Comprehension of Reversible Sentences in Specifically Language-Impaired Children

1990 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather K. J. van der Lely ◽  
Margaret Harris
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Semantic Knowledge ◽  
Vocabulary Test ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Impaired Children ◽  
Very High

This study investigated comprehension of reversible sentences in specifically language-impaired (SLI) children. Two experiments, using different paradigms, were undertaken. In Experiment 1, 14 SLI children (aged 4:10–7:10) were compared with children matched on chronological age and language age (LA). Subjects acted out 36 semantically reversible sentences that varied in thematic content (transitives, locatives, and datives) and in the order of thematic roles (canonical and noncanonical). The SLI children performed at a significantly lower level than both control groups. In Experiment 2, the same sentences were presented using a picture-pointing task. A single word vocabulary test preceded the test sentences to assess semantic knowledge of the predicates. Sixteen SLI children were compared with language age controls. No significant differences were found between the performance of the two groups on the vocabulary test, and in general, the results of Experiment 2 supported those of Experiment 1. Analysis of individual children's error patterns identified qualitative differences between the SLI children and the LA controls. The majority of SLI children had a very high proportion of word order errors. The proportion of word order errors of the SLI children, unlike those of the LA controls, was unrelated to language age. These findings are considered in relation to the processes involved in sentence comprehension.

Facilitating Word Combination in Language-Impaired Children through Discourse Structure

1985 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard G. Schwartz ◽  
Kathy Chapman ◽  
Brenda Y. Terrell ◽  
Patricia Prelock ◽  
Lynne Rowan
Keyword(s):  
Adult Child ◽  
Discourse Structure ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Word Combination ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Impaired Children ◽  
Experimental Group ◽  
Intervention Procedure

The influence of an adult-child discourse structure on the production of early word combinations was examined in language-impaired children. The subjects were 10 children (2:8–3:4) at the single-word utterance level. Eight of the children were engaged in 10 experimental sessions utilizing vertical structures (e.g., Adult: "Who's this?" Child: "Daddy." Adult: "What's Daddy throwing?" Child: "Ball." Adult: "Yeah, Daddy's throwing the ball."), while the remaining children, serving as controls, were engaged in an alternate activity. Examination of pretest and posttest data as well as session data revealed a substantial increase in the number of multiword productions for most of the children in the experimental group but not for the children serving as controls. These findings indicate that vertical structures have a facilitating effect on the multiword productions of language-impaired children comparable to that found in an identical procedure with normally developing children. The use of a naturally occurring adult-child discourse structure as an intervention procedure is discussed.

Conversational Replies of Children with Specific Language Impairment

1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence B. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Language Ability ◽  
World Knowledge ◽  
Considerable Variability ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Impaired Children

Conversational replies were examined in two groups of children with comparable vocabularies and speech limited to single-word utterances: children with specific language impairment, ages 2:10 to 3:6 (years:months); and children, ages 1:5 to 1:11, who were developing language normally. In interactions with adults the language-impaired children produced a greater number and variety of replies to both questions and statements than the normal-language children. The findings suggest that language-impaired children can serve as responsive conversationalists when syntactic skill is not a factor and that comprehension, world knowledge, and/or experience with conversations permit considerable variability in conversational skill even within the same level of expressive language ability.

scholarly journals The role of the l-IPS in the comprehension of reversible and irreversible sentences: an rTMS study

2020 ◽  
Vol 225 (8) ◽  
pp. 2403-2414
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Vercesi ◽  
Prerana Sabnis ◽  
Chiara Finocchiaro ◽  
Luigi Cattaneo ◽  
Elena Tonolli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Passive Voice ◽  
Performance Accuracy ◽  
Thematic Relations ◽  
First Pass ◽  
Stimulation Of

Abstract Thematic roles can be seen as semantic labels assigned to who/what is taking part in the event denoted by a verb. Encoding thematic relations is crucial for sentence interpretation since it relies on both syntactic and semantic aspects. In previous studies, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the left inferior intraparietal sulcus (l-IPS) selectively influenced performance accuracy on reversible passive (but not active) sentences. The effect was attributed to the fact that in these sentences the assignment of the agent and theme roles requires re-analysis of the first-pass sentence parsing. To evaluate the role of reversibility and non-canonical word order (passive voice) on the effect, rTMS was applied over l-IPS during a sentence comprehension task that included reversible and irreversible, active and passive sentences. Participants were asked to identify who/what was performing the action or who/what the action was being performed on. Stimulation of the l-IPS increased response time on reversible passive sentences but not on reversible active sentences. Importantly, no effect was found on irreversible sentences, irrespective of sentence diathesis. Results suggest that neither reversibility nor sentence diathesis alone are responsible for the effect and that the effect is likely to be triggered/constrained by a combination of semantic reversibility and non-canonical word order. Combined with the results of previous studies, and irrespective of the specific role of each feature, these findings support the view that the l-IPS is critically involved in the assignment of thematic roles in reversible sentences.

Symbolic Play in Normal and Language-Impaired Children

1984 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 424-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda Y. Terrell ◽  
Richard G. Schwartz ◽  
Patricia A. Prelock ◽  
Cheryl K. Messick
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Symbolic Play ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
Age Norms ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Impaired Children

The symbolic play of 15 normally developing (CA, 16–22 months) and 15 language-impaired children (CA, 32–49 months), whose productive language skills were at the single-word utterance level, was compared. Symbolic play was assessed formally through the Symbolic Play Test and informally through the observation of spontaneous play. The language-impaired children were found to be developmentally advanced when compared to the language-matched normal children in the level and direction of their symbolic play. Relative to age norms, however, the language-impaired children evidenced deficits in symbolic play. Thus, their linguistic and symbolic play abilities were not equally impaired. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the relationship between symbolic play and language and for the nature of specific language impairment.

Maternal sensitivity to vocabulary development in specific language-impaired and language-normal preschoolers

1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ann Evans ◽  
Susanne Wodar
Keyword(s):  
Maternal Sensitivity ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Vocabulary Test ◽  
Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales ◽  
Peabody Picture Vocabulary ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Impaired Children ◽  
Vineland Adaptive Behavior

ABSTRACTThis study examined mothers' accuracy in predicting the responses their children gave and the scores they achieved on two standardized vocabulary tests. Three groups of 16 mothers and their preschool children (specific language-impaired; age-matched, language-normal; and younger, language-matched, language-normal) completed the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised, Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised, and Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales. Mothers overestimated their children's standardized receptive and expressive scores, with the exception that the mothers' estimates of the receptive vocabulary scores for language-impaired children did not differ from the actual test scores. Mothers of age-matched normals were best able to predict the labels their children used to name various pictured items. However, the overall estimates by mothers of language-impaired children were more accurate than those by mothers of language-normal children.

Early action word acquisition in normal and language-impaired children

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard G. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Nonsense Word ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Word Acquisition ◽  
Early Action ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Impaired Children

AbstractThe acquisition of words referring to three types of actions was examined in normally developing and language-impaired children using a nonsense word paradigm. Fourteen language-normal and 10 language-impaired children whose speech was limited to single-word utterances served as subjects. The children were presented with 12 experimental words in 5 sessions over a period of approximately 3 weeks. The experimental words referred to actions that were classified as intransitive, transitive and specific to a particular object, or transitive but performed on 4 different objects. The children in both groups produced few of the action words. However, the groups differed in their comprehension of the three action word types. Specifically, the language-impaired children did not exhibit differences in comprehension across the different types of actions. The language-normal children, however, comprehended fewer words for intransitive actions than for the other types. The implications of these findings for characterizations of early lexical acquisition and for the nature of specific language impairment are addressed.

Facing a Communicative Obstacle: Pragmatics of Language-Impaired Children

1983 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 469-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Meline ◽  
Nannette Meline
Keyword(s):  
School Age ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Impaired Children

The ability of school-age, language-impaired children to respond when faced with a communicative obstacle was investigated. 18 language-impaired children were compared to 2 control groups, age-mates and language-mates. Language-impaired differed from both controls. They communicated more effectively than younger language-mates and less effectively than age-mates.

Language-impaired children's real-time comprehension of spoken language

1990 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 273-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Montgomery ◽  
Rosalind R. Scudder ◽  
Christopher A. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Sentence Type ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
Language Impaired ◽  
Impaired Children

ABSTRACTLanguage-impaired children have been shown to exhibit a variety of post-sentence comprehension deficits. Comprehension, however, may also be assessed as it develops rather than after it has occurred. The present investigation compared the real-time language processing abilities of language-impaired and normal children using a word recognition reaction time paradigm. Children's reaction times across three word positions in three sentence type conditions were measured. Results showed that the language-impaired children used linguistic context to facilitate word recognition, but were slower to do so than their normally developing peers. The results were interpreted to suggest that language-impaired children are less proficient than normal children at using their linguistic knowledge to develop linguistic representations of sentence meaning. An on-line retrieval deficit or deficient connections among processing units (e.g., Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986a, 1986b; Waltz & Pollack, 1985) are suggested as likely sources of the language-impaired children's language processing difficulties.

scholarly journals Syntax and processing in Seediq: an event-related potential study

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masataka Yano ◽  
Keiyu Niikuni ◽  
Hajime Ono ◽  
Manami Sato ◽  
Apay Ai-yu Tang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Processing Load ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Austronesian Language ◽  
Basic Word ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Processing Difficulty

AbstractIn many languages with subject-before-object as a syntactically basic word order, transitive sentences in which the subject precedes the object have been reported to have a processing advantage over those in which the subject follows the object in sentence comprehension. Three sources can be considered to account for this advantage, namely, syntactic complexity (filler-gap dependency), conceptual accessibility (the order of thematic roles), and pragmatic requirement. To examine the effect of these factors on the processing of simple transitive sentences, the present study conducted two event-related potential experiments in Seediq, an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan, by manipulating word orders (basic VOS vs. non-basic SVO), the order of thematic roles (actor vs. goal voice), and discourse factors (presence/absence of visual context). The results showed that, compared to VOS, SVO incurred a greater processing load (reflected by a P600) when there was no supportive context, irrespective of voice alternation; however, SVO did not incur a greater processing load when there was supportive context and the discourse requirement was satisfied. We interpreted these results as evidence that the processing difficulty of the non-basic word order in Seediq is associated with a discourse-level processing difficulty.

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