Oral Reading and Story Retelling of Students With Specific Language Impairment

Students with specific language impairment (SL) and students matched for single-word reading ability read and retold stories that were approximately one grade level above their reading level. Children with SLI produced a significantly greater percentage of oral reading discrepancies (miscues) between printed and read words. Their miscues were less graphophonemically, syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically consistent with the original texts than the miscues produced by their reading-matched peers. Despite these differences in oral reading story retellings by students in the two groups were similar in terms of percentages of recalled vocabulary, story elements, and problem-resolution pairs. Holistic analysis of the retellings indicated that fewer retellings by students in the SLI group were complete, and more of their retellings were confusing. Lack of prior knowledge regarding the topics of the stories that were read, slowed language processing and/or working memory deficiencies could account for these results.

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The Impact of Emphatic Stress on Novel Word Learning by Children With Specific Language Impairment

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/jslhr.4106.1444 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 41 (6) ◽

pp. 1444-1458 ◽

Cited By ~ 53

Author(s):

Susan Ellis Weismer ◽

Linda J. Hesketh

Keyword(s):

Language Processing ◽

Word Learning ◽

Language Impairment ◽

Specific Language Impairment ◽

School Age Children ◽

Specific Language ◽

Stress Effects ◽

Normal Language ◽

Novel Word Learning ◽

The Impact

This investigation examined the influence of emphatic stress on children's novel word learning. Forty school-age children participated in this study, including 20 children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 20 children with normal language (NL) development. Results indicated that there were no significant stress effects for comprehension or recognition of novel words (for which all children demonstrated relatively high levels of performance); however, children in both groups exhibited significantly better production of words that had been presented with emphatic stress than with neutral stress. These findings are discussed within a limited capacity framework of language processing.

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An Examination of Verbal Working Memory Capacity in Children With Specific Language Impairment

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/jslhr.4205.1249 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 42 (5) ◽

pp. 1249-1260 ◽

Cited By ~ 253

Author(s):

Susan Ellis Weismer ◽

Julia Evans ◽

Linda J. Hesketh

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Language Processing ◽

Language Impairment ◽

Specific Language Impairment ◽

Working Memory Capacity ◽

Verbal Working Memory ◽

Memory Capacity ◽

Word Recall ◽

School Age Children ◽

Specific Language

This study investigated verbal working memory capacity in children with specific language impairment (SLI). The task employed in this study was the Competing Language Processing Task (CLPT) developed by Gaulin and Campbell (1994). A total of 40 school-age children participated in this investigation, including 20 with SLI and 20 normal language (NL) age-matched controls. Results indicated that the SLI and NL groups performed similarly in terms of true/false comprehension items, but that the children with SLI evidenced significantly poorer word recall than the NL controls, even when differences in nonverbal cognitive scores were statistically controlled. Distinct patterns of word-recall errors were observed for the SLI and NL groups, as well as different patterns of associations between CLPT word recall and performance on nonverbal cognitive and language measures. The findings are interpreted within the framework of a limited-capacity model of language processing.

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Interaction of Language Processing and Motor Skill in Children With Specific Language Impairment

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/1092-4388(2013/12-0215) ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 57 (1) ◽

pp. 158-171 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

Andrea C. DiDonato Brumbach ◽

Lisa Goffman

Keyword(s):

Language Processing ◽

Motor Skill ◽

Language Impairment ◽

Specific Language Impairment ◽

Language Production ◽

Syntactic Structure ◽

Fine Motor ◽

Motor Deficits ◽

Specific Language ◽

Speech Motor

Purpose To examine how language production interacts with speech motor and gross and fine motor skill in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method Eleven children with SLI and 12 age-matched peers (4–6 years) produced structurally primed sentences containing particles and prepositions. Utterances were analyzed for errors and for articulatory duration and variability. Standard measures of motor, language, and articulation skill were also obtained. Results Sentences containing particles, as compared with prepositions, were less likely to be produced in a priming task and were longer in duration, suggesting increased difficulty with this syntactic structure. Children with SLI demonstrated higher articulatory variability and poorer gross and fine motor skills compared with aged-matched controls. Articulatory variability was correlated with generalized gross and fine motor performance. Conclusions Children with SLI show co-occurring speech motor and generalized motor deficits. Current theories do not fully account for the present findings, though the procedural deficit hypothesis provides a framework for interpreting overlap among language and motor domains.

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Auditory Processing in Specific Language Impairment (SLI): Relations With the Perception of Lexical and Phrasal Stress

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2015_jslhr-l-13-0306 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 58 (4) ◽

pp. 1292-1305 ◽

Cited By ~ 21

Author(s):

Susan Richards ◽

Usha Goswami

Keyword(s):

Language Processing ◽

Language Impairment ◽

Specific Language Impairment ◽

Auditory Processing ◽

Rise Time ◽

Digit Span ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Amplitude Envelope ◽

Stress Perception ◽

Specific Language

Purpose We investigated whether impaired acoustic processing is a factor in developmental language disorders. The amplitude envelope of the speech signal is known to be important in language processing. We examined whether impaired perception of amplitude envelope rise time is related to impaired perception of lexical and phrasal stress in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method Twenty-two children aged between 8 and 12 years participated in this study. Twelve had SLI; 10 were typically developing controls. All children completed psychoacoustic tasks measuring rise time, intensity, frequency, and duration discrimination. They also completed 2 linguistic stress tasks measuring lexical and phrasal stress perception. Results The SLI group scored significantly below the typically developing controls on both stress perception tasks. Performance on stress tasks correlated with individual differences in auditory sensitivity. Rise time and frequency thresholds accounted for the most unique variance. Digit Span also contributed to task success for the SLI group. Conclusions The SLI group had difficulties with both acoustic and stress perception tasks. Our data suggest that poor sensitivity to amplitude rise time and sound frequency significantly contributes to the stress perception skills of children with SLI. Other cognitive factors such as phonological memory are also implicated.

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Tracking Children From Poverty at Risk for Specific Language Impairment: A 3-Year Longitudinal Study

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/jshr.3903.611 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 39 (3) ◽

pp. 611-624 ◽

Cited By ~ 73

Author(s):

Barbara B. Fazio ◽

Rita C. Naremore ◽

Phil J. Connell

Keyword(s):

Longitudinal Study ◽

Language Impairment ◽

Specific Language Impairment ◽

Standardized Test ◽

Traditional Approach ◽

Language Performance ◽

Normal Children ◽

Specific Language ◽

Story Retelling ◽

Vocabulary Subtest

A 3-year longitudinal study of the language performance of children from poverty was designed to address the problem of separating children with a specific language impairment (SLI) from low-scoring normal children in the borderline area on the continuum of language performance where normal ends and abnormal begins. Two approaches to definition were compared: an experimental approach (using story-retelling, rote-memory ability, and invented-morpheme learning) and a traditional approach (using standardized-test discrepancy scores). Results indicated that 6 of 34 children tracked from kindergarten through second grade appeared to be SLI at the end of the study. The best kindergarten predictor for the outcome status of these 6 children was a combination of the score on the Oral Vocabulary subtest of the TOLD-2P and the score on a combination of the experimental tasks. The best single kindergarten predictor of the academic status of the 15 children in the study who received academic remediation was story-retelling. Children’s scores on the experimental and standardized tests of language performance and nonverbal intelligence were profiled over the 3 years of the study, and patterns of change in many instances reveal the lifting of the early influences of poverty.

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