A comparative study of the phonology of pre-school children with specific language impairment (SLI), language delay (LD) and normal acquisition

The phonology of two groups of SLI (n = 5) and LD (n = 5) children was analysed at age 3 and compared with two control groups: an age control (n = 5) and a language level control (measured using the MLU-W) (n = 5). Children with SLI and LD showed a delay in the acquisition of segments, syllabic structures and word structures, and in the simplification processes, compared with their age control group. However, SLI children also displayed significant differences vis-à-vis their language level controls, mainly in early acquisitions: vowels, nasals and stops at the segmental level, and in CV structures at the syllabic level. There is also a simplification process that seems to be more prevalent in these children than in their language level controls, namely, the deletion of unstressed syllables, mainly initial ones. The results enable SLI to be distinguished from LD and suggest that the development of SLI phonology is deviant. This deviation is interpreted as being a plateau in early acquisitions when later acquisitions have already appeared. The results are considered in the light of Leonard's surface hypothesis and an exclusively linguistic cause for this disorder is ruled out.     

The comprehension of verb agreement morphology by English-speaking children with specific language impairment

English-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) have well-documented difficulties with the production of grammatical morphemes related to agreement, as compared to both same-age and younger normally developing peers. However, comprehension of agreement-related morphemes has not been well studied in children with SLI, especially during the pre-school years. In two experiments, pre-schoolers with SLI and their normally developing peers were compared on their comprehension of third person singular, copula, and noun plural forms. The results showed that the children with SLI had poorer overall comprehension. Furthermore, the children with SLI appeared to rely primarily on the number cues that were present in the subject rather than on the verb agreement morphology. The findings are examined in light of several current accounts of the grammatical deficits found in children with SLI.     

Fast mapping of verbs by children with specific language impairment

Two studies examined preschoolers' ability to assign verb interpretations to nonsense words encountered in conjunction with novel actions. Experiment 1 examined the ability of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and younger, normally developing peers to glean a verb interpretation when the name of the figure performing the novel action was already known. The two groups of children performed in a similar, accurate fashion. Experiment 2 required pre-schoolers to rely exclusively on morphosyntactic information to determine whether the novel word represented an object or action. When provided with redundant morphosyntactic cues, children with SLI and language- and age-matched peers succeeded in identifying the novel words that referred to objects but not those that referred to actions. Only the age-matched normal peers were above chance levels when a noun interpretation depended on a single grammatical morpheme (e.g., 'We want the koob ' versus 'We want to koob '). The findings suggest that preschoolers, whether or not they have language impairment, have difficulty using morphosyntactic information to bootstrap verbs. Furthermore, redundant but not single morphosyntactic cues facilitate the bootstrapping of nouns.     

Omissions of obligatory relative markers in children with specific language impairment

Although the morphological difficulties of children with specific language impairment (SLI) have been documented extensively, performance on complex syntax production has been explored to a far lesser degree. Leonard's (1995) functional categories account of SLI suggests that syntactic structures involving the embedding of complementizer phrases may be problematic for SLI children. In a follow up to Schuele (1995) and Schuele and Nicholls (2000), this study explored the inclusion of obligatory relative markers in subject relative clauses by children with SLI (5 to 7 years) as compared to children with typical language (3 to 5 years). Children with SLI omitted the obligatory relativizer that or WH relative pronoun in 63% of the attempted subject relative clauses. In contrast, TL children always included the obligatory relative marker. Thus, children with SLI demonstrated particular difficulty in the production of subject relative clauses, complex syntactic structures which require an overt element in an embedded complementizer phrase.     

Relative clauses: evidence of continued linguistic vulnerability in children with specific language impairment

It is hypothesized that children with specific language impairment (SLI) will have difficulties in the acquisition of complex syntactic structures. The studies reported provide evidence of linguistic vulnerability at the level of formulation of complex syntactic structures, specifically relative clauses, in three children with SLI participating in a longitudinal familial case study. In language samples, the proband omitted obligatory relative markers in subject relative clauses and made errors in selecting relative markers in object relative clauses. Two other children in the family, identified as SLI, evidenced omissions of obligatory subject relative markers in language sample data and elicited data. Of the five children in the family with a negative clinical history, omission of subject relative markers in language sample and elicited data was observed in only one child. The findings are consistent with Leonard's functional category deficits account of the grammatical limitations of children with SLI.     

Imitation of intonation contours by children with normal and disordered language development

This study investigated the relation between intonation and segmental phonology in children with developmental language impairment (LI). Eleven 4-year-olds with LI and 11 age-matched children with normal language development imitated sentences that were modelled with different nuclear tones. Instrumental analysis indicated that the children imitated falling tones more accurately than rising tones, but there were no group differences. Although the children with LI had age-appropriate intonation skills, they all demonstrated mild to moderate impairments in segmental phonology. This dissociation pattern was confirmed by correlation analyses, which indicated that the severity of a child's articulation disorder predicted how well he or she produced segmental contrastsA but not prosodic contrasts. The findings are discussed in relation to the hypothesis that prosody pertains to a different 'tier' of the grammar than other phonological systems, and that the speech of children with LI may reflect asymmetrical degrees of impairment across prosodic and non-prosodic tiers.     

Analogical mapping across modalities in children with specific language impairment (SLI)

Analogical mapping is a domain-general cognitive process found in language development, and more particularly in the abstraction of construction schemas. Analogical mapping is considered as the general cognitive process which consists in the alignment of two or several sequences in order to detect their common relational structure and generalize it to new items. The current study investigated analogical mapping across modalities in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Nineteen children with SLI and their age-matched peers were administered two tasks: a linguistic analogical reasoning task (composed of syllables) and a similar non-linguistic analogical reasoning task (composed of pictures). In the two tasks, the items presented were divided into two groups: items with perceptual cues and items without perceptual cues. Children had to complete a sequence sharing the same relational structure as previously presented sequences. Results showed an expected group effect with poorer performance for children with SLI compared to children with typical language development (TLD). Results corroborate hypotheses suggesting that children with SLI have difficulties with analogical mapping, which may hinder the abstraction of construction schemas. Interestingly, whereas no interaction effect between group and modality (linguistic vs. non-linguistic) was revealed, a triple interaction Group * Modality * Perceptual support was observed. In the non-linguistic task, the performance of children with SLI was the same for items with and without perceptual clues, but in the linguistic task they performed more poorly for items without perceptual cues compared to items with perceptual cues. The results and limits of the study are discussed.     

Phonetic categorisation and cue weighting in adolescents with Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

This study investigates phonetic categorisation and cue weighting in adolescents and young adults with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). We manipulated two acoustic cues, vowel duration and F1 offset frequency, that signal word-final stop consonant voicing ([t] and [d]) in English. Ten individuals with SLI (14.0–21.4 years), 10 age-matched controls (CA; 14.6–21.9 years) and 10 non-matched adult controls (23.3–36.0 years) labelled synthetic CVC non-words in an identification task. The results showed that the adolescents and young adults with SLI were less consistent than controls in the identification of the good category representatives. The group with SLI also assigned less weight to vowel duration than the adult controls. However, no direct relationship between phonetic categorisation, cue weighting and language skills was found. These findings indicate that some individuals with SLI have speech perception deficits but they are not necessarily associated with oral language skills.     

Characterising compensation. (Commentary on Ullman and Pierpont, "Specific language impairment is not specific to language: the procedural deficit hypothesis")

This article considers Ullman and Pierpont's Procedural Deficit theory of Specific Language Impairment (SLI). The theory represents an innovative attempt to fill the gap between brain and cognition in SLI, and has the potential to explain the non-linguistic as well as linguistic deficits seen in this disorder. The theory is reviewed with regard to: (1) the claims it makes on the domain-specificity of language structures; (2) the falsifiability conditions of the theory; (3) the level of detail at which compensatory processes are specified; and (4) from a computational perspective, whether the inferences that the theory draws from uneven behavioural impairments to underlying structural deficits are necessary ones.     

脑干听觉诱发电位在听阈正常的语言发育迟缓患儿中的意义

目的 探讨脑干听觉诱发电位（BAEP）在听阈正常而语言发育迟缓患儿中的变化规律及应用价值.方法 分析100例听阈正常而语言发育迟缓患儿BAEP的变化规律;按年龄分组比较两个年龄段之间各波的延长时间.结果 （1）BAEP正常10例,异常90例,BAEP表现为Ⅰ、Ⅴ波潜伏期（PL）延长,Ⅲ~Ⅴ、Ⅰ~Ⅴ波峰间期（IPL）延长;（2）随着年龄增长,Ⅴ波PL与Ⅲ~Ⅴ波IPL延长时间越长.结论 Ⅰ波、Ⅴ波延长对早期诊断听阈正常而语言发育迟缓患儿具有一定的意义,说明即使听阈正常也可能存在听觉传导通路异常,且随着年龄增加,脑干上段受损越严重.     

Speed and context: the effect of a sentence prime on naming speed in children with language impairment

Nineteen pre-school children with language impairment participated in a computerized naming task. The naming procedure involved two conditions, one unprimed where the child had to name a colour picture appearing on the screen as fast as possible and one primed where the picture was preceded by an uncompleted sentence. Response times were significantly shorter in the primed condition compared to the unprimed condition. There was a tendency that the ability to benefit from a semantic-syntactic prime was more closely linked to the participants' results on verbal measures than on non-verbal measures. Naming speed in the primed condition or the unprimed condition was not found to be linked to non-verbal measures including a speed component. Results are discussed in relation to current research, and methodological issues are highlighted.     

Building words on actions: Verb enactment and verb recognition in children with specific language impairment

Recent studies have shown that language processing is grounded in actions. Multiple independent research findings indicate that children with specific language impairment (SLI) show subtle difficulties beyond the language domain. Uncertainties remain on possible association between body-mediated, non-linguistic expression of verbs and early manifestation of SLI during verb acquisition. The present study was conducted to determine whether verb production through non-linguistic modalities is impaired in children with SLI.Children with SLI (mean age 41 months) and typically developing children (mean age 40 months) were asked to recognize target verbs while viewing video clips showing the action associated with the verb (verb-recognition task) and to enact the action corresponding to the verb (verb-enacting task). Children with SLI performed more poorly than control children in both tasks. The present study demonstrates that early language impairment emerges at the bodily level. These findings are consistent with the embodied theories of cognition and underscore the role of action-based representations during language development.     

Adolescents with a history of specific language impairment (SLI): Strengths and difficulties in social,emotional and behavioral functioning

Adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI) are at a greater risk of emotional and behavioral problems compared to their typically developing (TD) peers, but little is known about their self-perceived strengths and difficulties. In this study, the self-reported social, emotional and behavioral functioning of 139 adolescents with a history of SLI and 124 TD individuals at age 16 was examined. The self-report version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was used to assess their prosocial behavior and levels of peer, emotional and behavioral difficulties. Associations of these areas of functioning with gender, verbal and non-verbal skills were also investigated. Adolescents with a history of SLI were more likely than their TD peers to report higher levels of peer problems, emotional symptoms, hyperactivity and conduct problems. The majority of adolescents in both groups (87% SLI and 96% TD), however, reported prosocial behavior within the typical range. Difficulty with peer relations was the strongest differentiator between the groups, with the odds of reporting borderline or abnormally high levels of peer problems being 12 times higher for individuals with a history of SLI. Adolescents with poorer receptive language skills were also more likely to report higher levels of emotional and behavioral difficulties. The findings of this study identify likely traits that may lead to referral to services.     

Finite verb morphology and phonological length in the speech of children with specific language impairment

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) usually differ from younger peers in their use of grammatical morphemes pertaining to tense and agreement. The word‐final consonant status of many of these morphemes has prompted researchers to verify that the children under study are capable of producing these consonants in monomorphemic words (e.g. hand, box). However, such a measure does not ensure that the children with SLI are capable of producing words of sufficient length to support grammatical morpheme use. To examine the possible influence of this factor, we employed Ingram's phonological mean length of utterance (PMLU) as the basis for matching a group of preschoolers with SLI and younger typically developing peers. The children's use of tense/agreement morphemes was then determined. The findings indicated that despite the comparable PMLUs of the two groups, the children with SLI were more limited in their use of tense/agreement morphology than the younger peers.     

A pilot study of the effects of RightStart instruction on early numeracy skills of children with specific language impairment

This pilot study investigated the effects of an early numeracy program, RightStart Mathematics (RS), on Finnish kindergartners with specific language impairment (SLI). The study applied a pre-test–instruction–post-test design. The children with SLI (n = 9, M_age = 82.11 months) received RS instruction two to three times a week for 40 min over seven months, which replaced their business-as-usual mathematics instruction. Mathematical skill development among children with SLI was examined at the individual and group levels, and compared to the performance of normal language-achieving age peers (n = 32, M_age = 74.16 months) who received business-as-usual kindergarten mathematics instruction. The children with SLI began kindergarten with significantly weaker early numeracy skills compared to their peers. Immediately after the instruction phase, there was no significant difference between the groups in counting skills. In Grade 1, the children with SLI performed similarly to their peers in addition and subtraction skills (accuracy) and multi-digit number comparison, but showed weaker skills in arithmetical reasoning and in matching spoken and printed multi-digit numbers. Our pilot study showed encouraging signs that the early numeracy skills of children with SLI can be improved successfully in a kindergarten small-classroom setting with systematic instruction emphasizing visualization.     

Imitation in the spontaneous language of children with and without Down syndrome

This study examined the potential roles of immediate imitation in the spontaneous language of eight children with Down syndrome and eight peers matched for mean length of utterance (MLU). The typically developing group, but not the group with Down syndrome, used significantly longer imitated than spontaneous utterances. They also used expanded and modified imitations significantly more often than the children with Down syndrome, who used a relatively larger proportion of reduced and exact imitations. Thus, imitation seemed to play a different syntactic role for the groups. Several children with Down syndrome and one typically developing child imitated words selectively (i.e. they either imitated words that they did not use spontaneously or vice-versa), suggesting that imitation played a role in lexical development for these children. The most robust findings related to the pragmatic function of imitation. Imitations of both groups frequently included the final word of the previous maternal utterance. One interpretation of this finding is that imitation acted as a conversational place-holder when the children could not otherwise participate appropriately. Mothers also shortened their utterances immediately following an imitation. This finding suggests that mothers may have interpreted imitation as a result of children's incomplete comprehension.     

Oral language and narrative skills in children with specific language impairment with and without literacy delay: A three-year longitudinal study

This longitudinal study compared the development of oral language and more specifically narrative skills (storytelling and story retelling) in children with specific language impairment (SLI) with and without literacy delay. Therefore, 18 children with SLI and 18 matched controls with normal literacy were followed from the last year of kindergarten (mean age=5 years 5 months) until the beginning of grade 3 (mean age=8 years 1 month). Oral language tests measuring vocabulary, morphology, sentence and text comprehension and narrative skills were administered yearly. Based on first and third grade reading and spelling achievement, both groups were divided into a group with and a group without literacy problems. Results showed that the children with SLI and literacy delay had persistent oral language problems across all assessed language domains. The children with SLI and normal literacy skills scored also persistently low on vocabulary, morphology and story retelling skills. Only on listening comprehension and storytelling, they evolved towards the level of the control group. In conclusion, oral language skills in children with SLI and normal literacy skills remained in general poor, despite their intact literacy development during the first years of literacy instruction. Only for listening comprehension and storytelling, they improved, probably as a result of more print exposure.     

Cognitive neuropsychological and regional cerebral blood flow study of a Japanese-English bilingual girl with specific language impairment (SLI)

We report here on an investigation into the possible factors which might have contributed to language impairment (LI) in EM, a 14-year-old Japanese-English bilingual girl. EM was born in the UK to Japanese parents with no other siblings, and used English to communicate with all other people except for her parents. A delay in her English language development was identified at primary school in the UK, which was attributed to her bilingualism. The deficiency in her English language skills persisted into her adolescence despite more than adequate educational opportunities (including additional language support). At the start of her secondary education, language ability/literacy attainment tests were conducted in both English and Japanese, and the results suggested specific language impairment (SLI) in both languages. Further, her brain Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) revealed significantly lower Regional Cerebral Blood Flow(rCBF) in the left temporo-parietal area, which is also similar to the area of dysfunction often found among Japanese individuals with SLI.     

Lexical spelling in children and adolescents with specific language impairment: Variations with the writing situation

The goal of this study was to compare the lexical spelling performance of children and adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI) in two contrasting writing situations: a dictation of isolated words (a classic evaluative situation) and a narrative of a personal event (a communicative situation). Twenty-four children with SLI and 48 typically developing children participated in the study, split into two age groups: 7–11 and 12–18 years of age. Although participants with SLI made more spelling errors per word than typically developing participants of the same chronological age, there was a smaller difference between the two groups in the narratives than in the dictations. Two of the findings are particularly noteworthy: (1) Between 12 and 18 years of age, in communicative narration, the number of spelling errors of the SLI group was not different from that of the typically developing group. (2) In communicative narration, the participants with SLI did not make specific spelling errors (phonologically unacceptable), contrary to what was shown in the dictation. From an educational perspective or that of a remediation program, it must be stressed that the communicative narration provides children—and especially adolescents—with SLI an opportunity to demonstrate their improved lexical spelling abilities. Furthermore, the results encourage long-term lexical spelling education, as adolescents with SLI continue to show improvement between 12 and 18 years of age.     

Benefits of augmentative signs in word learning: Evidence from children who are deaf/hard of hearing and children with specific language impairment

BackgroundAugmentative signs may facilitate word learning in children with vocabulary difficulties, for example, children who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DHH) and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Despite the fact that augmentative signs may aid second language learning in populations with a typical language development, empirical evidence in favor of this claim is lacking.AimsWe aim to investigate whether augmentative signs facilitate word learning for DHH children, children with SLI, and typically developing (TD) children.Methods and proceduresWhereas previous studies taught children new labels for familiar objects, the present study taught new labels for new objects. In our word learning experiment children were presented with pictures of imaginary creatures and pseudo words. Half of the words were accompanied by an augmentative pseudo sign. The children were tested for their receptive word knowledge.Outcomes and resultsThe DHH children benefitted significantly from augmentative signs, but the children with SLI and TD age-matched peers did not score significantly different on words from either the sign or no-sign condition.Conclusions and implicationsThese results suggest that using Sign-Supported speech in classrooms of bimodal bilingual DHH children may support their spoken language development. The difference between earlier research findings and the present results may be caused by a difference in methodology.