Pragmatics and SLI

1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 777-789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly K. Craig ◽  
Julia L. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Receptive Language ◽  
Chronological Age ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Language Status ◽  
Pragmatic Research ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance

Selected discourse behaviors of children with specific language impairment (SU) presenting expressive (E:SLI) or combined expressive-receptive deficits (E-R:SLI) were compared to each other and to chronological age-mates and younger mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched children with normal-language skills. The two SLI subgroups varied from each other on specific measures of tum-taking and cohesion. These findings imply the need for future normative work with SLI subgroups differing in receptive skill, and indicate that, in the interim, pragmatic research with this population will need to consider potential effects of receptive language status when interpreting variations in outcomes for discourse-based variables.

Brain Morphology in Children With Specific Language Impairment

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 1272-1284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurie M. Gauger ◽  
Linda J. Lombardino ◽  
Christiana M. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Left Hemisphere ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Brain Morphology ◽  
Planum Temporale ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Pars Triangularis ◽  
The Right

The planum temporale and pars triangularis have been found to be larger in the left hemisphere than the right in individuals with normal language skills. Brain morphology studies of individuals with developmental language disorders report reversed asymmetry or symmetry of the planum, although the bulk of this research has been completed on adults with dyslexia. Pars triangularis has not been studied in the developmental language impaired population. In this study, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used for quantitative comparisons of the planum temporale (Wernicke’s area) and pars triangularis (Broca’s area) in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with normal language skills. The subjects were 11 children with SLI and 19 age- and sex-matched controls between 5.6 and 13.0 years old. Each subject received a neurolinguistic battery of tests and a high resolution volumetric MRI scan. Major results were that (a) pars triangularis was significantly smaller in the left hemisphere of children with SLI, and (b) children with SLI were more likely to have rightward asymmetry of language structures. Furthermore, anomalous morphology in these language areas correlated with depressed language ability. These findings support the hypothesis that language impairment is a consequence of an underlying neurobiological defect in areas of the brain known to subserve language.

Access Behaviors of Children With Specific Language Impairment

1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 322-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly K. Craig ◽  
Julie A. Washington
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Chronological Age ◽  
Nonverbal Behaviors ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Control Subjects ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
Verbal And Nonverbal Behaviors ◽  
Gain Access ◽  
Language Literature

The verbal and nonverbal behaviors used by 5 children with specific language impairment (SLI) to attempt to gain access into established interactions were described and compared with those of chronological-age-mates and language-similar control subjects. Three of the children with SLI were unsuccessful. Two of the children with SLI achieved access but did so without using linguistic forms like those most normal-language children use. All of the children with normal language accessed, and most did so quickly and easily using an orderly and sequential set of indirect behaviors. The findings contribute to social-linguistic characterizations of SLI and clarify specific aspects of access described in the normal-language literature.

An Examination of the Morpheme BE in Children With Specific Language Impairment

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 480-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia L. Cleave ◽  
Mabel L. Rice
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Omission Error ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Language Status ◽  
Normal Language ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Omission Errors

This study examined the production of the morpheme BE, focusing on the influence of contractibility, the relationship between copula and auxiliary forms, and the occurrence of non-omission errors. Language samples collected from children with SLI and from normal language learners at equivalent MLU levels were analyzed. Three levels of contractibility were examined: contractible, syntactically uncontractible, and phonetically uncontractible. Contractible contexts were produced significantly more accurately than uncontractible contexts by both groups. There was no difference between the two forms of uncontractibility. Furthermore, there were no significant interactions between language status and contractibility, suggesting that contractibility influenced both groups equally. Copula forms were produced more consistently than auxiliary. There was no interaction between BE type and language status. The groups did not differ in proportion or type of non-omission error. The results are discussed in relation to accounts of morphological deficits in SLI.

Semantic Features in Fast-Mapping

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 407-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Alt ◽  
Elena Plante ◽  
Marlena Creusere
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Receptive Language ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Fast Mapping ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Novel Objects

This study examined the receptive language skills of young children (4–6 years old) with specific language impairment (SLI). Specifically, the authors looked at their ability to fast-map semantic features of objects and actions and compared it to the performance of age-matched peers with normally developing language (NL). Children completed a computer task during which they were exposed to novel objects and actions with novel names. The children then were asked questions about the semantic features of these novel objects and actions. Overall, the questions about actions were more difficult for children than objects. The children with SLI were able to recognize fewer semantic features than were their peers with NL. They also performed poorly relative to their peers on a lexical label recognition task. These results lend support to the idea that children with SLI have broader difficulties with receptive vocabulary than simply a reduced ability to acquire labels.

Specific Language Impairment in Swedish

2000 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 848-864 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Hansson ◽  
Ulrika Nettelbladt ◽  
Laurence B. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Appropriate Use ◽  
Verb Morphology ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
New Findings ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance

Several competing proposals have been offered to explain the grammatical difficulties experienced by children with specific language impairment (SLI). In this study, the grammatical abilities of Swedish-speaking children with SLI were examined for the purpose of evaluating these proposals and offering new findings that might be used in the development of alternative accounts. A group of preschoolers with SLI showed lower percentages of use of present tense copula forms and regular past tense inflections than normally developing peers matched for age and younger normally developing children matched for mean length of utterance (MLU). Word order errors, too, were more frequent in the speech of the children with SLI. However, these children performed as well as MLU-matched children in the use of present tense inflections and irregular past forms. In addition, the majority of their sentences containing word order errors showed appropriate use of verb morphology. None of the competing accounts of SLI could accommodate all of the findings. In particular, these accounts—or new alternatives —must develop provisions to explain both the earlier acquisition of present tense inflections than past tense inflections and word order errors that seem unrelated to verb morphology.

Recognition of Gated Words by Children With Specific Language Impairment

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 735-743 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Confidence Rating ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Chronological Age ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Auditory Word ◽  
Auditory Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Mapping

In this study we examined the lexical mapping stage of auditory word recognition in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Twenty-one children with SLI, 21 children matched for chronological age (CM), and 21 vocabulary-matched (VM) children participated in a forward gating task in which they listened to successive temporal chunks of familiar monosyllabic nouns. After each gate, children guessed the identity of the word and provided a confidence rating of their word guess. Results revealed that the children with SLI performed comparably to the CM and VM children on all seven dependent measures related to lexical mapping. The findings were interpreted to suggest that children with SLI and their normally developing peers demonstrate a comparable lexical mapping phase (i.e., acoustic-phonetic analysis) of auditory word recognition.

Dynamic Temporal Processing of Nonspeech Acoustic Information by Children With Specific Language Impairment

1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 510-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane C. Visto ◽  
Jerry L. Cranford ◽  
Rosalind Scudder
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Precedence Effect ◽  
Complex Sound ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Acoustic Information ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
Spectral Components ◽  
Normal Language

The present study investigated whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) differed from children with normal language learning in their ability to process binaural temporal information. The SLI group was matched with peers of the same chronological age, as well as peers with similar language age. All three subject groups were tested with measures of complex sound localization involving the precedence effect phenomenon. Subjects were required to track the apparent motion of a “moving” fused auditory image (FAI). Movement of the FAI was simulated by varying the delay incrementally between pairs of clicks presented, one each, from two matched loudspeakers placed on opposite sides of the child’s head. With this task, the SLI subjects’ performances were found to be similar to their language age-matched but chronologically younger peers. Both groups exhibited tracking skills that were statistically poorer than that of the chronologically age-matched group. Additional tests indicated this effect was not due to differences in motoric tracking abilities nor to the SLI subjects’ abilities to perceive small binaural time cues. Thus, children with SLI appear to be impaired in their ability to use binaural acoustic information in a dynamic ongoing fashion. The requirements for processing such nonlinguistic acoustic information in a “dynamic and ongoing” fashion may be similar to those involved in the ongoing processing of rapid changes in the temporal and spectral components of the speech chain.

Cognition and Communication

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 964-974 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith R. Johnston ◽  
Linda B. Smith ◽  
Peggy Box
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Object Type ◽  
Attentional Capacity ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Normal Language

Ten children with specific language impairment and 10 children with normal language development were asked to describe objects so that a listener could select them. Each trial targeted two out of a group of three toys. The targeted objects were identical or were similar in size or color. Children in the two groups did not differ in referential success, although children in both groups found the size items more difficult. Content analysis of the messages did reveal differences in the referential strategies used most frequently. Children with specific language impairment were more likely to mention the attributes of each object separately, rather than to describe the characteristics common to a pair of objects. Children in both groups talked about separate objects more often when talking about size than about color or object type. Use of this strategy could indicate the effects of attentional capacity on children's solutions to communication tasks.

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