Procedural Discourse Analysis in Children with Specific Learning Disorder (SLD)

Background: The term ‘Specific Learning Disorder’ which is commonly used in federal and state law, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) interferes with a student’s ability to listen, think, speak, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations. Procedural discourse can be defined as a goal-oriented monologue in which a series of steps are involved in a specifiable manner (conceptual or chronological). Aim: The present study aims at investigating the Macro and Micro Structural production of Discourse elicited through a procedural task using a video given lemonade preparation. Method: 10 individuals with Specific Learning Disorders ages ranging from 7 to 12 years and 10 age- matched typically developing children who has Tamil as their native mother tongue and whose medium of instruction is English were enrolled in the study. To assess their discourse skills, participants were engaged in a Procedural task on ‘preparation of a lemonade procedure”. All the samples were transcribed orthographically and divided into communication units following which the macro and microstructural analyses were carried out. The comparison of raw scores between both the groups was subjected to statistical analysis for obtaining significant values. Results: The individuals with Specific Learning disorders underperformed neuro-typical individuals in complex structures per utterance, relevant pieces per utterance, and Information Adequacy. Conclusion: It is evident from the present study that Specific Learning Disorder has an effect on Procedural performance and this, in turn, has an effect on the language performance in an individual.