Search

Although theories of specific language impairment grounded in universal grammar (UG ) have advanced the description of SLI considerably, they provide limited utility as far as treatment is concerned. Because UG assumes deficits in language principles and parameter setting, remediation of the difficulty is not possible; rather, reliance on compensatory mechanisms is recommended. Compensatory mechanisms rely on the same learning principles as are adopted by theorists that adopt a more emergentist view. Thus, we agree with Ambridge, Pine, and Lieven that a UG-based approach is redundant and recommend focusing efforts on identifying and strengthening treatment strategies associated with general learning principles instead.

Five groups of children defined by presence or absence of syntactic deficits and autism spectrum disorders (ASD) took vocabulary tests and provided sentences, definitions, and word associations. Children with ASD who were free of syntactic deficits demonstrated age-appropriate word knowledge. Children with ASD plus concomitant syntactic language impairments (ASDLI) performed similarly to peers with specific language impairment (SLI) and both demonstrated sparse lexicons characterized by partial word knowledge and immature knowledge of word-to-word relationships. This behavioral overlap speaks to the robustness of the syntax-lexicon interface and points to a similarity in the ASDLI and SLI phenotypes.

Children with SLI have difficulty with tense and agreement morphology. This study examined the proficiency of these children and their typically developing peers with the coordination of tense and aspect markers in two-clause sentences. Scenarios designed to elicit past tense were presented to five- to eight-year-old children with SLI (n=14) and their normally developing age- and MLU-matched peers (n=24) to examine the omission of tense markers in complex sentences (Owen, 2010). Responses with overt tense/aspect morphology in both clauses were recoded for how similar the use of tense and aspect was across the two clauses. Tense and aspect concordance was high across both sentence types, but aspect-only mismatches were more common than tense mismatches. The three groups of children did not differ from each other on any comparisons. Coordination of temporal information in sentences with more than one time marker does not appear to be especially difficult for these children.

Purpose The author examined the influence of sentence type, clause order, and verb transitivity on the accuracy of children’s past tense productions. All groups of children, but especially children with specific language impairment (SLI), were predicted to decrease accuracy as linguistic complexity increased. Method The author elicited past tense productions in 2-clause sentences from 5- to 8-year-old children with SLI ( n = 14) and their typically developing peers ( n = 24). The target sentences varied in the type and obligatory nature of the second clause and the number of arguments. Results On average, 85% of the responses across all groups and sentence types contained 2 clauses. Fewer 2-clause sentences were produced in the complement clause condition than in the other conditions. Sentence type and clause order, but not argument structure, influenced use of past tense. Children with SLI had a similar but less accurate profile as compared with the age-matched group. The younger mean length of utterance (MLU)–matched group reflected decreased accuracy with each additional source of linguistic complexity. Conclusions Increased syntactic difficulty decreases use of morphology for all children, supporting the hypothesis that processing demands influence morphological accuracy. MLU-matched children, but not children with SLI, were more affected by changes in linguistic complexity. Further work on age-related changes in sentence production is necessary.

Does explicit instruction in combination with modeling and recasting (deductive learning) or modeling and recasting alone (inductive learning) lead to higher rates of production, generalization, an...

Current views on the acquisition of PRO can roughly be divided into two areas: lexical and syntactic accounts. We present data on one verb, decide, that yields data that not only differs from the data for other similar verbs with the same children, but does not lend itself easily to either type of account. Data from a sentence elicitation task conducted with 20 typically-developing children (4 ; 0–7 ; 11), along with 3 case studies illustrate that children may not be assigning a referent for PRO in an adult-like manner for particular verbs. Instead they may be overgeneralizing the use of non-finite complements to finite contexts.

Purpose Many typically developing children first use inflections such as – ed with verb predicates whose meanings are compatible with the functions of the inflection (e.g., using – ed when describing events of brief duration with clear end points, such as dropped ). This tendency is assumed to be beneficial for development. In this study, the authors examine whether preschool-aged children with specific language impairment (SLI) show a similar tendency. Method Sixteen children in each of three groups participated—children with SLI, typically developing children matched for age (TD–A), and younger typically developing children matched for mean length of utterance (TD–MLU). The children described actions in contexts that promoted either past tense – ed or progressive aspect – ing in past contexts. Half of the verb predicates referred to events of brief duration with distinct endpoints (e.g., drop ), and half referred to events of considerable duration with less distinct points of termination (e.g., play ). Results Both the TD–A children and the TD–MLU children used – ed with verb predicates of the first type more consistently than they did with verb predicates of the second type. They showed the reverse pattern for – ing . The children with SLI did not show any effects according to the verb predicate type. However, although the children with SLI made less overall use of – ed than did both groups of TD children, they differed only from the TD–A children in their overall use of – ing . Conclusion Difficulties with tense-related morphology may be compounded in children with SLI if they fail to make use of associations between the lexical aspect of verb predicates and the grammatical function of the accompanying inflections. The authors argue that the advantages of using these associations as a starting point in acquisition may be especially important in the case of – ed . Additional studies of children with SLI are clearly needed, including those that employ longitudinal, naturalistic data.

Purpose: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) frequently have difficulty producing the past tense. This study aimed to quantify the relative influence of telicity (i.e. the completedness of an event), verb frequency and stem final phonemes on the production of past tense by school-age children with SLI and their typically-developing (TD) peers.Method: Archival elicited production data from children with SLI between the ages of 6–9 and TD peers aged 4–8 were re-analysed. Past tense accuracy was predicted using measures of telicity, verb frequency measures and properties of the final consonant of the verb stem.Result: All children were highly accurate when verbs were telic, the inflected form was frequently heard in the past tense and the word ended in a sonorant/non-alveolar consonant. All children were less accurate when verbs were atelic, rarely heard in the past tense or ended in a word final obstruent or alveolar consonant. SLI status depressed overall accuracy rates, but did not influence how facilitative a given factor was.Conclusion: Some factors that have been believed to be useful only when children are first discovering past tense, such as telicity, appear to be influential in later years as well.

The lexical diversity of children with specific language impairment (SLI) (ages 3 years 7 months to 7 years 3 months) was compared to that of normally developing same-age peers and younger normally developing children matched according to mean length of utterance in words (MLUw). Lexical diversity was calculated from spontaneous speech samples using D, a measure that uses repeated calculations of type-token ratio (TTR) to estimate how TTR changes as the speech samples increase in size. When D computations were based on 250-word samples, developmental differences were apparent. For both children with SLI and typically developing children, older subgroups showed higher D scores than younger subgroups, and subgroups with higher MLUws showed higher D scores than subgroups with lower MLUws. Children with SLI did not differ from same-age peers. At lower MLUw levels, children with SLI showed higher D scores than younger typically developing children matched for MLUw. The developmental sensitivity of D notwithstanding, comparisons using 100-utterance samples, in which the number of lexical tokens varied as a function of the children's MLUws, and comparisons between 250- and 500-word samples revealed the possible influence of sample size on this measure. However, analysis of the effect sizes using smaller and larger samples revealed that D is not affected by sample size to the degree seen for more traditional measures of lexical diversity.

Phonological deficits are common in children with specific language impairment (SLI). However, the degree to which they constitute an area of extraordinary difficulty, and their contribution to the morphological deficits of these children are largely unknown. In this investigation, we studied a group of young children with SLI who were acquiring Hebrew, a language in which phonology and morphology are closely linked. The phonology of these children lagged behind that of same-age peers as well as younger normally developing children matched according to mean number of morphemes per utterance. Furthermore, the children with SLI were more likely to commit phonological errors that neutralized important morphological distinctions in their language. These findings have implications for both assessment and therapy. Learning outcomes: As a result of this activity, the following learning outcomes will be achieved: The participant will be able to: (1) describe the differences in phonology between children with SLI and typically developing children; (2) describe the impact of phonological disorders on the assessment of the morphological systems of children with SLI; and (3) explain the necessary modifications to a therapy program for children with a combination of morphological and phonological disorders.

English-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) have well-documented difficulties with the production of grammatical morphemes related to agreement, as compared to both same-age and younger normally developing peers. However, comprehension of agreement-related morphemes has not been well studied in children with SLI, especially during the pre-school years. In two experiments, pre-schoolers with SLI and their normally developing peers were compared on their comprehension of third person singular, copula, and noun plural forms. The results showed that the children with SLI had poorer overall comprehension. Furthermore, the children with SLI appeared to rely primarily on the number cues that were present in the subject rather than on the verb agreement morphology. The findings are examined in light of several current accounts of the grammatical deficits found in children with SLI.

Purpose In this study, the authors tested the unique checking constraint (UCC) hypothesis and the usage-based approach concerning why young children variably use tense and agreement morphemes in obligatory contexts by examining the effect of subject types on the production of auxiliary is . Method Twenty typically developing 3-year-olds were included in this study. The children’s production of auxiliary is was elicited in sentences with pronominal subjects, high-frequency lexical noun phrase (NP) subjects (e.g., the dog ), and low-frequency lexical NP subjects (e.g., the deer ). Results As a group, children did not use auxiliary is more accurately with pronominal subjects than with lexical NP subjects. Furthermore, individual data revealed that although some children used auxiliary is more accurately with pronominal subjects than with lexical NP subjects, the majority of children did not show this trend. Conclusion The symmetry observed between lexical and pronominal subjects supports the predictions of the UCC hypothesis, although additional mechanisms may be needed to account for the asymmetry between subject types in some individual children. Discrepant results between the present study and previous studies were attributed to differences in task formats and children’s developmental levels.

The development of the use of the third-person singular -s in open syllable verbs in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their typically developing peers was examined. Verbs that included overt productions of the third-person singular -s morpheme (e.g. Bobby plays ball everyday; Bear laughs when mommy buys popcorn) were contrasted with clearly bare stem contexts (e.g. Mommy, buy popcorn; I saw Bobby play ball) on both global and local measures of acoustic duration. A durational signature for verbs inflected with -s was identified separately from factors related to sentence length. These duration measures were also used to identify acoustic changes related to the omission of the -s morpheme. The omitted productions from the children with SLI were significantly longer than their correct third-person singular and bare stem productions. This result was unexpected given that the omitted productions have fewer phonemes than correctly inflected productions. Typically developing children did not show the same pattern, instead producing omitted productions that patterned most closely with bare stem forms. These results are discussed in relation to current theoretical approaches to SLI, with an emphasis on performance and speech-motor accounts.

The purpose of this study was to explore whether 13 children with specific language impairment (SLI; ages 5;1–8;0 [years;months]) were as proficient as typically developing age- and vocabulary-matched children in the production of finite and nonfinite complement clauses. Preschool children with SLI have marked difficulties with verb-related morphology. However, very little is known about these children’s language abilities beyond the preschool years. In Experiment 1, simple finite and nonfinite complement clauses (e.g., The count decided that Ernie should eat the cookies; Cookie Monster decided to eat the cookies ) were elicited from the children through puppet show enactments. In Experiment 2, finite and nonfinite complement clauses that required an additional argument (e.g., Ernie told Elmo that Oscar picked up the box; Ernie told Elmo to pick up the box ) were elicited from the children. All 3 groups of children were more accurate in their use of nonfinite complement clauses than finite complement clauses, but the children with SLI were less proficient than both comparison groups. The SLI group was more likely than the typically developing groups to omit finiteness markers, the nonfinite particle to, arguments in finite complement clauses, and the optional complementizer that . Utterance-length restrictions were ruled out as a factor in the observed differences. The authors conclude that current theories of SLI need to be extended or altered to account for these results.