What do monolingual and bilingual children with and without SLI produce when phonology is too complex?

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laetitia de Almeida ◽  
Sandrine Ferré ◽  
Marie-Anne Barthez ◽  
Christophe dos Santos
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Nonword Repetition ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Repetition Task

In this study, the authors compare the production of internal codas and branching onsets in four groups of children learning French: monolingual typically-developing children ( n = 12), bilingual typically-developing children ( n = 61), monolingual children with Specific Language Impairment ( n = 17) and bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment ( n = 20). Their elicited productions were collected using a nonword repetition task (LITMUS-NWR-French), containing 71 nonwords with different syllable types. Except for typically-developing monolingual children, all children performed significantly better on branching onsets than on internal codas. Moreover, the repair strategies used in erroneous productions also indicate that children had more difficulties with internal codas: all the cases of metathesis affecting a target internal coda resulted in the production of a branching onset whereas the contrary was not observed. The differences in the rates of target-like production and the patterns of metathesis of these two structures suggest that internal codas are more difficult than branching onsets for children learning French.

Grammatical Morphology Deficits in Spanish-Speaking Children With Specific Language Impairment

2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 905-924 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Bedore ◽  
Laurence B. Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Clinical Markers ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Grammatical Morphology ◽  
Grammatical Morphemes ◽  
Third Person

The focus of this study was the use of grammatical morphology by Spanish-speaking preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI). Relative to both same-age peers and younger typically developing children with similar mean lengths of utterance (MLUs), the children with SLI showed more limited use of several different grammatical morphemes. These limitations were most marked for noun-related morphemes such as adjective-agreement inflections and direct object clitics. Most errors on the part of children in all groups consisted of substitutions of a form that shared most but not all of the target’s grammatical features (e.g., correct tense and number but incorrect person). Number errors usually involved singular forms used in plural contexts; person errors usually involved third person forms used in first person contexts. The pattern of limitations of the children with SLI suggests that, for languages such as Spanish, additional factors might have to be considered in the search for clinical markers for this disorder. Implications for evaluation and treatment of language disorders in Spanish-speaking children are also discussed.

scholarly journals Lipreading Ability and Its Cognitive Correlates in Typically Developing Children and Children With Specific Language Impairment

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenni Heikkilä ◽  
Eila Lonka ◽  
Sanna Ahola ◽  
Auli Meronen ◽  
Kaisa Tiippana
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Visual Speech ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Phonological Skills ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Cognitive Correlates

PurposeLipreading and its cognitive correlates were studied in school-age children with typical language development and delayed language development due to specific language impairment (SLI).MethodForty-two children with typical language development and 20 children with SLI were tested by using a word-level lipreading test and an extensive battery of standardized cognitive and linguistic tests.ResultsChildren with SLI were poorer lipreaders than their typically developing peers. Good phonological skills were associated with skilled lipreading in both typically developing children and in children with SLI. Lipreading was also found to correlate with several cognitive skills, for example, short-term memory capacity and verbal motor skills.ConclusionsSpeech processing deficits in SLI extend also to the perception of visual speech. Lipreading performance was associated with phonological skills. Poor lipreading in children with SLI may be, thus, related to problems in phonological processing.

scholarly journals Sentence Comprehension in Specific Language Impairment: A Task Designed to Distinguish Between Cognitive Capacity and Syntactic Complexity

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 577-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence B. Leonard ◽  
Patricia Deevy ◽  
Marc E. Fey ◽  
Shelley L. Bredin-Oja
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Target Sentence ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Item Types

Purpose This study examined sentence comprehension in children with specific language impairment (SLI) in a manner designed to separate the contribution of cognitive capacity from the effects of syntactic structure. Method Nineteen children with SLI, 19 typically developing children matched for age (TD-A), and 19 younger typically developing children (TD-Y) matched according to sentence comprehension test scores responded to sentence comprehension items that varied in either length or their demands on cognitive capacity, based on the nature of the foils competing with the target picture. Results The TD-A children were accurate across all item types. The SLI and TD-Y groups were less accurate than the TD-A group on items with greater length and, especially, on items with the greatest demands on cognitive capacity. The types of errors were consistent with failure to retain details of the sentence apart from syntactic structure. Conclusions The difficulty in the more demanding conditions seemed attributable to interference. Specifically, the children with SLI and the TD-Y children appeared to have difficulty retaining details of the target sentence when the information reflected in the foils closely resembled the information in the target sentence.

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.

How do bilingual dyslexic and typically developing children perform in nonword repetition? Evidence from a study on Italian L2 children

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 884-896
Author(s):  
Maria Vender ◽  
Denis Delfitto ◽  
Chiara Melloni
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Nonword Repetition ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
School Aged Children ◽  
Repetition Task

AbstractNonword repetition is typically impaired in dyslexia. Conversely, native-like performance is early achieved by bilingual children whose second language has a simple phonotactic system, like Italian. Our study aimed at comparing the performance of monolingual and bilingual children with and without dyslexia in a nonword repetition task modeled after Italian. We assessed nonword repetition in 111 school-aged children: 24 Italian L2 bilingual dyslexics, 24 Italian monolingual dyslexics, 30 Italian L2 bilingual controls and 33 Italian monolingual controls. We administered an original task composed of 40 nonwords ranging from two to five syllables; the complexity of the syllables was also manipulated. Results showed that both groups of dyslexics underperformed controls at each syllable length. No differences were found between monolingual and bilingual controls. Conversely, bilingual dyslexics underperformed monolingual dyslexics only with four-syllable nonwords. The possible use of nonword repetition tasks to assist in the identification of dyslexia in bilingual children is also discussed.

Verb inflections and noun phrase morphology in the spontaneous speech of Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
LISA M. BEDORE ◽  
LAURENCE B. LEONARD
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
General Linguistic ◽  
Verb Inflections ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance

Spanish-speaking preschoolers with specific language impairment (SLI) were compared to typically developing same-age peers (TD-A) and younger typically developing children matched for mean length of utterance (TD-MLU) in terms of their use of grammatical morphology in spontaneous speech. The children with SLI showed high levels of accuracy on present tense and past tense (preterite) verb inflections. However, their use of definite articles and direct object clitics was significantly more problematic than for either the TD-MLU or the TD-A children. Substitutions and omissions were observed, especially in contexts requiring plural articles and clitics. Many of the details of the observed Spanish SLI profile were predicted by Wexler's (Extended) Unique Checking Constraint (EUCC) proposal. Remaining details in the data could be accommodated by making additional assumptions within the same general linguistic framework as the EUCC. Some of the differences between the findings from Spanish and those from previous studies on related languages such as Italian suggest the need for clinical assessment and intervention procedures that are shaped as much by language-specific details as by the language's typology.

Dative prepositions in children with specific language impairment

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
BERNARD GRELA ◽  
LULA RASHITI ◽  
MONICA SOARES
Keyword(s):  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Word Selection ◽  
Mean Length Of Utterance ◽  
Omission Errors ◽  
Selection Of

The purpose of this study was to evaluate children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their proficiency with the use of prepositions. Ten children with SLI were compared to 10 younger, normally developing children matched for mean length of utterance and 10 children matched for age. Each child was asked to produce 24 sentences containing locative (in, on) and dative (to) prepositions. Responses were coded for omission or word selection errors for the target prepositions. It was hypothesized that children with SLI would make more errors than the typically developing children. Omission errors would support a difficulty with syntax because of the role prepositions play in case marking. Word selection errors would support a deficit in the area of semantics. The results confirmed that children with SLI made more errors than the control group. The children with SLI made more errors in the selection of dative prepositions, indicating a difficulty linking the semantics of prepositions and verbs.

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