| Sumario: | Purpose: The purpose of this study was to provide preliminary data on differences in lexical diversity and lexical-semantic errors in the language samples of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and children with typical language development (TLD) of the same age. Method: We analyzed word use in the narrative transcripts of children with DLD and TLD (N = 14; Mage = 6;8 [years; months]) using standard measures of lexical diversity (number of different words, moving-average type-token ratio) and additional counts of lexical-semantic errors. Results: There were no significant differences between the groups in lexical diversity, and all children with DLD scored within the age-appropriate range on diversity relative to a normative sample. The children with DLD, however, produced significantly more lexical errors than their TLD peers. Conclusions: The results suggest that caution is warranted when interpreting normal-range lexical diversity scores in children with DLD, as children with DLD may demonstrate functional difficulties with word use that are not captured by lexical diversity measures. A focus on lexical errors holds promise for characterizing lexical-semantic qualities of language transcripts that are not captured by standard measures of diversity. Development of a reliable clinical system for coding and characterizing lexical-semantic errors in language transcripts is warranted.
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