Nonword Repetition Skills in Gulf Arabic–Speaking Children With Developmental Language Disorder

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (11) ◽  
pp. 3700-3713
Author(s):  
Saleh Shaalan
Keyword(s):  
Phonological Processing ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Nonword Repetition ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Gulf Arabic ◽  
Arabic Speaking ◽  
Phonological Complexity

Purpose This study examined the performance of Gulf Arabic–speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD) on a Gulf Arabic nonword repetition (GA-NWR) test and compared it to their age- and language-matched groups. We also investigated the role of syllable length, wordlikeness, and phonological complexity in light of NWR theories. Method A new GA-NWR test was conducted with three groups of Gulf Arabic–speaking children: school-age children with DLD, language-matched controls (LCs), and age-matched controls (ACs). The test consisted of two- and three-syllable words that either had no clusters, medial clusters, final clusters, or medial + final clusters. Results The GA-NWR distinguished between the performance of children with DLD and the LC and AC groups. Results showed significant syllable length, wordlikeness, and phonological complexity effects. Differences between the DLD and typically developing groups were seen in two- and three-syllable nonwords; however, when compared on nonwords with no clusters, children with DLD were not significantly different from the LC group. Conclusions The GA-NWR test differentiated between children with DLD and their ACs and LCs. Findings, therefore, support its clinical utility in this variety of Arabic. Results showed that phonological processing factors, such as phonological complexity, may have stronger effects when compared to syllable length effects. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12996812

scholarly journals Variability of input in preposition learning by preschoolers with developmental language disorder and typically-developing language

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-74
Author(s):  
Katrina Nicholas ◽  
Mary Alt ◽  
Ella Hauwiller
Keyword(s):  
High Performance ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Case Series ◽  
High Variability ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Vocabulary Skills ◽  
Series Design

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of variability in teaching prepositions to preschoolers with typical development (TD) and developmental language disorder (DLD). Input variability during teaching can enhance learning, but is target dependent. We hypothesized that high variability of objects would improve preposition learning. We also examined other characteristics (e.g. vocabulary skills) of children who responded to treatment. We used a case series design, repeated across children ( n = 18) to contrast how preschoolers learned prepositions in conditions that manipulated variability of objects and labels across three treatment sessions. We contrasted a high versus low variability condition for objects and labels for one group of typically-developing (TD) children ( n = 6). In other groups (TD, n = 6; DLD, n = 6), we contrasted high versus low object variability only. Visual inspection and descriptive statistics were used to characterize gains. Half ( n = 3) of TD participants showed a low variability advantage for the condition that combined object and label variability. In the condition that only contrasted object variability, the majority ( n = 4) of TD participants showed a high variability advantage, compared to only two participants with DLD. In the high object variability condition, high receptive vocabulary scores were significantly correlated with high performance of learning prepositions ( rs = 0.71, p < 0.05). Combining high variability for objects and labels when teaching prepositions was not effective. However, high variability for objects can create a learning advantage for learning prepositions for children with typically developing language, but not all learners. Characteristics of different learners (e.g. receptive vocabulary scores) and language status (impaired or unimpaired) should be taken into consideration for future studies.

Investigating the Relationship Between Nonword Repetition Performance and Syllabic Structure in Typical and Atypical Language Development

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 708-720 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Tamburelli ◽  
Gary Jones
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Nonword Repetition ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Syllabic Structure ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Phonological Complexity ◽  
Different Levels

Purpose In this study, the authors examined the role of syllabic structure in nonword repetition performance in typically developing (TD) children and children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method Eighteen children with SLI (5;7–6;7 [years;months]) and 18 TD children matched for chronological age were tested on their ability to repeat phonemes in different positions within syllable structure (onset, nucleus, coda). The test involved 2 separate nonword repetition tasks differing in lexicality (high vs. low). High-lexicality nonwords contained subparts that are morphemes of the language (i.e., subparts were “lexical”), whereas nonlexical nonwords did not. Results Repetition performance across the 3 syllabic positions showed a significant effect for both populations and on both tasks. However, although on the high-lexicality task the direction of the effect revealed the onset as the most error-prone constituent (onset > coda > nucleus), on the low-lexicality task, it was the coda that attracted most errors (coda > onset > nucleus). Conclusions Results suggest that the procedures involved in computing syllabic structure are qualitatively similar in the 2 populations. We take these results to support the view that different syllabic positions involve different levels of phonological complexity and that tests that control for lexicality are crucial in illuminating these differences.

scholarly journals Nonword repetition depends on the frequency of sublexical representations at different grain sizes: evidence from a multi-factorial analysis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakub M. Szewczyk ◽  
Marta Marecka ◽  
Shula Chiat ◽  
Zofia Wodniecka
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Phonological Processing ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Nonword Repetition ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Phonotactic Probability ◽  
Grain Sizes ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
Phonological Complexity ◽  
Repetition Task

The nonword repetition task (NWR) has been widely used in basic cognitive and clinical research, as well as in clinical assessment, and has been proposed as a clinical marker for Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Yet the mechanisms underlying performance on this task are not clear. This study offers insights into these mechanisms through a comprehensive examination of item-related variables identified in previous research as possibly contributing to NWR scores and through testing the predictive power of each in relation to the others. A unique feature of the study is that all factors are considered simultaneously. Fifty-seven typically developing children were tested with a NWR task containing 150 nonwords differing in length, phonotactic probability, lexical neighbourhood, and phonological complexity. The results indicate that phonological processing of novel words draws on sublexical representations at all grain sizes and that these representations are phonological, unstructured and insensitive to morphemehood. We propose a novel index – mean ngram frequency of all phonemes – that best captures the extent to which a nonword draws on sublexical representations. The study demonstrates the primacy of sublexical representations in NWR performance with implications for the nature of the deficit in SLI.

scholarly journals Nonword Repetition Performance of Arabic-Speaking Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder: A Study on Diagnostic Accuracy

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Juhayna Taha ◽  
Vesna Stojanovik ◽  
Emma Pagnamenta
Keyword(s):  
Diagnostic Accuracy ◽  
Sensitivity And Specificity ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Characteristic Curve ◽  
Nonword Repetition ◽  
Cutoff Score ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Likelihood Ratios ◽  
Palestinian Arabic ◽  
Arabic Speaking

Purpose This study evaluates the effectiveness of a nonword repetition (NWR) task in discriminating between Palestinian Arabic–speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and age-matched typically developing (TD) children. Method Participants were 30 children with DLD aged between 4;0 and 6;10 (years;months) and 60 TD children aged between 4;0 and 6;8 matched on chronological age. The Arabic version of a Quasi-Universal NWR task was administered. The task comprises 30 nonwords that vary in length, presence of consonant clusters (CCs) and wordlikeness ratings. Responses were scored using an item-level scoring method to assess the diagnostic accuracy of the task. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was conducted to determine the best cutoff point with the highest sensitivity and specificity values, and likelihood ratios were calculated. Results Children with DLD scored significantly lower on the NWR task than their age-matched TD peers. Only the DLD group was influenced by the phonological complexity of the nonwords, with nonwords with two CC being more difficult than nonwords with no or only one CC. For both groups, three-syllable nonwords were repeated less accurately than two- and one-syllable nonwords. Also, high word-like nonwords were repeated more accurately than nonwords with low wordlikeness ratings. The best cutoff score had sensitivity and specificity of 93% and highly informative likelihood ratios. Conclusions NWR was an area of difficulty for Palestinian Arabic–speaking children with DLD. NWR showed excellent discriminatory power in differentiating Arabic-speaking children diagnosed with DLD from their age-matched TD peers. NWR appears to hold promise for clinical use as it is a useful indicator of DLD in Arabic. These results need to be further validated using population-based studies. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14880360

scholarly journals Morphosyntactic weaknesses in Developmental Language Disorder: the role of structure and agreement configurations

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 909-944 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincenzo MOSCATI ◽  
Luigi RIZZI ◽  
Ilenia VOTTARI ◽  
Anna Maria CHILOSI ◽  
Renata SALVADORINI ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Disorder ◽  
Forced Choice ◽  
Choice Task ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
The Hierarchical Structure ◽  
Forced Choice Task ◽  
Structural Distance ◽  
New Evidence

AbstractAgreement is a morphosyntactic dependency which is sensitive to the hierarchical structure of the clause and is constrained by the structural distance that separates the elements involved in this relation. In this paper we present two experiments, providing new evidence that Italian-speaking children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), as well as Typically Developing (TD) children, are sensitive to the same hierarchical and locality factors that characterise agreement in adult grammars. This sensitivity holds even though DLD children show accrued difficulties in more complex agreement configurations. In the first experiment, a forced-choice task was used to establish whether children are more affected in the computation of S-V agreement when an element intervenes hierarchically or linearly in the agreement relation: DLD children are more subject to attraction errors when the attractor intervenes hierarchically, indicating that DLD children discriminate between hierarchical and linear configurations. The second experiment, also conducted through a forced-choice task, shows that the computation of agreement in DLD children is more ‘fragile’ than in TD children (and also in children with a primary impairment in the phonological domain), in that it is more sensitive to the factors of complexity identified in Moscati and Rizzi's (2014) typology of agreement configurations. To capture the agreement pattern found in DLD children, we put forth a novel hypothesis: the Fragile Computation of Agreement Hypothesis. Its main tenet is that DLD children make use of the same grammatical operations employed by their peers, as demonstrated in Experiment 1, but difficulties increase as a function of the complexity of the agreement configuration.

scholarly journals Executive Function, Working Memory, and Verbal Fluency in Relation to Non-Verbal Intelligence in Greek-Speaking School-Age Children with Developmental Language Disorder

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 604
Author(s):  
Asimina M. Ralli ◽  
Elisavet Chrysochoou ◽  
Petros Roussos ◽  
Kleopatra Diakogiorgi ◽  
Panagiota Dimitropoulou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Verbal Fluency ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
School Age ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Verbal Intelligence ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Digit Recall

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is often associated with impairments in working memory (WM), executive functions (EF), and verbal fluency. Moreover, increasing evidence shows poorer performance of children with DLD on non-verbal intelligence tests relative to their typically developing (TD) peers. Yet, the degree and generality of relevant difficulties remain unclear. The present study aimed at investigating WM capacity, key EFs and verbal fluency in relation to non-verbal intelligence in Greek-speaking school-age children with DLD, compared to TD peers (8–9 years). To our knowledge, the present study is the first to attempt a systematic relevant assessment with Greek-speaking school-age children, complementing previous studies mostly involving English-speaking participants. The results showed that children with DLD scored lower than TD peers on the non-verbal intelligence measure. Groups did not differ in the inhibition measures obtained (tapping resistance to either distractor or proactive interference), but children with DLD were outperformed by TD peers in the WM capacity, updating, monitoring (mixing cost), and verbal fluency (phonological and semantic) measures. The effects showed limited (in the case of backward digit recall) or no dependence on non-verbal intelligence. Findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical and practical implications as well as in relation to future lines of research.

Bilingualism and Processing Speed in Typically Developing Children and Children With Developmental Language Disorder

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (5) ◽  
pp. 1479-1493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ji Sook Park ◽  
Carol A. Miller ◽  
Teenu Sanjeevan ◽  
Janet G. van Hell ◽  
Daniel J. Weiss ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Processing Speed ◽  
Dual Language ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Vocabulary Test ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Language Abilities ◽  
Language Measures

Purpose The aim of the current study was to investigate whether dual language experience modulates processing speed in typically developing (TD) children and in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). We also examined whether processing speed predicted vocabulary and sentence-level abilities in receptive and expressive modalities. Method We examined processing speed in monolingual and bilingual school-age children (ages 8–12 years) with and without DLD. TD children (35 monolinguals, 24 bilinguals) and children with DLD (17 monolinguals, 10 bilinguals) completed a visual choice reaction time task. The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and the Expressive Vocabulary Test were used as language measures. Results The children with DLD exhibited slower response times relative to TD children. Response time was not modified by bilingual experience, neither in children with typical development nor children with DLD. Also, we found that faster processing speed was related to higher language abilities, but this relationship was not significant when socioeconomic status was controlled for. The magnitude of the association did not differ between the monolingual and bilingual groups across the language measures. Conclusions Slower processing speed is related to lower language abilities in children. Processing speed is minimally influenced by dual language experience, at least within this age range. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12210311

scholarly journals A New Memory Perspective on the Sentence Comprehension Deficits of School-Age Children With Developmental Language Disorder: Implications for Theory, Assessment, and Intervention

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
James W. Montgomery ◽  
Ronald B. Gillam ◽  
Julia L. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Fluid Intelligence ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
New Model ◽  
Syntactic Knowledge ◽  
Controlled Attention

Purpose The nature of the relationship between memory and sentence comprehension in school-age children with developmental language disorder (DLD) has been unclear. We present a novel perspective that highlights the relational influences of fluid intelligence, controlled attention, working memory (WM), and long-term memory (LTM) on sentence comprehension in children with and without DLD. This perspective has new and important implications for theory, assessment, and intervention. Method We review a large-scale study of children with and without DLD that focused on the connections between cognition, memory, and sentence comprehension. We also summarize a new model of these relationships. Results Our new model suggests that WM serves as a conduit through which syntactic knowledge in LTM, controlled attention, and general pattern recognition indirectly influence sentence comprehension in both children with DLD and typically developing children. For typically developing children, language-based LTM and fluid intelligence indirectly influence sentence comprehension. However, for children with DLD, controlled attention plays a larger indirect role. Conclusions WM plays a key role in children's ability to apply their syntactic knowledge when comprehending canonical and noncanonical sentences. Our new model has important implications for the assessment of sentence comprehension and for the treatment of larger sentence comprehension deficits.

Do Children With Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) Have Difficulties With Interference Control, Visuospatial Working Memory, and Selective Attention? Developmental Patterns and the Role of Severity and Persistence of DLD

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (9) ◽  
pp. 3036-3050
Author(s):  
Elma Blom ◽  
Tessel Boerma
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Developmental Language Disorder ◽  
Visuospatial Working Memory ◽  
Interference Control ◽  
Developmental Patterns ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
The Impact

Purpose Many children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have weaknesses in executive functioning (EF), specifically in tasks testing interference control and working memory. It is unknown how EF develops in children with DLD, if EF abilities are related to DLD severity and persistence, and if EF weaknesses expand to selective attention. This study aimed to address these gaps. Method Data from 78 children with DLD and 39 typically developing (TD) children were collected at three times with 1-year intervals. At Time 1, the children were 5 or 6 years old. Flanker, Dot Matrix, and Sky Search tasks tested interference control, visuospatial working memory, and selective attention, respectively. DLD severity was based on children's language ability. DLD persistence was based on stability of the DLD diagnosis. Results Performance on all tasks improved in both groups. TD children outperformed children with DLD on interference control. No differences were found for visuospatial working memory and selective attention. An interference control gap between the DLD and TD groups emerged between Time 1 and Time 2. Severity and persistence of DLD were related to interference control and working memory; the impact on working memory was stronger. Selective attention was unrelated to DLD severity and persistence. Conclusions Age and DLD severity and persistence determine whether or not children with DLD show EF weaknesses. Interference control is most clearly impaired in children with DLD who are 6 years and older. Visuospatial working memory is impaired in children with severe and persistent DLD. Selective attention is spared.

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