scholarly journals Linguistic and Cognitive Abilities in Children with Specific Language Impairment as Compared to Children with High-Functioning Autism

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeannette Schaeffer
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
High Functioning Autism ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
High Functioning

scholarly journals Article choice, theory of mind, and memory in children with high-functioning autism and children with specific language impairment

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEANNETTE SCHAEFFER ◽  
MEREL VAN WITTELOOSTUIJN ◽  
AVA CREEMERS
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
High Functioning Autism ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Phonological Memory ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
High Functioning ◽  
Indefinite Article

ABSTRACTPrevious studies show that young, typically developing (TD) children (<age 5) and children with specific language impairment (SLI; >age 5) make errors in the choice between a definite and an indefinite article. Suggested explanations for overgeneration of the definite article include failure to distinguish speaker from hearer assumptions, and for overgeneration of the indefinite article failure to draw scalar implicatures, and weak working memory. However, no direct empirical evidence for these accounts is available. In this study, 27 Dutch-speaking children with high-functioning autism, 27 children with SLI, and 27 TD children aged 5–14 were administered a pragmatic article choice test, a nonverbal theory of mind test, and three types of memory tests (phonological memory, verbal, and nonverbal working memory). The results show that the children with high-functioning autism and SLI (a) make similar errors, that is, they overgenerate the indefinite article; (b) are TD-like at theory of mind, but (c) perform significantly more poorly than the TD children on phonological memory and verbal working memory. We propose that weak memory skills prevent the integration of the definiteness scale with the preceding discourse, resulting in the failure to consistently draw the relevant scalar implicature. This in turn yields the occasional erroneous choice of the indefinite articleain definite contexts.

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.

scholarly journals Do nonword repetition errors in children with specific language impairment reflect a weakness in an unidentified skill specific to nonword repetition or a deficit in simultaneous processing?

2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 569-573 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klara Marton
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Alternative Hypothesis ◽  
Nonword Repetition ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Speech Stimuli ◽  
Simultaneous Processing ◽  
Error Analyses ◽  
Double Deficit

This Commentary supports Gathercole's (2006) proposal on a double deficit in children with specific language impairment (SLI). The author suggests that these children have a limited phonological storage combined with a particular problem of processing novel speech stimuli. According to Gathercole, there are three areas of skill contributing to memory for nonwords: general cognitive abilities, phonological storage, and an unidentified skill specific to nonword repetition. The focus of this Commentary is to examine whether these children's nonword repetition performance is influenced by an unidentified skill or some other processes. An alternative hypothesis is that the nonword repetition errors observed in children with SLI are related to one of their main weaknesses, to their difficulties in simultaneous processing of information. Evidence for this argument comes from our recent studies: from error analyses data and from findings on nonword repetition with stimuli that included meaningful parts (monosyllabic real words).

What’s Normal? Specific Language Impairment in an Individual Differences Perspective

1991 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip S. Dale ◽  
Kevin N. Cole
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Development ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Learning Ability ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
First Case ◽  
Syntactic Development

In this paper, the issue of language impairment is set in a broader perspective of individual differences. Two aspects of language development are identified in which the discrepancies between domains of language and/or cognitive development often observed in specific language impairment (SLI) children occur naturally as a consequence of individual variation in rate of development together with relative independence of specific domains. In the first case, concerning bound morphemes versus syntactic development, research with precocious children complements data from language-impaired children in demonstrating that morphology is the component of language most tied to general language learning ability. In the second case, the definition of specific language impairment as a distinct etiology on the basis of discrepancy between language and nonverbal cognitive development (the "Cognitive Hypothesis") is shown to lead to an invalid prediction. Children with SLI do not show a distinctive response to language intervention, relative to children with even profiles of language and nonverbal cognitive abilities.

scholarly journals Grammatical and pragmatic properties of the DP in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and in children with High Functioning Autism (HFA)

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 16-32
Author(s):  
Ava Creemers ◽  
Jeannette C. Schaeffer
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
High Functioning Autism ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Production Task ◽  
Age And Gender ◽  
High Functioning ◽  
Indefinite Article ◽  
Quantity Judgment ◽  
And Gender

This study investigates whether grammar and pragmatics are separate linguistic components or not, and whether children with SLI and children with HFA have overlapping or distinct linguistic profiles. We examine two DP-related phenomena: the mass-count distinction (grammatical) and the choice for a definite/indefinite article (pragmatic). We tested 27 children with HFA aged 6–14, age and gender matched to 27 children with SLI, and 27 TD controls on a Quantity Judgment Task (mass-count) and an Elicited Production Task (article choice). Our results show that pragmatics can be impaired independently from grammar (in HFA) and vice versa (in SLI), providing evidence for a modular view of grammar and pragmatics, and against an overlap in the profiles of SLI and HFA.

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