Specific language impairment at adolescence: Avoiding complexity

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURICE TULLER ◽  
CÉLIA HENRY ◽  
EVA SIZARET ◽  
MARIE-ANNE BARTHEZ
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Complex Structures ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Low Frequencies ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Syntactic Development ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
Language Characteristic ◽  
Syntactic Derivation

ABSTRACTThis study explores complex language in adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI) with the aim of finding out how aspects of language characteristic of typical syntactic development after childhood fare and, in particular, whether there is evidence that individuals with SLI avoid using structures whose syntactic derivation involves greater computational complexity. An analysis of spontaneous language samples of 18 French-speaking adolescents with SLI, compared to groups of typically developing speakers, showed that whereas complexity increases with age in the latter, behaviors of avoidance are clear in the former, in the form of low frequencies of complex structures, but also frequency of failed attempts and alternative strategies. Whereas increasing complexity is the hallmark of syntactic development after childhood, avoidance of complexity appears to characterize SLI after childhood.

scholarly journals Procedural learning across modalities in French-speaking children with specific language impairment

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 747-769 ◽  
Author(s):  
AUDREY GABRIEL ◽  
THIERRY MEULEMANS ◽  
CHRISTOPHE PARISSE ◽  
CHRISTELLE MAILLART
Keyword(s):  
Sequence Learning ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Procedural Memory ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Specific Sequence ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Language Problems ◽  
Serial Reaction ◽  
French Speaking

ABSTRACTIt has been suggested that the language problems encountered in specific language impairment (SLI) arise from basal ganglia abnormalities that lead to impaired procedural memory. However, recent serial reaction time (SRT) studies did not reveal any differences between the SLI and typically developing (TD) groups on the measures of procedural memory linked to visual sequence learning. In this paper, 16 children with and without SLI were compared on two versions of SRT tasks: a visual task and an auditory one. The results showed that children with SLI were as fast as their TD peers in both modalities. All of the children obtained similar specific sequence learning indices, indicating that they were able to detect regularities in both modalities. Although children with SLI were as accurate as their TD peers for the visual SRT task, they made more errors than their TD peers in auditory SRT conditions. The results indicate that, in relation to procedural memory, the core of the impairment in SLI is not linked to difficulties in the detection of regularities. We argue that when children with SLI present some difficulties, the children's weaknesses might depend on the type of processing involved (e.g., tasks involving auditory sequences).

scholarly journals Annoying Danish relatives: Comprehension and production of relative clauses by Danish children with and without SLI

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
KRISTINE JENSEN DE LÓPEZ ◽  
LONE SUNDAHL OLSEN ◽  
VASILIKI CHONDROGIANNI
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Avoidance Strategies ◽  
Reversal Errors ◽  
Object Relative

ABSTRACTThis study examines the comprehension and production of subject and object relative clauses (SRCs, ORCs) by children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and their typically developing (TD) peers. The purpose is to investigate whether relative clauses are problematic for Danish children with SLI and to compare errors with those produced by TD children. Eighteen children with SLI, eighteen TD age-matched (AM) and nine TD language-matched (LM) Danish-speaking children participated in a comprehension and in a production task. All children performed better on the comprehension compared with the production task, as well as on SRCs compared to ORCs and produced various avoidance strategies. In the ORC context, children with SLI produced more reversal errors than the AM children, who opted for passive ORCs. These results are discussed within current theories of SLI and indicate a deficiency with the assignment of thematic roles rather than with the structural make-up of RCs.

Gesture and speech during shared book reading with preschoolers with specific language impairment

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (6) ◽  
pp. 1191-1218 ◽  
Author(s):  
MANUELA LAVELLI ◽  
CHIARA BARACHETTI ◽  
ELENA FLORIT
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Sequential Analysis ◽  
Book Reading ◽  
Shared Book Reading ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Potential Effectiveness ◽  
Maternal Speech ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTThis study examined (a) the relationship between gesture and speech produced by children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing (TD) children, and their mothers, during shared book-reading, and (b) the potential effectiveness of gestures accompanying maternal speech on the conversational responsiveness of children. Fifteen preschoolers with expressive SLI were compared with fifteen age-matched and fifteen language-matched TD children. Child and maternal utterances were coded for modality, gesture type, gesture–speech informational relationship, and communicative function. Relative to TD peers, children with SLI used more bimodal utterances and gestures adding unique information to co-occurring speech. Some differences were mirrored in maternal communication. Sequential analysis revealed that only in the SLI group maternal reading accompanied by gestures was significantly followed by child's initiatives, and when maternal non-informative repairs were accompanied by gestures, they were more likely to elicit adequate answers from children. These findings support the ‘gesture advantage’ hypothesis in children with SLI, and have implications for educational and clinical practice.

Grammatical Morphology Deficits in Spanish-Speaking Children With Specific Language Impairment

2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 905-924 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Bedore ◽  
Laurence B. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Clinical Markers ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Grammatical Morphology ◽  
Grammatical Morphemes ◽  
Third Person

The focus of this study was the use of grammatical morphology by Spanish-speaking preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI). Relative to both same-age peers and younger typically developing children with similar mean lengths of utterance (MLUs), the children with SLI showed more limited use of several different grammatical morphemes. These limitations were most marked for noun-related morphemes such as adjective-agreement inflections and direct object clitics. Most errors on the part of children in all groups consisted of substitutions of a form that shared most but not all of the target’s grammatical features (e.g., correct tense and number but incorrect person). Number errors usually involved singular forms used in plural contexts; person errors usually involved third person forms used in first person contexts. The pattern of limitations of the children with SLI suggests that, for languages such as Spanish, additional factors might have to be considered in the search for clinical markers for this disorder. Implications for evaluation and treatment of language disorders in Spanish-speaking children are also discussed.

scholarly journals Lipreading Ability and Its Cognitive Correlates in Typically Developing Children and Children With Specific Language Impairment

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenni Heikkilä ◽  
Eila Lonka ◽  
Sanna Ahola ◽  
Auli Meronen ◽  
Kaisa Tiippana
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Visual Speech ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Phonological Skills ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Cognitive Correlates

PurposeLipreading and its cognitive correlates were studied in school-age children with typical language development and delayed language development due to specific language impairment (SLI).MethodForty-two children with typical language development and 20 children with SLI were tested by using a word-level lipreading test and an extensive battery of standardized cognitive and linguistic tests.ResultsChildren with SLI were poorer lipreaders than their typically developing peers. Good phonological skills were associated with skilled lipreading in both typically developing children and in children with SLI. Lipreading was also found to correlate with several cognitive skills, for example, short-term memory capacity and verbal motor skills.ConclusionsSpeech processing deficits in SLI extend also to the perception of visual speech. Lipreading performance was associated with phonological skills. Poor lipreading in children with SLI may be, thus, related to problems in phonological processing.

scholarly journals Sentence Comprehension in Specific Language Impairment: A Task Designed to Distinguish Between Cognitive Capacity and Syntactic Complexity

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 577-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence B. Leonard ◽  
Patricia Deevy ◽  
Marc E. Fey ◽  
Shelley L. Bredin-Oja
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Target Sentence ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Item Types

Purpose This study examined sentence comprehension in children with specific language impairment (SLI) in a manner designed to separate the contribution of cognitive capacity from the effects of syntactic structure. Method Nineteen children with SLI, 19 typically developing children matched for age (TD-A), and 19 younger typically developing children (TD-Y) matched according to sentence comprehension test scores responded to sentence comprehension items that varied in either length or their demands on cognitive capacity, based on the nature of the foils competing with the target picture. Results The TD-A children were accurate across all item types. The SLI and TD-Y groups were less accurate than the TD-A group on items with greater length and, especially, on items with the greatest demands on cognitive capacity. The types of errors were consistent with failure to retain details of the sentence apart from syntactic structure. Conclusions The difficulty in the more demanding conditions seemed attributable to interference. Specifically, the children with SLI and the TD-Y children appeared to have difficulty retaining details of the target sentence when the information reflected in the foils closely resembled the information in the target sentence.

Redirects: A Strategy to Increase Peer Initiations

1995 ◽  
Vol 38 (6) ◽  
pp. 1319-1333 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Melanie Schuele ◽  
Mabel L. Rice ◽  
Kim A. Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Training ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Intervention Period ◽  
Verbal Interactions ◽  
Verbal Abilities ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Preschool Boys

Preschoolers’ verbal abilities influence their verbal interactions with play partners. Previous research has suggested that preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI) are more likely to initiate conversations with adults than with peers, as compared to their typically developing peers. This study investigated a teacher-implemented procedure, redirects, as a means to facilitate initiations to peers. A redirect occurs when a child initiates to the teacher, and the teacher then suggests the child initiate to a peer, thereby redirecting the child from an adult to a peer. Four preschool boys with SLI participated in the study. The teacher training was successful in increasing the teacher’s ability to redirect the children’s initiations. The children consistently responded to redirects by initiating to peers, and most redirected initiations received conversational responses from peers. Generalization effects to spontaneous peer initiations following the intervention period were demonstrated for 2 of the boys.

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