Strategies and Beliefs about Conflict Resolution: Comparing Children with Language-Learning Disorders to Children with Typical Language Development

• Main Author: Porter, Karmen Louise
• Other Authors: Janet A Norris
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: LSU 2005
• Subjects: Communication Sciences & Disorders
• Online Access: http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04072005-130656/

The purpose of the current study was to compare the conflict resolution skills and beliefs of children with Language and Learning Disorders (LLD) to those with typically developing language (TDL). All of the participants were drawn from a rural middle school in southeastern Louisiana. The independent variable was linguistic ability and it included two groups of children, thirteen with LLD and a comparison group of eight controls with TDL. The childrens conflict resolution skills and beliefs were collected by giving the children a hypothetical scenario of conflict and then asking them about resolution through an interview format. Conflict resolution measures from these interviews were: the number of strategies the children produced to resolve conflict, the complexity level of the strategies the children produced, and the cognitive level of the childrens beliefs about conflict. Differences were not found in the number of strategies produced by children with LLD and the controls. However, the children with LLD produced a lower level of strategy to resolve conflict and a lower level of cognitive belief about conflict than did the controls, with the latter resulting in a statistically significant group difference.