Speech Monitoring in Retarded Children

This study investigates retarded children’s ability to monitor their speech, identify linguistic problems and attempt repair. Our interest lies with the linguistic and the metalinguistic knowledge revealed through this behavior. The empirical investigation concerns retarded children’s reactions in response to conversational requests for clarification, as detailed below. In an earlier study with normal children of a similar MLU (Levy, in press) it was argued that children’s ability to monitor their speech and locate errors in their own production is evidence for meta-procedures that are fundamental to the use of language as a vehicle for the expression of intentional content. It follows from the analysis proposed in Levy (in press) that similar competencies will be seen in retarded children who use language to communicate. If this expectation is supported by the present research it may have direct bearing on the conceptualization of retardation.