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.     

Serial order short-term memory capacities and specific language impairment: No evidence for a causal association

This study re-explored the nature of verbal short-term memory (STM) deficits in children with specific language impairment (SLI), by distinguishing item and serial order STM processes. Recent studies have shown serial order STM capacity to be a critical determinant of language development, relative to item STM. In Experiment 1, 12 children with SLI, 12 age-matched children and 12 language-matched children were administered serial order recognition and reconstruction tasks. Experiment 2 assessed implicit serial learning abilities via a Hebb learning task. The SLI group showed impaired performance for the serial order reconstruction and recognition tasks, relative to language-matched and/or age-matched control groups. However, normal serial position effects were observed in all SLI children in the serial order reconstruction task, suggesting normal coding of serial position information. Similarly, performance on the Hebb serial learning task was at chronological age appropriate levels. Experiment 3 showed that the group differences observed for the serial order STM tasks in Experiment 1 disappeared when the SLI group was compared to a mental age-matched control group. Experiment 4 showed similar performance levels in the SLI group and the mental age-matched control group for a nonword recognition task assessing item STM capacities. This study shows that children with SLI have no specific impairments for serial order and item STM components but that poorer general cognitive efficiency is related to functional limitations in verbal STM tasks. The data are in line with limited information processing accounts of SLI.     

The nature of auditory discrimination problems in children with specific language impairment: an MMN study

Many children with specific language impairment (SLI) show impairments in discriminating auditorily presented stimuli. The present study investigates whether these discrimination problems are speech specific or of a general auditory nature. This was studied using a linguistic and nonlinguistic contrast that were matched for acoustic complexity in an active behavioral task and a passive ERP paradigm, known to elicit the mismatch negativity (MMN). In addition, attention skills and a variety of language skills were measured. Participants were 25 five-year-old Dutch children with SLI having receptive as well as productive language problems and 25 control children with typical speech- and language development. At the behavioral level, the SLI group was impaired in discriminating the linguistic contrast as compared to the control group, while both groups were unable to distinguish the non-linguistic contrast. Moreover, the SLI group tended to have impaired attention skills which correlated with performance on most of the language tests. At the neural level, the SLI group, in contrast to the control group, did not show an MMN in response to either the linguistic or nonlinguistic contrast. The MMN data are consistent with an account that relates the symptoms in children with SLI to non-speech processing difficulties.     

Informativeness of the spoken narratives of younger and older adolescents with specific language impairment and their counterparts with normal language

A large body of literature describing the narrative skills of young children with and without language impairments exists. However, there has been only limited study of the informativeness of narratives of adolescents with normally developing language (NL) and those of adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI), even though narratives play an important role in adolescents' complex social and academic lives and there is emerging evidence that narrative abilities in young children portend their later language proficiency. This study examined the informativeness of oral narratives produced by four groups of adolescents: younger adolescents with NL (mean age = 13years:2 months), older adolescents with NL (15:10), younger adolescents with SLI (13:2) and older adolescents with SLI (15:9). The results indicated that the narratives produced by the SLI adolescents consisted of fewer informative and more irrelevant/inaccurate responses than the narratives of their peers with NL. The SLI adolescents also tended to give more vague responses in their narratives than their NL counterparts, as well tending not to provide any responses to the pictures representing the story. Taken together, these results painted a picture of SLI adolescents producing less satisfying, complete, and cohesive narratives, findings consistent with those of the research on children with SLI. Language status more than age appeared to be the factor that affected the likelihood of the adolescents providing or not providing informative responses. These results suggested that the performance of adolescents with SLI may not catch up to the level of performance of their NL counterparts during adolescence.     

Informativeness of the spoken narratives of younger and older adolescents with specific language impairment and their counterparts with normal language

A large body of literature describing the narrative skills of young children with and without language impairments exists. However, there has been only limited study of the informativeness of narratives of adolescents with normally developing language (NL) and those of adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI), even though narratives play an important role in adolescents' complex social and academic lives and there is emerging evidence that narrative abilities in young children portend their later language proficiency. This study examined the informativeness of oral narratives produced by four groups of adolescents: younger adolescents with NL (mean age = 13years:2 months), older adolescents with NL (15:10), younger adolescents with SLI (13:2) and older adolescents with SLI (15:9). The results indicated that the narratives produced by the SLI adolescents consisted of fewer informative and more irrelevant/inaccurate responses than the narratives of their peers with NL. The SLI adolescents also tended to give more vague responses in their narratives than their NL counterparts, as well tending not to provide any responses to the pictures representing the story. Taken together, these results painted a picture of SLI adolescents producing less satisfying, complete, and cohesive narratives, findings consistent with those of the research on children with SLI. Language status more than age appeared to be the factor that affected the likelihood of the adolescents providing or not providing informative responses. These results suggested that the performance of adolescents with SLI may not catch up to the level of performance of their NL counterparts during adolescence.     

How do children ascribe gender to nouns? A study of Spanish‐speaking children with and without specific language impairment

The purpose of this investigation was to identify how Spanish‐speaking preschool children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) use the various cues available for ascribing a noun's inherent gender in the language. Via an invented word task, four types of cues were isolated and presented to each child: (1) two types of noun‐internal cues (semantic transparency and word ending), and (2) two types of noun‐external cues (article gender and adjective gender). Eleven children with typical language skills, 11 children with SLI, and 11 adults participated in the study. Results indicated, as expected, that adults outperformed both child groups. Significant differences were observed in the children's use of article cues, with the typical children outperforming the children with SLI. Individual data also indicate that most children with SLI were using the noun‐internal cue of word ending effectively. Discussion of previous research in the area of gender agreement in Spanish‐speaking children with SLI and explanations of potential reasons for the children's performance are addressed.     

Visuospatial working memory in specific language impairment: A meta-analysis

We conducted a meta-analysis of the data from studies comparing visuospatial working memory (WM) in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing (TD) children. The effect sizes of 21 studies (including 32 visuospatial storage tasks and 9 visuospatial central executive (CE) tasks) were identified via computerized database searches and the reference sections of the identified studies. Meta-analyses and moderator analyses were conducted to examine the magnitude of the differences in visuospatial storage and CE, and their relation to the inclusion criteria used for SLI and the age of the children. The results showed significant effect sizes for visuospatial storage (d = 0.49) and visuospatial CE (d = 0.63), indicating deficits in both components of visuospatial WM in children with SLI. The moderator analyses showed that greater impairment in visuospatial storage was associated with more pervasive language impairment, whereas age was not significant associated with visuospatial WM. The finding of deficits in visuospatial WM suggests domain-general impairments in children with SLI. It raises questions about the language-specificity of a diagnosis of SLI. Careful attention should thus be paid to both verbal and visuospatial WM in clinical practice, and especially in those children with pervasive language impairments.     

Verb morphology in Catalan and Spanish in children with Specific Language Impairment: a developmental study

In this article we examine language processing and development in Catalan or Spanish‐speaking children with SLI, focusing on the study of the verb. We analyse the key initial phase of its process of acquisition and aim to define common features of the SLI group that distinguish them from children with normal language development. We intend to identify more precisely the kind of delay shown by these children in a language with a rich verb morphology, in terms of both structure and chronology. The sample comprised 18 Catalan‐Spanish bilingual pre‐school children, assigned to three groups of six; an SLI group and two control groups, one matched for age and the other matched for MLU‐w. Developmental data were obtained by recording situations of spontaneous speech at two different time points. Certain differences were found between groups in verb production. Production of verb inflection by children with SLI was only partial at the first evaluation; they maintained the same percentage of errors after a year. The patterns of correct and incorrect verb forms found in Catalan and Spanish do not corroborate the EOI hypothesis, but they support the Surface Hypothesis, given that the number of errors is not particularly high. This suggests the presence of limitations in subjects' processing ability, linked to the typological characteristics of the specific language being learnt.     

Grammar predicts procedural learning and consolidation deficits in children with Specific Language Impairment

The Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH) posits that Specific Language Impairment (SLI) can be largely explained by abnormalities of brain structures that subserve procedural memory. The PDH predicts impairments of procedural memory itself, and that such impairments underlie the grammatical deficits observed in the disorder. Previous studies have indeed reported procedural learning impairments in SLI, and have found that these are associated with grammatical difficulties. The present study extends this research by examining consolidation and longer-term procedural sequence learning in children with SLI. The Alternating Serial Reaction Time (ASRT) task was given to children with SLI and typically developing (TD) children in an initial learning session and an average of three days later to test for consolidation and longer-term learning. Although both groups showed evidence of initial sequence learning, only the TD children showed clear signs of consolidation, even though the two groups did not differ in longer-term learning. When the children were re-categorized on the basis of grammar deficits rather than broader language deficits, a clearer pattern emerged. Whereas both the grammar impaired and normal grammar groups showed evidence of initial sequence learning, only those with normal grammar showed consolidation and longer-term learning. Indeed, the grammar-impaired group appeared to lose any sequence knowledge gained during the initial testing session. These findings held even when controlling for vocabulary or a broad non-grammatical language measure, neither of which were associated with procedural memory. When grammar was examined as a continuous variable over all children, the same relationships between procedural memory and grammar, but not vocabulary or the broader language measure, were observed. Overall, the findings support and further specify the PDH. They suggest that consolidation and longer-term procedural learning are impaired in SLI, but that these impairments are specifically tied to the grammatical deficits in the disorder. The possibility that consolidation and longer-term learning are problematic in the disorder suggests a locus of potential study for therapeutic approaches. In sum, this study clarifies our understanding of the underlying deficits in SLI, and suggests avenues for further research.     

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   

Visual attentional engagement deficits in children with Specific Language Impairment and their role in real-time language processing

In order to become a proficient user of language, infants must detect temporal cues embedded within the noisy acoustic spectra of ongoing speech by efficient attentional engagement. According to the neuro-constructivist approach, a multi-sensory dysfunction of attentional engagement – hampering the temporal sampling of stimuli – might be responsible for language deficits typically shown in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). In the present study, the efficiency of visual attentional engagement was investigated in 22 children with SLI and 22 typically developing (TD) children by measuring attentional masking (AM). AM refers to impaired identification of the first of two sequentially presented masked objects (O1 and O2) in which the O1–O2 interval was manipulated. Lexical and grammatical comprehension abilities were also tested in both groups. Children with SLI showed a sluggish engagement of temporal attention, and individual differences in AM accounted for a significant percentage of unique variance in grammatical performance. Our results suggest that an attentional engagement deficit – probably linked to a dysfunction of the right fronto-parietal attentional network – might be a contributing factor in these children's language impairments.     

Long-term reading and spelling outcome in Italian adolescents with a history of specific language impairment

Specific language impairment (SLI) diagnosed in the pre-school years is frequently associated with reading and writing difficulties at school age. The nature of this relationship is unclear, despite the availability of a large number of studies, mostly on English speaking children. Phonological processing deficits have been considered the prominent cause of both difficulties. However recent findings in both children with SLI and in children with reading difficulties are not easily accommodated within a single dimensional model explaining the relationship between oral and written language deficits.Our study focuses on the long-term reading and spelling outcome in relation to preschool oral language skills in a group of Italian adolescents with a documented history of SLI.Sixteen Italian adolescents diagnosed as SLI at our Hospital in the pre-school years and 32 normal controls were submitted to an extensive assessment of oral and written language skills. At a group level SLI adolescents had weak oral and written language skills in almost all tests.Results show that reading difficulties have some features in common with those of Italian developmental dyslexics but also have distinct characteristics, since reading accuracy and written comprehension, usually relatively spared in Italian developmental dyslexics, were impaired in adolescents with SLI.Longitudinal analyses showed that expressive morpho-syntactic and lexical abilities at pre-school age were the oral language skills that best predicted reading and spelling outcomes in adolescents with SLI.However, also children with severe phonological impairment in the absence of other oral language deficits showed later literacy difficulties, although less severe and mainly limited to reading accuracy.Our study supports the notion that there is a complex relationship between oral and written language difficulties which may change at different developmental time points, not captured by a single deficit model, but best conceptualized considering multiple interactions between language skills and literacy abilities.     

Non‐word repetition: An investigation of phonological complexity in children with Grammatical SLI

We investigate whether children with Grammatical Specific Language Impairment (G‐SLI) are also phonologically impaired and, if so, what the nature of that impairment is. We focus on the prosodic complexity of words, based on their syllabic and metrical (stress) structure, and investigate this using a novel non‐word repetition procedure, the Test of Phonological Structure (TOPhS). Participants with G‐SLI (aged 12–20 years) were compared to language‐matched, typically developing children (aged 4–8 years). The results reveal that, in contrast to the controls, the accuracy with which the G‐SLI group repeated non‐words decreased as prosodic complexity increased, even in non‐words with only one‐ and two‐syllables. The study indicates that, in G‐SLI, complexity deficits in morphology and syntax can extend to prosodic phonology. The study highlights the importance of taking into account prosodic complexity in phonological assessment and the design of non‐word repetition procedures.     

Conversational profiles of children with ADHD,SLI and typical development

Conversational indices of language impairment were used to investigate similarities and differences among children with Attention‐Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and children with typical development (TD). Utterance formulation measures (per cent words mazed and average number of words per maze) differentiated the ADHD group from the SLI and TD groups (ADHD>TD=SLI). In contrast, measures of lexical diversity, average sentence length and morphosyntactic development (number of different words, MLU, and composite tense) differentiated the SLI group from the ADHD and TD groups (SLI<ADHD=TD). High levels of within group variation were observed in children's speaking rate (words per minute). Implications for differential diagnosis and the establishment of phenotypes for developmental language disorders are discussed.     

Phonology and syntax in French children with SLI: A longitudinal study

Maillart and Parisse found out that French children with specific language impairment (SLI) presented strong difficulties in phonology when compared with normally‐developing children matched by MLU (NLD). Some of the youngest children from this study were followed to provide developmental information about their language deficit. Children were tested again in the same way as before (free spontaneous production) and matched by MLU against other NLD children. The previous phonological analysis was extended to include syntax as well as phonology. Percentage of words correct was computed for both phonology and syntax. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was performed with children's age as covariate. Results showed a significant difference between SLI and NLD children for phonology but not for syntax. There was a trend that showed that the difference between SLI and NLD children tended to increase with age. The same analysis was performed separately for 9 frequent syntactic categories for phonology and for syntax. A significant difference was found for prepositions, nouns, subject pronouns, and verbs in phonology. Effects were found for determiners and prepositions in syntax. As well as confirming the importance of phonological difficulties in SLI, our results call for a developmental theory of phonological and syntactic deficits in SLI, where differences between SLI and NLD grow with age and where there is a timing difference between phonology (earlier) and syntax (later).     

Non‐word repetition in Dutch children with (a risk of) dyslexia and SLI

It has been proposed that poor non‐word repetition is a marker of specific language impairment (SLI), and a precursor and marker of dyslexia. This study investigated whether a non‐word repetition deficit underlies both disorders. A group of Dutch preschool SLI children and children at familial risk of dyslexia, as well as school‐going groups of SLI and dyslexic children were presented with a non‐word repetition task. The results showed that the SLI and the (at‐risk of) dyslexia groups performed more poorly than the control children. Furthermore, with the exception of one child, all preschool SLI children scored significantly below the mean of the preschool control group, suggesting that non‐word repetition performance is a marker of SLI. Approximately half of the at‐risk group were poor performers, which was expected on the basis of the familial risk factor of the at‐risk group. The results show that a non‐word repetition deficit is attested early in life and underlies both dyslexia and SLI.     

Low-level neural auditory discrimination dysfunctions in specific language impairment—A review on mismatch negativity findings

In specific language impairment (SLI), there is a delay in the child’s oral language skills when compared with nonverbal cognitive abilities. The problems typically relate to phonological and morphological processing and word learning. This article reviews studies which have used mismatch negativity (MMN) in investigating low-level neural auditory dysfunctions in this disorder. With MMN, it is possible to tap the accuracy of neural sound discrimination and sensory memory functions. These studies have found smaller response amplitudes and longer latencies for speech and non-speech sound changes in children with SLI than in typically developing children, suggesting impaired and slow auditory discrimination in SLI. Furthermore, they suggest shortened sensory memory duration and vulnerability of the sensory memory to masking effects. Importantly, some studies reported associations between MMN parameters and language test measures. In addition, it was found that language intervention can influence the abnormal MMN in children with SLI, enhancing its amplitude. These results suggest that the MMN can shed light on the neural basis of various auditory and memory impairments in SLI, which are likely to influence speech perception.     

Derivational morphology in children with Grammatical‐Specific Language Impairment

Although it is well‐established that children with Specific Language Impairment characteristically optionally inflect forms that require tense and agreement marking, their abilities with regards to derivational suffixation are less well understood. In this paper we provide evidence from children with Grammatical‐Specific Language Impairment (G‐SLI) that derivational suffixes, unlike tense and agreement suffixes, are not omitted in elicitation tasks. We investigate two types of derivation – comparative/superlative formation and adjective‐from‐noun formation – and reveal that G‐SLI children supply these suffixes at high rates, equivalent to their language matched peers. Moreover, increasing the phonological or morphological complexity of the stimulus does not trigger suffix omission, although it results in non‐target forms that are not characteristic of typically developing children. We discuss what these results reveal about the nature of the deficit in G‐SLI within the context of three hypotheses of SLI: the Extended Optional Infinitive, Implicit Rule and Computational Grammatical Complexity Hypotheses.