Follow up of P1 peak amplitude and peak latency in a group of specific language-impaired children

This project investigated the maturation of P1 of 32 native Arabic speaking children; all had a primary diagnosis of SLI. The study group had a mean age 60.25 (±6.4) months (range 50–80 months) at the time of the primary diagnosis. The control group consisted of 69 children matched for age, language level and academic skills, with no history of language disability. 30 children of the SLI group were re-examined 28 months after primary diagnosis. The test battery included basic audiological evaluation and P₁/N₂ complex evoked by speech syllable /da/ and presented binaurally through sound field.

Results

Stepwise regression analysis of variables showed significant shortening of P1 peak latency in both control and SLI group showed proportional to the natural logarithm of the chronological age (r = −.414 & r² = .418). P1 peak amplitude showed significant decrease in amplitude in both control and SLI group proportional to the square of the chronological age (r = −.375 & r² = .140). However, no significant difference could be detected between the SLI group and the control group as regards P1 peak latency and peak amplitude. Moreover, the study showed no statistical significant difference between the control group and the study group as regards the correlation between P1 and language age (P1 latency t = .153, while significant t = .879 and P1 amplitude (t = −.37) significant t = .712). The partial correlation coefficient was .04 for P1 latency and .088 for P1 amplitude.

Conclusions

Considering the heterogeneity of the SLI group, P1 peak amplitude and peak latency may be valuable to follow up the maturation of the auditory system on individual basis rather than for differential diagnosis of SLI patient from normal. P1 does not show dramatic developmental change in the age range 5–10 years to be used clinically. Further researches are needed to standardize statistical method for analyzing P1 waveform.     

The contribution of processing impairments to SLI: Insights from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Slowed speed of processing and impaired rapid temporal processing (RTP) have been proposed to underlie specific language impairment (SLI), but it is not clear that these dysfunctions are unique to SLI. We considered the contribution of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which frequently co-occurs with language impairments, to performances on processing tasks. School-aged children who had SLI without concurrent ADHD (n = 14), ADHD without concurrent SLI (n = 14), and typical development (TD, n = 28) performed two nonverbal speeded tasks and one auditory RTP task. RTP impairments were found in many children with SLI and ADHD, and some children with TD. Children with ADHD demonstrated slower processing speed than children with SLI or TD. Overall, findings questioned the uniqueness of these processing dysfunctions to language impairments and the validity of the behavioural paradigms traditionally used to estimate processing dysfunctions. Accounts of SLI should be further scrutinized by considering the influence of other disorders.Learning outcomes: Readers will (1) become familiar with areas of overlap between SLI and ADHD, (2) understand some of the confounds associated with behavioural measures of processing speed in children, and (3) recognize the value in testing models of language disorders by including participants with other types of disorders.     

Association between language development and auditory processing disorders

IntroductionIt is crucial to understand the complex processing of acoustic stimuli along the auditory pathway; comprehension of this complex processing can facilitate our understanding of the processes that underlie normal and altered human communication.AimTo investigate the performance and lateralization effects on auditory processing assessment in children with specific language impairment (SLI), relating these findings to those obtained in children with auditory processing disorder (APD) and typical development (TD).Material and methodsProspective study. Seventy-five children, aged 6-12 years, were separated in three groups: 25 children with SLI, 25 children with APD, and 25 children with TD. All went through the following tests: speech-in-noise test, Dichotic Digit test and Pitch Pattern Sequencing test.ResultsThe effects of lateralization were observed only in the SLI group, with the left ear presenting much lower scores than those presented to the right ear. The inter-group analysis has shown that in all tests children from APD and SLI groups had significantly poorer performance compared to TD group. Moreover, SLI group presented worse results than APD group.ConclusionThis study has shown, in children with SLI, an inefficient processing of essential sound components and an effect of lateralization. These findings may indicate that neural processes (required for auditory processing) are different between auditory processing and speech disorders.     

Contralateral suppression of otoacoustic emissions in children with specific language impairment

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the investigation was to determine whether a group of children with specific language impairments (SLI) have reduced peripheral auditory processes thought to be associated with speech-in-noise intelligibility. DESIGN: Transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAE) and their suppression by the efferent activity of the medial olivocochlear system (MOCS) in response to contralateral acoustic stimulation were used to compare these processes in 18 children with SLI and 21 controls. RESULTS: The results revealed no group difference in TEOAE suppression effect or left/right asymmetry of TEOAE suppression effect. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that children with SLI do not have auditory processing problems at this peripheral level casting doubt on a hypothesized relationship between strength of MOCS activity and language impairment.     

Assessment of auditory processing in 6-year-old language-impaired children

The performance of a group of twenty 6-year-old children with specific language impairment (SLI) on several behavioural auditory tests was compared to that of a group of twenty age-matched control children. The auditory test battery used in this study consisted of the following tests: a speech-in-noise test, a filtered speech test, a binaural fusion test, a frequency pattern test, a duration pattern test, a temporal integration test, an auditory word discrimination test, an auditory synthesis test, an auditory closure test and a number recall test. Our results show that the SLI children obtained scores on almost all tests that were significantly lower than those of the control group. Many of the basic auditory processing measures in our test battery correlated significantly with receptive and language scores, suggesting a (causal) relationship between auditory processing and language proficiency. Results from discriminant function analyses do not warrant deleting one or more tests from the test battery yet (with the exception of the auditory synthesis test and the temporal integration test, for which we did not find significant group effects). At present, we are conducting experiments with older (SLI and control) children and adults to find whether the significant performance deficits of the SLI children are also found in older SLI children, and to determine the influence of maturational effects on these auditory tests.     

Behavioral profiles associated with auditory processing disorder and specific language impairment

PurposeTo describe and compare behavioral profiles associated with auditory processing disorder (APD) and specific language impairment (SLI) in school-age children.MethodThe participants in this cross-sectional observational study were 64 children (mean age 10.1 years) recruited through clinician referrals. Thirty-five participants had a clinical diagnosis of APD and 29 were receiving services for language impairment. Participants completed 18 behavioral measures of spoken language, auditory processing, reading, memory, and motor speed. Responses were used to classify children as affected/not affected with APD, and affected/not affected with SLI. Comparisons were made between children with and without an APD diagnosis, and between children assigned to the APD/not APD and SLI/not SLI groups. Agreement between clinical status and test-based classifications is also reported.ResultsThere were no group mean differences between children with and without a clinical diagnosis of APD. Group mean differences on Cube Design and reading fluency were observed for children classified as APD/not APD; and group mean differences on nonword repetition, spatial working memory, and two auditory processing tests were observed for children classified as SLI/not SLI.ConclusionsThe behavioral profiles of children with APD and SLI were very similar. Although group mean differences were found, they were difficult to interpret in terms of current theories.Learning outcomes: The reader will be able to: (1) describe similarities and differences found between children with SLI and children with APD and (2) discuss assessment problems posed by overlapping behavioral characteristics of SLI and APD.     

Phonological representations in children with SLI: a study of French.

The present research examined the quality of the phonological representations of French children with specific language impairment (SLI) and those with normal language development (NLD). Twenty-five children with SLI and 50 children with NLD matched on lexical age level participated in an auditory lexical decision task. The observations gathered in our study can be summarized as follows. First, children with a higher receptive lexical level performed better, and this was true both for children with NLD and children with SLI. Second, both children with NLD and those with SLI were more likely to reject pseudowords resulting from a modification affecting the number of syllables of a word than pseudowords resulting from a slight modification with the number of syllables unchanged. This difference, however, was greater for the children with SLI, who appeared to have much difficulty rejecting pseudowords resulting from slight modifications. Finally, the performance of children with SLI was particularly poor when presented with pseudowords resulting from a slight modification at the beginning or the end of a word. These findings are interpreted as supporting the hypothesis of an under-specification of phonological representations in children with SLI.     

Hearing and communicative skills in the first years of life in children with congenital Zika syndrome

IntroductionMicrocephaly is recognized as one of the main consequences of congenital Zika syndrome, but other serious problems such as global hypertonia, irritability, excessive crying, swallowing disorders, seizures, visual impairment and sensorineural hearing loss have been identified as associated with the syndrome.ObjectiveDescribe the developmental characteristics of hearing and language skills in the first year of life of children with normal hearing thresholds’ and congenital Zika syndrome.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional study that evaluated hearing and language skills in the first year of life of 88 children with normal peripheral hearing and confirmed congenital Zika syndrome. All children were submitted to a behavioral auditory test and a validated questionnaire addressed to parents or caregivers, which was used as an instrument for assessing hearing and communicative skills.ResultsThe delay in communicative skills was present in 87.5% of the children, while 44.3% of them demonstrated a delay in hearing acuity. Only the alteration of cervical motor control presented as a statistically significant association with delays in both skills (p-value = 0.006 and <0.001 for hearing and communicative skills, respectively), while the presence of microcephaly and the degree of its severity were only associated with delayed development of communicative skills.ConclusionDespite a normal peripheral auditory system, children with congenital Zika syndrome may demonstrate delayed language development by having neurological damage at the center of auditory processing, requiring more specific studies to clarify language acquisition in this population.     

Speed of processing in children with specific language impairment.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the speed with which children with specific language impairment (SLI) respond on a range of tasks. Seventy-seven third-grade children participated in 10 different tasks (involving a total of 41 conditions), including nonlinguistic and linguistic activities. Mean response times (RTs) of children with SLI (n = 29) increased as a function of mean RTs of children with normal language (NLD, n = 29) under each of three different regression models; children with SLI responded more slowly across all task conditions, and also when linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks were analyzed separately. Children with nonspecific language impairment (NLI) were also included (n = 19). The results were similar to those for children with SLI, but the degree of slowing was greater. The results of the group analyses support the hypothesis that speed of processing in children with SLI is generally slower than that of children with normal language. However, some children with SLI do not appear to show deficits of this type.     

Diagnostik und Differenzierung sprachentwicklungsgestörter Kinder?

BACKGROUND: Specific language impairment (SLI) is defined as a developmental disorder in which language comprehension and the child's ability to use expressive spoken language is markedly below the appropriate level for his or her mental age. The intelligence of SLI children is in the normal range, while their language abilities are impaired. "Normal intelligence", the defining feature of SLI is questioned in this study. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Using IDIS (an inventory of diagnostic information in language impairment), we examined 138 children aged 5 and 6 years with severe language impairment; 108 SLI and 30 LI children. Various indicators of speech and language such as articulation, the ability to discriminate sounds, lexicon, grammar and pragmatic abilities but also auditory and visual perception, auditory and visual memory, fine and gross motor function were assessed. RESULTS: The performance of the SLI children was significantly higher in most of the tests than that of the LI children. Factor analysis showed that the two groups also differed in the structure of performance. Auditory short-term memory was reduced in most children irrespective of intelligence. CONCLUSIONS: We propose the retention of the differentiation of subgroups of developmental speech and language disorders depending on the level of intelligence.     

Specific language impairment in French-speaking children: beyond grammatical morphology.

PURPOSE: Studies on specific language impairment (SLI) in French have identified specific aspects of morphosyntax as particularly vulnerable. However, a cohesive picture of relative strengths and weaknesses characterizing SLI in French has not been established. In light of normative data showing low morphological error rates in the spontaneous language of French-speaking preschoolers, the relative prominence of such errors in SLI in young children was questioned. METHOD: Spontaneous language samples were collected from 12 French-speaking preschool-age children with SLI, as well as 12 children with normal language development matched on age and 12 children with normal language development matched on mean length of utterance. Language samples were analyzed for length of utterance; lexical diversity and composition; diversity of grammatical morphology and morphological errors, including verb finiteness; subject omission; and object clitics. RESULTS: Children with SLI scored lower than age-matched children on all of these measures but similarly to the mean length of utterance-matched controls. Errors in grammatical morphology were very infrequent in all groups, with no significant group differences. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that the spontaneous language of French-speaking children with SLI in the preschool age range is characterized primarily by a generalized language impairment and that morphological deficits do not stand out as an area of particular vulnerability, in contrast with the pattern found in English for this age group.     

Factors that influence lexical and semantic fast mapping of young children with specific language impairment.

PURPOSE: This purpose of this study was to investigate the lexical and semantic fast mapping ability of young children with specific language impairment (SLI) and normal language (NL), with a specific emphasis on the influence of phonological factors. METHOD: The study included 46 children (mean age 58 months), half with SLI and half with NL. Children were asked to fast map visual information only, visual-plus-nonlinguistic-auditory information, and visual-plus-linguistic-auditory information. A mixed design was used to compare children across and within groups. RESULTS: Children with SLI performed worse than children with NL overall. The SLI group showed specific deficits in semantic fast mapping when they saw visual information only. This condition may have disrupted encoding because it varied from the expected auditory and visual pattern. The children with SLI also performed poorly when they were asked to map phonotactically infrequent linguistic information and when the difficulty of the task increased. A nonword repetition task was correlated with both semantic and lexical fast mapping. CONCLUSIONS: The findings are discussed in the light of their support for a limited capacity model of processing, as well as the impact of phonology on word learning.     

Auditory-visual integration for speech by children with and without specific language impairment.

PURPOSE: It has long been known that children with specific language impairment (SLI) can demonstrate difficulty with auditory speech perception. However, speech perception can also involve the integration of both auditory and visual articulatory information. METHOD: Fifty-six preschool children, half with and half without SLI, were studied in order to examine auditory-visual integration. Children watched and listened to video clips of a woman speaking [bi] and [gi]. They also listened to audio clips of [bi], [di], and [gi], produced by the same woman. The effect of visual input on speech perception was tested by presenting an auditory [bi] combined with a visually articulated [gi], which tends to alter the phoneme percept (the McGurk effect). RESULTS: Both groups of children performed at ceiling when asked to identify speech tokens in auditory-only and congruent auditory-visual modalities. In the incongruent auditory-visual condition, a stronger McGurk effect was found for the normal language group compared with the children with SLI. CONCLUSION: Responses by the children with SLI indicated less impact of visual processing on speech perception than was seen with their normal peers. These results demonstrate that the difficulties with speech perception by SLI children extend beyond the auditory-only modality to include auditory-visual processing as well.     

Morphological productivity in children with normal language and SLI: a study of the English past tense.

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are known to display persistent difficulties with inflectional morphology--in particular, the overuse of unmarked grammatical forms (i.e., zero-marking). Yet, several recent studies have shown that English-speaking children with SLI, like their normal language peers (NL), demonstrate a considerable degree of productive language abilities (e.g., Bishop, 1994; Loeb & Leonard, 1991; Oetting & Horohov, 1997). In this study, we explore productivity in the English past tense in school-age children with SLI (N= 31) and NL (N = 31) who were equivalent as a group in chronological and mental age. Although children in both groups produced a range of error types, the children with SLI produced significantly more errors, with a greater proportion resulting from zero-marking (e.g., go) than suffixation (e.g., goed). Item analyses indicated that suffixations and zero-markings were predicted by item frequency, phonological features of stems, and similarity relationships across items (i.e., neighborhood structure) in both groups, yet children with SLI were more sensitive to item phonology than their NL peers. Results are interpreted in light of the predictions of dual- versus single-mechanism models of morphological productivity. Implications for accounts of SLI are discussed.     

Basic auditory processing skills and specific language impairment: a new look at an old hypothesis.

PURPOSE: To explore the sensitivity of children with specific language impairment (SLI) to amplitude-modulated and durational cues that are important for perceiving suprasegmental speech rhythm and stress patterns. METHOD: Sixty-three children between 7 and 11 years of age were tested, 21 of whom had a diagnosis of SLI, 21 of whom were matched for chronological age to the SLI sample, and 21 of whom were matched for language age to the SLI sample. All children received a battery of nonspeech auditory processing tasks along with standardized measures of phonology and language. RESULTS: As many as 70%-80% of children diagnosed with SLI were found to perform below the 5th percentile of age-matched controls in auditory processing tasks measuring sensitivity to amplitude envelope rise time and sound duration. Furthermore, individual differences in sensitivity to these cues predicted unique variance in language and literacy attainment, even when age, nonverbal IQ, and task-related (attentional) factors were controlled. CONCLUSION: Many children with SLI have auditory processing difficulties, but for most children, these are not specific to brief, rapidly successive acoustic cues. Instead, sensitivity to durational and amplitude envelope cues appear to predict language and literacy outcomes more strongly. This finding now requires replication and exploration in languages other than English.     

Predicting word decoding and word spelling development in children with Specific Language Impairment

This longitudinal investigation on Dutch children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) aimed at determining the predictive value of statistically uncorrelated language proficiencies on later reading and spelling skills in Dutch. Language abilities, tested with an extensive test battery at the onset of formal reading instruction, were represented by four statistically uncorrelated factors: lexical-semantic abilities, auditory perception, verbal-sequential processing, and speech production. All factors contributed significantly to the prediction of word reading and spelling development seven months later. Verbal-sequential processing was the strongest predictor for both word decoding and spelling. Furthermore, autoregression effects of word decoding and spelling were strong and verbal-sequential processing had predictive value on word spelling nineteen months later when pre-existing spelling abilities were accounted for. Children with SLI and normal literacy skills performed better on most of the language and language-related measures than children with SLI and poor literacy skills. Learning outcomes: As a result of this activity, readers will describe four language domains that are related to later literacy skills in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). As a result of this activity, readers will recognize the predictive value of each of these language domains and the important role of verbal-sequential processing in learning to decode and writing words for children with SLI. As a result of this activity, readers will recall the differences in language proficiencies between children with SLI who develop normal literacy skills and those who encounter literacy problems.     

Examining the language performances of children with and without specific language impairment: contributions of phonological short-term memory and speed of processing.

PURPOSE: This study investigated the effects of processing speed and phonological short-term memory (PSTM) on children's language performance. METHOD: Forty-eight school-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) and age peers completed auditory detection reaction time (RT) and nonword repetition tasks, the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Revised (CELF-R; E. Semel, E. Wiig, & W. Secord, 1987), and a word recognition RT task. Correlation and regression were used to determine unique and shared contributions to variance among measures. RESULTS: Children with SLI were outperformed by age peers on each task. Auditory detection RT was correlated with nonword repetition (NWR) in each group. However, both variables covaried with age, and auditory detection RT did not contribute unique variance to NWR in either group. For the SLI group, NWR predicted unique variance in CELF-R performance (about 15%); auditory detection RT predicted a smaller amount of unique variance in the word recognition RT task (about 9%). CONCLUSION: Processing speed and PSTM measures covaried with chronological age. Processing speed was associated with offline language performance only through association with PSTM. Processing speed contributed to online language performance, suggesting that speed is associated with processing more familiar language material (i.e., lexical content and structure) than less familiar material (e.g., various content on the CELF-R).     

Delay or deficit? Spelling processes in children with specific language impairment

Few studies have explored the phonological, morphological and orthographic spellings skills of children with specific language impairment (SLI) simultaneously. Fifteen children with SLI (mean age = 113.07 months, SD = 8.61) completed language and spelling tasks alongside chronological-age controls and spelling-age controls. While the children with SLI showed a deficit in phonological spelling, they performed comparably to spelling-age controls on morphological spelling skills, and there were no differences between the three groups in producing orthographically legal spellings. The results also highlighted the potential importance of adequate non-word repetition skills in relation to effective spelling skills, and demonstrated that not all children with spoken language impairments show marked spelling difficulties. Findings are discussed in relation to theory, educational assessment and practice.Learning outcomes: As a result of this activity, readers will describe components of spoken language that predict children's morphological and phonological spelling performance. As a result of this activity, readers will describe how the spelling skills of children with SLI compare to age-matched and spelling age-matched control children. Readers will be able to interpret the variability in spelling performance seen in children with SLI.     

Central auditory processing disorder (CAPD) in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Central auditory tests

The aim of this project is to use central auditory tests for diagnosis of central auditory processing disorder (CAPD) in children with specific language impairment (SLI), in order to confirm relationship between speech-language impairment and central auditory processing. We attempted to establish special dichotic binaural tests in Czech language modified for younger children. Tests are based on behavioral audiometry using dichotic listening (different auditory stimuli that presented to each ear simultaneously). The experimental tasks consisted of three auditory measures (test 1-3)-dichotic listening of two-syllable words presented like binaural interaction tests. Children with SLI are unable to create simple sentences from two words that are heard separately but simultaneously. Results in our group of 90 pre-school children (6-7 years old) confirmed integration deficit and problems with quality of short-term memory. Average rate of success of children with specific language impairment was 56% in test 1, 64% in test 2 and 63% in test 3. Results of control group: 92% in test 1, 93% in test 2 and 92% in test 3 (p<0.001). Our results indicate the relationship between disorders of speech-language perception and central auditory processing disorders.     

Word learning by preschoolers with specific language impairment: effect of phonological or semantic cues.

PURPOSE: This study investigated whether phonological or semantic encoding cues promoted better word learning for children with specific language impairment (SLI) and whether this treatment differentially affected children with SLI and normal language (NL). METHOD: Twenty-four preschoolers ages 4;0 (years;months) to 5;11 with SLI and 24 age- and gender-matched children with NL participated. The between-group factor was language group (NL, SLI) and within-group factors were language modality (comprehension, recognition, production) and treatment condition (phonological, semantic). Word learning was assessed during fast mapping, word learning, and post-testing with trials to criterion calculated for the number of words learned. A drawing task assessed the change in semantic representation of words. RESULTS: The SLI group comprehended more words in the semantic condition and produced more words in the phonological condition, but the NL group performed similarly in both. The NL group required significantly fewer trials than the SLI group to comprehend words in the semantic and phonological conditions and to produce words in the semantic condition, but between-group differences for production were not significant for the phonological condition. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that preschoolers with SLI may benefit from cues that highlight the phonological or semantic properties of words but that different cues may aid different aspects of word learning.