
 What is special about friends?
 What does being a friend mean?
 What is different about a friend?
 Would you ever confide in a friend about how
you are feeling or if you are worried?

9. Findings
 Adolescents with SLI  Typically developing
(TD) adolescents
 Considerable diversity in  Most TD adolescents
friendships in have good quality of
adolescents with SLI friendships

10. 100
80
60
40
20
0
TD SLI
% reporting having one or more friends with shared interests

11.  We identified a group of adolescents with SLI
with good friendships (n = 65)
 And a group of adolescents with SLI with poor
friendships (n = 44).

12. 88
87
86
85
84
83 Receptive
82
81
80
Good Poor
Friendships Friendships
16-year-olds with Good or Poor Friendships:
Scores on Receptive language (TROG) at age 7 years

13.  Patterns remained consistent at 11 years
 And at 16 years
 Relatively low language ability, particularly
receptive language, appears to be a continuous
characteristic of poor friendship quality in SLI

14.  Adolescents with SLI are more likely to
experience peer problems/lack of friendships
 Language abilities in childhood bear on
friendship quality through to adolescence

15. But the good news …
 Language problems are not a guarantee of social
problems
 Children with SLI are varied in terms of their
language characteristics - and their social
abilities, too
 Some children and adolescents with SLI achieve
high levels of peer popularity
 60% of adolescents with SLI in our study had
reported friendship quality in the good range

16. What can we do?
Training, Facilitation, Fostering adaptation
 Training to support the development of social uses
of language, social skills and social self-esteem
 Facilitation of peer relationships, friendship
formation and maintenance
 Foster the development of positive
adaptive/compensatory strategies
 Self awareness: To know when to seek help/support

17. References
 Clegg, J., Hollis, C., Mawhood, L., & Rutter, M. (2005). Developmental
language disorders – a follow-up in later adult life. Cognitive, language and
psychosocial outcomes. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 46, 128-149.
 Durkin, K. & Conti-Ramsden, G. (2007) Language, social behaviour and the
quality of friendships in adolescents with and without a history of specific
language impairment. Child Development, 78, 1441-1457.
 Fujiki, M., Brinton, B. Hart, C., & Fitzgerald, A. H. (1999). Peer acceptance
and friendship in children with specific language impairment. Topics in
Language Disorders, 19, 34-48.
 Fujiki, M., Brinton, B., Isaacson, T., & Summers, C. (2001). Social behaviors
of children with language impairment on the playground: A pilot study.
Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 32, 101-113.