SPEECH PRODUCED DURING PROBLEM-SOLVING: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF LANGUAGE DISORDERED AND NORMALLY ACHIEVING CHILD DYADS (VYGOTSKY)

An investigation was undertaken of speech and strategic behaviors exhibited during collaborative problem solving. Two groups, language disordered (LD) and normally achieving (NA) child dyads, ages 4-11 to 5-11 were studied. Following Vygotsky's theoretical constructs, problem solving was observed within a social setting and speech utterances were evaluated in terms of their ability to mediate goal-directed activity. The central focus was whether or not language disordered subjects would exhibit quantitative or qualitative differences in speech productions. A second concern related to the influence of a language disorder upon collaborative problem solving.;The number of task relevant utterances was similar between groups but their distribution in relationship to certain strategic actions was not, reflecting differences in the way the task was defined. LD dyads produced fewer references to puzzle pieces than NA dyads, and those references were more often erroneous or vague. Prior negotiation concerning which dyad member should perform a strategic act occurred less frequently with LD dyads. These results indicated qualitative as well as quantitative differences in speech productions by the two groups.;Theoretical and clinical implications were derived from the findings that language disordered dyads may exhibit speech less effective in its ability to mediate activity, reduced efficiency in problem solving, or both. Suggestions were made for further research concerning the ability of language disordered and other learning disabled children to communicate hypotheses, to elicit and to share information pertinent to solution of tasks in social situations.;Children were videotaped as they solved a model-copy task of a puzzle depicting the letters of the alphabet. A fine-grained transcription was obtained of their utterances within the stream of nonverbal behaviors. Analysis of nonverbal activity revealed differences in the way the two groups defined the task. Requisite strategic moves were sequenced differently or omitted significantly more often by LD dyads. They applied symbolic skills to task solution less frequently. Several analyses indicated that LD dyads completed the task in a less systematic fashion and that overall task efficiency was reduced.