Differentiating SLI from ADHD using children's sentence recall and production of past tense morphology

Measures of sentence recall and past tense marking were used to examine the similarities and differences between children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), children with specific language impairment (SLI), and typically developing (TD) children. Both SLI and ADHD group means for sentence recall tasks were significantly lower than the TD control group (SLI相似文献   

Exploring aphasic grammar 1: a single case analysis of conversation

This paper uses the methodology and analytical findings of conversation analysis to investigate the notion that aphasic grammar may be understood at least partly in the context of the demands of turns at talk in conversation. An investigation of the conversation of an English-speaking person with aphasia reveals two distinct grammatical phenomena, and it is suggested that their use may be interactionally motivated by the need to take a relatively unproblematic turn at talk despite the constraints of non-fluent aphasia. The grammatical patterns that are revealed by this analysis look considerably different from those elicited by standard methods of data sampling. The possibility that interactional grammatical phenomena are not visible in the language data elicited by clinical assessments is raised. This question is addressed via an in-depth comparison of the same speaker's interactional and elicited grammar in a linked article. It is suggested that the tool of conversation analysis provides researchers with a new and fruitful approach to the study of grammatical abilities in aphasia.     

Semantic impairment and past tense verb production: neighbourhood and frequency modulation of irregular past tense production

Background: An ongoing debate concerns whether two distinct processes are necessary to explain our production of regular and irregular past tense verbs. A key notion within a single-mechanism account is that the production of past tense verb forms is mediated by semantic knowledge and phonological support from verb neighbourhoods. There are currently very few studies that examine the effect of verb neighbourhoods within the irregular past tense on production.

Aims: The study assessed the relative contributions of frequency, phonological support from neighbourhoods and semantic knowledge to the past tense verb production of JF, a patient with posterior cortical atrophy and impaired semantic knowledge. We also explored interactive effects between these factors, e.g., whether effects of phonological support from verb neighbourhoods (e.g., sleep–slept, weep–wept) were stronger when semantic knowledge about items was compromised.

Methods & Procedures: We assessed irregular past tense verb production in JF and control participants using a series of verb production tests.

Outcomes & Results: JF’s past tense verb production was predicted by the degree of regularity, frequency, and irregular phonological “neighbourhood” size, along also with the integrity of his semantic knowledge about the verbs. These factors interacted: the effect of phonological support from neighbourhoods was strongest where frequency, and semantic knowledge about individual items, was low.

Conclusions: The data demonstrate that irregular past tense production is graded in this case. The effects of phonological verb neighbourhoods and semantic knowledge are consistent with a single-mechanism model. The findings emphasise effects of phonological neighbourhoods in supporting production of the English irregular past tense, and we argue that a single-mechanism model provides the most parsimonious explanation of the data.     

Exploring the boundaries of SLI: findings from morphosyntactic and story grammar analyses

The nature of morphosyntactic and story‐grammar differences were examined between children with SLI and children with language impairments that fell outside the diagnostic category for SLI solely because of their low non‐verbal cognitive abilities (LNVA). Two oral narratives were elicited from 5‐year‐old children with language impairments and age‐matched children with normally developing language. Morphosyntactic difficulties were found to be similar for children with SLI and children with LNVA. The children with SLI produced more complex stories than the children with LNVA when a complex wordless picture book was used, but not for a single scene picture stimulus. These findings challenge notions about the unique nature of SLI and, understandings of differences and similarities with other language impairments.     

Lateralization of speech production using verbal/manual dual tasks: meta-analysis of sex differences and practice effects

The present paper reviews the findings of 30 years of verbal/manual dual task studies, the method most commonly used to assess lateralization of speech production in non-clinical samples. Meta-analysis of 64 results revealed that both the type of manual task used and the nature of practice that is given influence the size of the laterality effect. A meta-analysis of 36 results examining the effect size of sex differences in estimates of lateralization of speech production indicated that males appear to show slightly larger laterality effects than females.