Referential Cohesion in the Narratives of Bilingual and Monolingual Children With Typically Developing Language and With Specific Language Impairment

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sveta Fichman ◽  
Carmit Altman
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Specific Language

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.

scholarly journals Alternative Tense and Agreement Morpheme Measures for Assessing Grammatical Deficits During the Preschool Period

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 542-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Gladfelter ◽  
Laurence B. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Sensitivity And Specificity ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Preschool Age ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Composite Measure ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Preschool Period ◽  
Preschool Age Children

Purpose P. A. Hadley and H. Short (2005) developed a set of measures designed to assess the emerging diversity and productivity of tense and agreement (T/A) morpheme use by 2-year-olds. The authors extended 2 of these measures to the preschool years to evaluate their utility in distinguishing children with specific language impairment (SLI) from their typically developing (TD) peers. Method Spontaneous speech samples from 55 children (25 with SLI, 30 TD) at 2 different age levels (4;0–4;6 [years;months] and 5;0–5;6) were analyzed, using a traditional T/A morphology composite that assessed accuracy, and the Hadley and Short measures of Tense Marker Total (assessing diversity of T/A morpheme use) and Productivity Score (assessing productivity of major T/A categories). Results All 3 measures showed acceptable levels of sensitivity and specificity. In addition, similar differences in levels of productivity across T/A categories were seen in the TD and SLI groups. Conclusion The Tense Marker Total and Productivity Score measures seem to have considerable utility for preschool-age children, in that they provide information about specific T/A morphemes and major T/A categories that are not distinguished using the traditional composite measure. The findings are discussed within the framework of the gradual morphosyntactic learning account.

scholarly journals Article choice in children with High Functioning Autism (HFA) and in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 107-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeannette C. Schaeffer ◽  
Merel van Witteloostuijn ◽  
Doatske de Haan
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
High Functioning Autism ◽  
Scalar Implicature ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
High Functioning ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
Group A ◽  
Impaired Children

This study reports on the choice between a definite and an indefinite article by children with High Functioning Autism (HFA) and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). We carried out an elicited production task with 16 Dutch-speaking non-grammatically impaired children with HFA aged 6–13, 16 age-matched Dutch-speaking children with SLI, and 16 typically developing (TD) age controls. The results in the indefinite conditions reveal virtually no errors across groups. However, in the definite condition the HFA group, but NOT the SLI group, incorrectly produces indefinite articles significantly more often than the TD group. A more detailed analysis shows that 38% (6/16) of the children with HFA vs. 13% (2/16) of the children with SLI regularly produce indefinite articles in definite contexts. We propose that these children do not always calculate the additional (pragmatic) meaning of indefinites derived by scalar implicature (Horn 2006). Furthermore, development by age in the SLI group, but NOT in the HFA group, suggests that the failure to draw a scalar implicature is more persistent in children with HFA than in children with SLI. Concluding, our results show that non-grammatically impaired children with HFA are more prone to pragmatic impairments than children with SLI, suggesting a dissociation between grammar and pragmatics.

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