DEVELOPMENT AND BEHAVIOR: OLDER CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS 0031-3955/92 $0.00 + .20 EASILY OVERLOOKED LANGUAGE DISABILITIES DURING CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE A Cognitive-Linguistic Perspective James W. Montgomery, PhD The cognitive-linguistic and academic demands placed on children increase dramatically over a relatively short period during the school years. Most children can keep pace with these demands. For those children evidencing a language learning disability (LLD), however, academic achievement may be seriously compromised. These are children who demonstrate various oral language comprehension or production deficits in one or more basic or higher- order domains of language functioning. As these children get older, their language deficits become less obvious and less detectable, yet they may become increasingly detrimental to their social and academic development. From the middle school years and beyond, changes in the nature of language input (e.g., more abstract, decontextualized, dense), expectations for advanced cognitive- linguistic reasoning, content expectations, and course requirements pose special problems for these students. DEVELOPMENTAL LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT: GETTING SOME PERSPECTIVE The perspective taken in this article is one in which language can be profitably viewed as falling under the more general rubric of cognition. It has From the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences, and the Clinical Center for Devel- opment and Learning, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, North Carolina PEDIATRIC CLINICS OF NORTH AMERICA VOLUME 39 • NUMBER 3 • JUNE 1992 513