scholarly journals The interface between neighborhood density and optional infinitives: normal development and Specific Language Impairment

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 835-862 ◽  
Author(s):  
JILL R. HOOVER ◽  
HOLLY L. STORKEL ◽  
MABEL L. RICE
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Normal Development ◽  
Neighborhood Density ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Third Person ◽  
English Speaking

ABSTRACTThe effect of neighborhood density on optional infinitives was evaluated for typically developing (TD) children and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Forty children, twenty in each group, completed two production tasks that assessed third person singular production. Half of the sentences in each task presented a dense verb, and half presented a sparse verb. Children's third person singular accuracy was compared across dense and sparse verbs. Results showed that the TD group was significantly less likely to use optional infinitives with dense, rather than sparse verbs. In contrast, the distribution of optional infinitives for the SLI group was independent of verb neighborhood density. Follow-up analyses showed that the lack of neighborhood density effect for the SLI group could not be attributed to heterogeneous neighborhood density effects or floor effects. Results were interpreted within the Optional Infinitive/Extended Optional Infinitive accounts for typical language development and SLI for English-speaking children.

The use of grammatical morphemes reflecting aspect and modality by children with specific language impairment

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-795 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURENCE B. LEONARD ◽  
PATRICIA DEEVY ◽  
CAROL A. MILLER ◽  
MONIQUE CHAREST ◽  
ROBERT KURTZ ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Grammatical Morphemes ◽  
Action Context ◽  
Third Person ◽  
English Speaking

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have well-documented problems in the use of tense-related grammatical morphemes. However, in English, tense often overlaps with aspect and modality. In this study, 15 children with SLI (mean age 5;2) and two groups of 15 typically developing children (mean ages 3;6 and 5;3) were compared in terms of their use of previously studied morphemes in contexts that more clearly assessed the role of aspect. The children's use of less frequently studied morphemes tied to modality or tense was also examined. The children with SLI were found to use -ing to mark progressive aspect in past as well as present contexts, even though they were relatively poor in using the tense morphemes (auxiliary was, were) that should accompany the progressive inflection. These children were inconsistent in their use of third person singular -s to describe habitual actions that were not occurring during the time of their utterance. However, the pattern of the children's use suggested that the source of the problem was the formal tense feature of the inflection, not the habitual action context. The children's use of modal can was comparable to that of the typically developing children, raising the possibility that the modality function of possibility had been learned without necessarily acquiring the tense feature of this morpheme. These children's proficiency with can suggests that their bare verb stem productions should probably not be re-interpreted as cases of missing modals. Together these findings suggest that the more serious tense-related problems seen in English-speaking children with SLI co-occur with a less impaired ability to express temporal relations through aspect and modality.

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 Number dissimilarities facilitate the comprehension of relative clauses in children with (Grammatical) Specific Language Impairment

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 811-841 ◽  
Author(s):  
FLAVIA ADANI ◽  
MATTEO FORGIARINI ◽  
MARIA TERESA GUASTI ◽  
HEATHER K. J. VAN DER LELY
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Head Noun ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
English Speaking

ABSTRACTThis study investigates whether number dissimilarities on subject and object DPs facilitate the comprehension of subject- and object-extracted centre-embedded relative clauses in children with Grammatical Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI). We compared the performance of a group of English-speaking children with G-SLI (mean age: 12;11) with that of two groups of younger typically developing (TD) children, matched on grammar and receptive vocabulary, respectively. All groups were more accurate on subject-extracted relative clauses than object-extracted ones and, crucially, they all showed greater accuracy for sentences with dissimilar number features (i.e., one singular, one plural) on the head noun and the embedded DP. These findings are interpreted in the light of current psycholinguistic models of sentence comprehension in TD children and provide further insight into the linguistic nature of G-SLI.

scholarly journals Children with Specific Language Impairment in Finnish: the use of tense and agreement inflections

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 999-1027 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARI KUNNARI ◽  
TUULA SAVINAINEN-MAKKONEN ◽  
LAURENCE B. LEONARD ◽  
LEENA MÄKINEN ◽  
ANNA-KAISA TOLONEN ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Verb Inflection ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Third Person

ABSTRACTChildren with specific language impairment (SLI) vary widely in their ability to use tense/agreement inflections depending on the type of language being acquired, a fact that current accounts of SLI have tried to explain. Finnish provides an important test case for these accounts because: (1) verbs in the first and second person permit null subjects whereas verbs in the third person do not; and (2) tense and agreement inflections are agglutinating and thus one type of inflection can appear without the other. Probes were used to compare the verb inflection use of Finnish-speaking children with SLI, and both age-matched and younger typically developing children. The children with SLI were less accurate, and the pattern of their errors did not match predictions based on current accounts of SLI. It appears that children with SLI have difficulty learning complex verb inflection paradigms apart from any problem specific to tense and agreement.

scholarly journals Production and Processing of Subject–Verb Agreement in Monolingual Dutch Children With Specific Language Impairment

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 952-965 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elma Blom ◽  
Nada Vasić ◽  
Jan de Jong
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Typical Development ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Test Sensitivity ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Listening Task ◽  
Dutch Children

Purpose In this study, the authors investigated whether errors with subject–verb agreement in monolingual Dutch children with specific language impairment (SLI) are influenced by verb phonology. In addition, the productive and receptive abilities of Dutch acquiring children with SLI regarding agreement inflection were compared. Method An SLI group (6–8 years old), an age-matched group with typical development, and a language-matched, younger, typically developing (TD) group participated in the study. Using an elicitation task, the authors tested use of third person singular inflection after verbs that ended in obstruents (plosive, fricative) or nonobstruents (sonorant). The authors used a self-paced listening task to test sensitivity to subject–verb agreement violations. Results Omission was more frequent after obstruents than nonobstruents; the younger TD group used inflection less often after plosives than fricatives, unlike the SLI group. The SLI group did not detect subject–verb agreement violations if the ungrammatical structure contained a frequent error (omission), but if the ungrammatical structure contained an infrequent error (substitution), subject–verb agreement violations were noticed. Conclusions The use of agreement inflection by children with TD or SLI is affected by verb phonology. Differential effects in the 2 groups are consistent with a delayed development in Dutch SLI. Parallels between productive and receptive abilities point to weak lexical agreement inflection representations in Dutch SLI.

scholarly journals Syntactic Versus Memory Accounts of the Sentence Comprehension Deficits of Specific Language Impairment: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

2016 ◽  
Vol 59 (6) ◽  
pp. 1491-1504 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Montgomery ◽  
Ronald B. Gillam ◽  
Julia L. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
School Age ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Proper Modification

Purpose Compared with same-age typically developing peers, school-age children with specific language impairment (SLI) exhibit significant deficits in spoken sentence comprehension. They also demonstrate a range of memory limitations. Whether these 2 deficit areas are related is unclear. The present review article aims to (a) review 2 main theoretical accounts of SLI sentence comprehension and various studies supporting each and (b) offer a new, broader, more integrated memory-based framework to guide future SLI research, as we believe the available evidence favors a memory-based perspective of SLI comprehension limitations. Method We reviewed the literature on the sentence comprehension abilities of English-speaking children with SLI from 2 theoretical perspectives. Results The sentence comprehension limitations of children with SLI appear to be more fully captured by a memory-based perspective than by a syntax-specific deficit perspective. Conclusions Although a memory-based view appears to be the better account of SLI sentence comprehension deficits, this view requires refinement and expansion. Current memory-based perspectives of adult sentence comprehension, with proper modification, offer SLI investigators new, more integrated memory frameworks within which to study and better understand the sentence comprehension abilities of children with SLI.

Predicting tense: finite verb morphology and subject pronouns in the speech of typically-developing children and children with specific language impairment

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
MONIQUE J. CHAREST ◽  
LAURENCE B. LEONARD
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Nominative Case ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Subject Pronouns ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Subject Pronoun ◽  
Finite Verb

According to the AGREEMENT/TENSE (Agr/Tns) OMISSION MODEL, children's failure to produce finite verb morphemes represents the selection of an optional infinitive form, in which tense and/or agreement is not specified. When agreement is specified, nominative case is licensed. Following the assumptions of this model, a child's utterance such as She run reflects a failure to specify tense only, given that the subject pronoun shows nominative case. We tested this assumption in two studies through the analysis of spontaneous speech samples from young typically-developing (TD) children and children with specific language impairment (SLI). In Study 1, 15 children were included (TD aged 2;1–3;11, SLI aged 4;0–6;2); in Study 2, 33 children were included (TD aged 2;5–3;11, SLI aged 3;6–6;9). We determined whether there was a relationship between the children's use of past tense -ed and their use of third person singular -s and copula is when nominative case was also used. Because nominative case was used, any failures to produce third person singular -s and copula is should be attributable to tense and not agreement. Such use should therefore be related to the children's use of -ed which presumably hinges on tense only. However, a relationship was not found in the speech of either group of children. This was true both for the children in each group who were consistent in using nominative case pronouns and for those who were not. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed.

scholarly journals Nonadjacent Dependency Learning in Cantonese-Speaking Children With and Without a History of Specific Language Impairment

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 694-700 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lai-Sang Iao ◽  
Lai Yan Ng ◽  
Anita Mei Yin Wong ◽  
Oi Ting Lee
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nonadjacent Dependencies ◽  
English Speaking

Purpose This study investigated nonadjacent dependency learning in Cantonese-speaking children with and without a history of specific language impairment (SLI) in an artificial linguistic context. Method Sixteen Cantonese-speaking children with a history of SLI and 16 Cantonese-speaking children with typical language development (TLD) were tested with a nonadjacent dependency learning task using artificial languages that mimic Cantonese. Results Children with TLD performed above chance and were able to discriminate between trained and untrained nonadjacent dependencies. However, children with a history of SLI performed at chance and were not able to differentiate trained versus untrained nonadjacent dependencies. Conclusions These findings, together with previous findings from English-speaking adults and adolescents with language impairments, suggest that individuals with atypical language development, regardless of age, diagnostic status, language, and culture, show difficulties in learning nonadjacent dependencies. This study provides evidence for early impairments to statistical learning in individuals with atypical language development.

scholarly journals Διερευνώντας τη σχέση μεταξύ της Ειδικής Γλωσσικής Διαταραχής και της Δυσλεξίας: θεωρητικές και κλινικές προεκτάσεις

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 358
Author(s):  
Ασημίνα Μ. Ράλλη ◽  
Ολυμπία Παληκαρά
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Language Delay ◽  
Chronological Age ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Comparison Groups

In this study, we tested the predictions of two opposing perspectives on the nature of the deficit in Specific Language Impairment (SLI): the language delay approach, and the view that the language development of SLI children is qualitatively different from typically developing children populations. Data consisted of the elicited production of pronominal object clitics from monolingual and bilingual SLI children with various language pairs (Greek always being the children’s second language); younger, typically developing, bilingual language peers, and monolingual Greek-speaking comparison groups. We analyzed the children’s accurate responses and error-types in clitic production. Both SLI groups had more difficulty with clitics in comparison to typically-developing, chronological age-matched peers, while SLI children performed similarly with their younger, unaffected monolingual and bilingual peers. We argue that these findings provide support to the language delay approach and present challenges to the role of bilingualism in SLI.

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