ЧЕСТОТА И РАЗПРОСТРАНЕНИЕ НАСПЕЦИФИЧНОТО ЕЗИКОВО НАРУШЕНИЕ ПРИ БЪЛГАРСКИТЕ ДЕЦА В ПРЕДУЧИЛИЩНА ВЪЗРАСТ
FREQUENCY AND PREVALENCE OF THE SPECIFIC LANGUAGE DISORDER IN BULGARIAN CHILDREN OF PRESCHOOL AGE

Summary/Abstract: Specific language impairment (SLI) is a developmental disorder in which children lag behind their peers in language production and comprehension for no apparent reason (Bishop, 1997). SLI is by definition not secondary to factors that typically cause language problems, such as local brain lesion or traumatic brain injury, hearing loss, or even environmental factors. In addition, in the Specific language impairment, language problems occur without any other obvious cognitive impairment, i.e. despite the relatively normal nonverbal intelligence.Objective: To study the prevalence of Specific language impairment among Bulgarian hildren of preschool age.Method: The screening was conducted in 18 state kindergartens on the territory of Sofia in the period September - October 2020. The examination was performed on the basis of a self-developed screening test and "Test for examination of articulation disorders" (Cv. TCenova 2000). Understanding, production and phonological awareness are studied, which are divided into 5 modules: Execution of one-stroke and two-stroke instructions; Naming/repeating words containing sounds from the late ontogenesis in all positions; repetition of a poem; answer to a question; phonological task: sound detection, presence of rhyme in word pairs.Results and discussion: The data from the study show that out of a total of 1767 surveyed preschool children, in a little more than a half: 948 (53.65%) are found communication disorders. The frequency of the Specific language impairment in the studied contingent is on average 5.89% (104 children). The distribution of SLI in the different age groups is as follows - in 4-year-old children it is 2.49%, in 5-year-olds - 1.99% and in 6-year-olds the frequency is 1.42%. Analysis of data on the prevalence of SLI by sex is indicative of a higher incidence in boys. Out of a total of 104 children with SLI, the percentage of manifestation in them is 54.81%, and in girls it is 45.19%.Summary: From the obtained results it is clear that a total of 104 children have a Specific language impairment or this is 5.89% of all children. This corresponds to the results presented by Leonard (1998), who reported that about 7% of English-speaking children have SLI. As in the literature on English-speaking children, the percentage of SLI in Bulgarian children decreases with age due to growing up and working with specialists.

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