Early Verb-Related Vulnerability Among Children With Specific Language Impairment

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 1384-1397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela A. Hadley

The purpose of this study was to characterize the nature of early grammatical development among very young children with specific language impairment (SLI). Grammatical development was examined for two subtypes: (a) children with expressive language impairments only (SLI-E) and (b) children with both receptive and expressive language impairments (SLI-RE). In particular, characteristics of noun-phrase (NP) and verb-phrase (VP) elaboration were examined longitudinally to determine whether structures associated with NP and VP emerged together following a typical developmental progression. Group analyses did not reveal any differences between the subtypes on the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn; Scarborough, 1990). However, specific weakness in VP elaboration was revealed on the IPSyn as well as in more extensive productivity analyses. The contribution of these findings to a developmentally sensitive grammatical description of SLI for very young children is discussed.

2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bill Wells ◽  
Sue Peppé

Intonation has been little studied in children with speech and language impairments, although deficits in related aspects of prosody have been hypothesized to underlie specific language impairment. In this study a new intonation battery, the Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems-Child version (PEPS-C), was administered to 18 children with speech and/or language impairments (LI). PEPS-C comprises 16 tasks (8 x 8, Input x Output) tapping phonetic and functional aspects of intonation in four areas: grammar, affect, interaction, and pragmatics. Scores were compared to a chronological age (CA) matched group of 28 children and a group of 18 children matched for language comprehension (LC). Measures of language comprehension, expressive language, nonverbal intelligence, and segmental phonology were also taken. The LI group did not score significantly below the LC group on any PEPS-C task. On 5 of 16 tasks, the LI group scored significantly lower than the CA group. In the LI group, there were just 2 significant correlations between a PEPS-C task and 1 of the nonprosodic measures. The results support the view that intonation is relatively discrete from other levels of speech and language while suggesting some specific areas of possible vulnerability: auditory memory for longer prosodic strings and the use of prosody for pragmatic/interactional purposes.


1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 17-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Frome Loeb ◽  
Clifton Pye ◽  
Sean Redmond ◽  
Lori Zobel Richardson

The focus of assessment and intervention is often aimed at increasing the lexical skills of young children with language impairment. Frequently, the use of nouns is the center of the lexical assessment. As a result, the production of verbs is not fully evaluated or integrated into treatment in a way that accounts for their semantic and syntactic complexity. This paper presents a probe for eliciting verbs from children, describes its effectiveness, and discusses the utility of and problems associated with developing such a probe.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 793-813 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mabel L. Rice ◽  
Catherine L. Taylor ◽  
Stephen R. Zubrick ◽  
Lesa Hoffman ◽  
Kathleen K. Earnest

Purpose Early language and speech acquisition can be delayed in twin children, a twinning effect that diminishes between 4 and 6 years of age in a population-based sample. The purposes of this study were to examine how twinning effects influence the identification of children with language impairments at 4 and 6 years of age, comparing children with specific language impairment (SLI) and nonspecific language impairment (NLI); the likelihood that affectedness will be shared within monozygotic versus dizygotic twin pairs; and estimated levels of heritability for SLI and NLI. Twinning effects are predicted to result in elevated rates of language impairments in twins. Method The population-based twin sample included 1,354 children from 677 twin pairs, 214 monozygotic and 463 dizygotic, enrolled in a longitudinal study. Nine phenotypes from the same comprehensive direct behavioral assessment protocol were investigated at 4 and 6 years of age. Twinning effects were estimated for each phenotype at each age using structural equation models estimated via diagonally weighted least squares. Heritabilities were calculated for SLI and NLI. Results As predicted, the twinning effect increased the percentage of affected children in both groups across multiple language phenotypes, an effect that diminished with age yet was still not aligned to singleton age peers. Substantial heritability estimates replicated across language phenotypes and increased with age, even with the most lenient definition of affectedness, at −1 SD . Patterns of outcomes differed between SLI and NLI groups. Conclusions Nonverbal IQ is not on the same causal pathway as language impairments. Twinning effects on language acquisition affect classification of 4- and 6-year-old children as SLI and NLI, and heritability is most consistent in the SLI group. Clinical practice requires monitoring language acquisition of twins to avoid misdiagnosis when young or a missed diagnosis of language impairments at school entry.


1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara B. Fazio

ABSTRACTThis report describes two studies on memory for rote linguistic sequences and sensitivity to rhyme in young children with and without language impairment. In the first study, 10 low income kindergarteners with specific language impairment (SLI) were compared with age- and income-matched classmates on reciting common nursery rhymes, reciting the alphabet, and rote counting. Children with SLI displayed lower performance on most of the rote linguistic sequence tasks, especially on (heir knowledge of Mother Goose nursery rhymes. The second study examined the learning and retention of nursery rhymes in 8 young children with SLI after 6 weeks of classroom instruction. Low-income, 4- and 5-year-old children with SLI and their age- and income-matched classmates were taught five novel Mother Goose rhymes during a large-group classroom activity. Children were tested before and after the intervention on their ability to recite nursery rhymes and to detect rhyme. When compared with their peers, children with SLI had difficulty repeating the nursery rhymes, despite daily classroom exposure. Although the performance of children with SLI on rhyme recitation and detection tasks was poor, their relative performance was better on a cloze task based on the set of nursery rhymes. The results of this study suggest that children with SLI have difficulty storing and/or retrieving lines of memorized text. Traditional informal techniques for teaching rote linguistic sequences may need to be modified to give children with SLI more opportunities to practice rote sequences.


2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gill Matson ◽  
Tony Cline

The impact of specific language impairment (SLI) on the acquisition of literacy and numeracy skills has been well researched. In contrast little has been written on its impact on the third core subject in the National Curriculum (NC) of science and this article describes a preliminary investigation into the scientific reasoning skills of children with SLI in comparison with those of typically developing (TD) children. In individual assessment sessions 11 pairs of target children with SLI and control TD children in the Key Stage (KS) 2 age span (ages 7–11 years) undertook a series of scientific reasoning tasks appropriate to their age involving receptive and expressive language skills. The children with SLI had for the most part significantly more difficulty with expressive language tasks (ELTs) than the TD children, in spite of the provision of scaffolding, and there was some evidence that they also had greater difficulty with the production of causal connectives, e.g. because, so. However, there was no difference between the two groups on receptive language tasks (RLTs) when scaffolding was used. Some possible implications for pedagogy are considered in light of these findings, and problems in matching children with SLI and TD controls are discussed.


1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 468-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael W. Casby

There have been a number of studies that have reported on the symbolic play abilities of children assessed as demonstrating developmental language disorders or specific language impairment. In general, this research has reported significant differences in the symbolic play abilities of children with language impairment and those developing language normally. In most, though interestingly, not all cases, the differences reflected less developed symbolic play of the children with language impairments. It will be argued here that these reported differences should not be interpreted as demonstrative of marked deficits in the general representational or specific symbolic play competence of children with language impairments. It will be argued further that part of the research conducted to date on the symbolic play abilities of children with language impairment has been confounded by the encroachment of language into the research procedures, that the level of play often investigated has not been unquestionably symbolic in nature, and that the actual differences in symbolic play have not been substantial.


1989 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 583-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence B. Leonard ◽  
Richard G. Schwartz ◽  
George D. Allen ◽  
Lori A. Swanson ◽  
Diane Frome Loeb

Young children sometimes make use of unusual phonological patterns even when they already possess the appropriate sound or a suitable substitute in their phonological systems. In this investigation, we attempted to determine whether in such instances unusual sound changes enable children to avoid potential homonymy with other words in their lexicons. Novel words were presented to children, half serving as potential homonyms, half as unlikely homonyms. The children's acquisition of these words was monitored. For a group of normally developing children, unusual sound changes were found to be more frequent in the words with the potential for homonymy. In contrast, a group of children with specific language impairment showed the same degree of unusual usage for both types of words. The findings suggest that children with specific language impairment are especially limited in their ability to capitalize on the phonetic regularities of the language.


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