| This dissertation investigates the relationship between language capacities and symbolic play in 3 to 5 year old, language disordered (LD) and language normal (LN) children. The first hypothesis was that symbolic abilities in play and language are related; and, that LD children would display symbolic play deficits relative to LN children of the same nonverbal cognitive level. The second hypothesis, tested only on the LD children, was that the representational skills involved in pretend play overlap more with receptive than expressive language capacities.;Due to the lack of an appropriate symbolic play scale for a LD sample, the Pretend Play Scale (PPS), was designed; it was shown to reflect a developmental progression in symbolic play, to have adequate interrater reliability, internal consistency and external validity.;57 LD and 30 LN children, matched on nonverbal cognitive level and SES, were given the PPS, a measure of nonverbal cognitive ability, and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised, a measure of language comprehension. For the LD children, data on two additional receptive language measures, one expressive language measure and a secondary symbolic play measure were collected.;Both hypotheses were confirmed for the boys, but not for the girls. The LD boys displayed symbolic play deficits relative to their LN peers of equivalent nonverbal cognitive ability; and, for the LD boys, pretend play was predicted by two of the three receptive language measures even after controlling for expressive language and nonverbal cognitive ability. The third measure of receptive language (Stanford-Binet Comprehension Subtest) may not have predicted symbolic play because it measures social comprehension and verbal expression as much as or more than language comprehension. It was unclear whether the lack of positive findings for the girls was due to sex differences in symbolic functioning or the characteristics of a particular and rather small sample.;The present findings confirm that LD boys are characterized by representational deficits which go beyond the linguistic domain and that receptive, rather than expressive, language capacities are more closely related to the representational skills involved in pretend play. The potential use of symbolic play in the early identification of representational difficulties with LD children is discussed. |
