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PubMed2003

Specific language impairment in families: evidence for co-occurrence with reading impairments.

Two family aggregation studies report the occurrence and co-occurrence of oral language impairments (LIs) and reading impairments (RIs). Study 1 examined the occurrence (rate) of LI and RI in children with specific language impairment (SLI probands), a matched control group, and all nuclear family members. Study 2 included a larger sample of SLI probands, as well as their nuclear and extended family members. Probands and their family members who met specific criteria were classified as language and/or reading impaired based on current testing. In Study 1, the rates of LI and RI for nuclear family members (excluding probands) were significantly higher than those for control family members. In the SLI families, affected family members were more likely to have both LI and RI than either impairment alone. In Study 2, 68% of the SLI probands also met the diagnostic classification for RI. The language and RI rates for the other family members, excluding probands, were 25% and 23% respectively, with a high degree of co-occurrence of LI and RI (46%) in affected individuals. Significant sex ratio differences were found across generations in the families of SLI probands. There were more male than female offspring in these families, and more males than females were found to have both LIs and RIs. Results demonstrate that when LIs occur within families of SLI probands, these impairments generally co-occur with RIs. Our data are also consistent with prior findings that males show impairments more often than females.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

The role of syntactic complexity in treatment of sentence deficits in agrammatic aphasia: the complexity account of treatment efficacy (CATE).

This experiment examined the hypothesis that training production of syntactically complex sentences results in generalization to less complex sentences that have processes in common with treated structures. Using a single subject experimental design, 4 individuals with agrammatic aphasia were trained to comprehend and produce filler-gap sentences with wh-movement, including, from least to most complex, object-extracted who-questions, object clefts, and sentences with object-relative clausal embedding. Two participants received treatment first on the least complex structure (who-questions), and 2 received treatment first on the most complex form (object-relative constructions), while untrained sentences and narrative language samples were tested for generalization. When generalization did not occur across structures, each was successively entered into treatment. Results showed no generalization across sentence types when who-questions were trained; however, as predicted, object-relative training resulted in robust generalization to both object clefts and who-questions. These findings support those derived from previous work, indicating not only that generalization occurs across structures that are linguistically related, but also that generalization is enhanced when the direction of treatment is from more complex to less complex constructions. This latter finding supports the authors' newly coined "complexity account of treatment efficacy" (CATE).

Aphasia, Broca↗

PubMed2003

Processing and linguistic markers in young children with specific language impairment (SLI).

Thirty-two 5-year-old children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 32 chronological age (CA) controls completed 4 tasks that were considered potential positive markers for SLI. Children's performance on 2 linguistic tasks (past tense and noun plurals task) and 2 processing tasks (nonword repetition and digit recall) were examined. This approach allowed the examination of more than 1 type of marker simultaneously, facilitating both comparisons between markers and also the evaluation of combinations of markers in relation to identifying SLI. Children with SLI performed significantly worse than CA controls in all 4 marker tasks. Specificity/sensitivity analysis of the 4 marker tasks revealed nonword repetition and the past tense task to have the best overall accuracy at the 25th and 16th percentile. Finally, stepwise discriminant analysis revealed nonword repetition and past tense marking to be the best markers for identifying young children with SLI.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed2003

Children's productions of the affix -ed in past tense and past participle contexts.

Children's productions of the affix -ed in past tense and past participle contexts (e.g., the boy kicked the ball vs. the ball was kicked) were examined in spontaneous conversations and elicited productions. The performances of 7 children with specific language impairment (SLI) were compared with those of 2 control groups of typically developing children (age matches, MLU matches). Children with SLI produced fewer obligatory contexts for both past tense and past participle forms than did the control children, and were more likely to omit past tense affixes. In contrast, few omissions of the past participle were observed across all 3 groups. Implications for theories regarding the morphological deficits associated with SLI are discussed.

Case-Control Studies↗

PubMed2003

Working memory capacity and language processes in children with specific language impairment.

This study examined the interaction between working memory and language comprehension in children with specific language impairment (SLI), focusing on the function of the central executive component and its interaction with the phonological loop (A. D. Baddeley, 1986) in complex working memory tasks. Thirteen children with SLI and 13 age-matched (age range = 7;0 [years;months] to 10;0) children with typical language development participated. The tasks combined traditional nonword repetition tests and sentence comprehension by using sentences that differed in length and syntactic complexity. The children with SLI exhibited larger processing and attentional capacity limitations than their age-matched peers. Increased word length and syntactic complexity resulted in a large performance decrease in nonword repetition in both groups. There were some variations in the error pattern, which may indicate qualitative differences between the 2 groups. The performance of the children with SLI in nonword repetition, across the different tasks, indicated a limitation in simultaneous processing rather than difficulty in encoding and analyzing the phonological structure of the nonwords. Furthermore, syntactic complexity had a greater effect on performance accuracy than did sentence length.

Case-Control Studies↗

PubMed2004

Hidden language impairments in children: parallels between poor reading comprehension and specific language impairment?

This study investigates the oral language skills of 8-year-old children with impaired reading comprehension. Despite fluent and accurate reading and normal nonverbal ability, these children are poor at understanding what they have read. Tasks tapping 3 domains of oral language, namely phonology, semantics, and morphosyntax, were administered, along with measures that reflect an interaction of language domains that we refer to as broader language skills. Relative to control children matched for age and decoding ability, poor comprehenders were impaired across all measures except those tapping phonological skills. In addition to low oral language ability characterizing the group as a whole, some individuals had marked language impairments; it is argued that a substantial minority can be classified as having specific language impairment. However, none of the children had been previously recognized as having a language or reading impairment. These findings demonstrate that serious reading and language impairments are not always obvious in children who have good phonological ability and appear, superficially at least, to read well.

Case-Control Studies↗

PubMed2004

Comparison of conversation, freeplay, and story generation as methods of language sample elicitation.

The spontaneous language sample forms an important part of the language evaluation protocol (M. Dunn, J. Flax, M. Sliwinski, and D. Aram, 1996; J. L. Evans and H. K. Craig, 1992; L. E. Evans and J. Miller, 1999) because of the limitations of standardized language tests and their unavailability in certain languages, such as Afrikaans. This study examined 3 methods of language elicitation, namely conversation (CV), freeplay (FP), and story generation (SG), on the following 5 measures to determine which method is best for clinical practice: number of utterances, variety of syntactic structures, mean length of the utterance (MLU), number of syntactic errors, and proportion of complex syntactic utterances as elicited from ten 5-year-old, Afrikaans-speaking boys. FP elicited significantly more utterances than did SG but elicited a smaller proportion of complex syntactic structures than did CV and SG. Furthermore, SG elicited longer utterances than did CV or FP. It is recommended that SG be used in clinical practice with 5-year-olds if the clinician wishes to observe maximum behavior. Where typical behavior is to be evaluated, the clinician can select a language elicitation method that best suits the client's personality and communication style, bearing in mind that FP does elicit a larger language sample.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed2004

Frequency discrimination deficits in people with specific language impairment: reliability, validity, and linguistic correlates.

The reliability and validity of a frequency discrimination (FD) task were tested in 16 people with specific language impairment (SLI) and 16 people with normal spoken language (controls). The FD thresholds of the 2 groups indicated that FD thresholds for 25-ms and 250-ms tones were remarkably stable across 18 months. The FD thresholds were lower for control listeners than for listeners with SLI for both duration conditions, and the FD thresholds for both groups of listeners were lower for 250-ms tones than for 25-ms tones. Moreover, the FD thresholds were influenced little by nonperceptual, task-related abilities (e.g., paired-associative learning, memory for temporal order, sustained attention, and control of attention) of the listener groups. The significant group difference between the mean FD thresholds of the SLI and control groups was explained by a subgroup of people with SLI who had particularly poor thresholds compared with those of controls and the majority of the SLI group. This subgroup did not differ from the remainder of the SLI sample in terms of age or nonverbal ability but was characterized by very poor reading that was associated with poor phonemic awareness.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

The relationship of language and emotion regulation skills to reticence in children with specific language impairment.

This study examined the relationship between emotion regulation, language ability, and reticent behavior in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their typical peers. Participants included 43 children with SLI and 43 typically developing children, for a total sample of 86 participants. Children were selected from 2 age ranges: 5-8 years and 9-12 years. The Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC; A. Shields and D. Cicchetti, 1997, 1998) and the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS; C. H. Hart and C. C. Robinson, 1996) were completed by each child's teacher to provide measures of emotion regulation and reticence, respectively. The Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (CASL; E. Carrow-Woodfolk, 1999) was administered to provide a measure of language ability. A regression analysis including all participants indicated that the emotion regulation scores and the CASL scores were significant predictors of the reticence scores, accounting for 43% of the variance. Group-specific analyses were then conducted to determine whether the 2 predictor scales differentially predicted reticence based on language and age groups. None of the tests exceeded the.05 level, indicating that there was no significant difference in predictive power on the 2 factors in question.

Case-Control Studies↗

PubMed2004

Prelinguistic predictors of language growth in children with developmental disabilities.

This study followed 18 children with developmental disabilities, whose chronological ages were between 3 years and 6 years at the start of the study, over a 2-year period. At initial observation, children communicated primarily through prelinguistic gestures, vocalizations, and single-word utterances. Children's language skills were measured every 6 months with the Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development-Revised (D. E. Hedrick, E. M. Prather, and A. R. Tobin, 1984). Prelinguistic communication rate and parental responsiveness were also measured at each observation. Development of language over time differed between participants in accordance with their entry-level communication. Hierarchical linear modeling indicated that children's level of gestural attainment, rate of communication, and parent response contingency were significant predictors of language outcome.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

The search for common ground: Part I. Lexical performance by linguistically diverse learners.

This study examines lexical performance by 3 groups of linguistically diverse school-age learners: English-only speakers with primary language impairment (LI), typical English-only speakers (EO), and typical bilingual Spanish-English speakers (BI). The accuracy and response time (RT) of 100 8- to 13-year-old children in word recognition and picture-naming tasks were analyzed. Within each task, stimulus difficulty was manipulated to include very easy stimuli (words that were high frequency/had an early age of acquisition in English) and more difficult stimuli (words of low frequency/late age of acquisition [AOA]). There was no difference among groups in real-word recognition accuracy or RT; all 3 groups showed lower accuracy with low-frequency words. In picture naming, all 3 groups showed a longer RT for words with a late AOA, although AOA had a disproportionate negative impact on BI performance. The EO group was faster and more accurate than both LI and BI groups in conditions with later acquired stimuli. Results are discussed in terms of quantitative differences separating EO children from the other 2 groups and qualitative similarities linking monolingual children with and without LI.

Child↗

PubMed2004

Do data from children with specific language impairment support the agreement/tense omission model?

One of the most influential recent accounts of pronoun case-marking errors in children's speech is C. T. Schütze and K. Wexler's (1996) agreement/tense omission model (ATOM). This model predicts that non-nominative subjects with agreeing verbs will be so rare that they can be reasonably disregarded as noise in the data. The present study tested this prediction on data from 4 children with specific language impairment (SLI) by comparing the frequency with which each child produced non-nominative subjects with agreeing verbs and the frequency with which they would be expected to produce such errors by chance given the number of nominative and non-nominative subjects and the number of agreeing and nonagreeing verb forms in the data. The results show (a) that although 3 of the 4 children used non-nominative subjects in their speech, only 2 of them (Nathan and Dan) produced non-nominative subjects with agreeing verbs significantly less often than one would expect by chance; (b) that to the extent that there was an asymmetry in Nathan's and Dan's use of nominative and non-nominative subjects with agreeing verbs, this asymmetry could be explained in terms of developmental changes in their ability to mark case and agreement correctly and the use of potentially unanalyzed contractions; and (c) that Nathan and Dan produced non-nominative subjects with noncontracted agreeing forms about as often as one would expect by chance. These findings are discussed in terms of their theoretical implications for the ATOM and their methodological implications for future work on patterns of pronoun case marking error in the speech of typically developing children and children with SLI.

Child, Preschool↗

PubMed2004

Inference generation during text comprehension by adults with right hemisphere brain damage: activation failure versus multiple activation.

Evidence conflicts as to whether adults with right hemisphere brain damage (RHD) generate inferences during text comprehension. M. Beeman (1993) reported that adults with RHD fail to activate the lexical-semantic bases of routine bridging inferences, which are necessary for comprehension. But other evidence indicates that adults with RHD activate multiple interpretations in various comprehension domains. In addition, the activation of contextually inappropriate interpretations is prolonged for many adults with RHD and predicts poor discourse comprehension. This study contrasted Beeman's activation failure hypothesis with the prediction that adults with RHD would generate multiple interpretations in text comprehension. The relation between activation of textually incompatible inferences and discourse comprehension was also investigated for this group. Thirty-seven adults with RHD and 34 without brain damage listened to brief narratives that required a bridging inference (BI) to integrate the text-final sentence. This final sentence, when isolated from its text, was strongly biased toward a contextually incompatible alternate interpretation (AI). Auditory phoneme strings were presented for lexical decision immediately after each text's initial and final sentence. Adults with RHD were both faster and more accurate in making lexical decisions to BI-related target words in final-sentence position than in initial-sentence position. Thus, contrary to the activation failure hypothesis, adults with RHD generated the lexical-semantic foundations of BIs where they were required by the text. AI generation was evident in accuracy data as well, but not in response time data. This result is partially consistent with the multiple activation view. Finally, greater activation for contextually incompatible interpretations was associated with poorer discourse comprehension performance by adults with RHD.

Aged↗

PubMed2004

The nature of written language deficits in children with SLI.

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have associated difficulties in reading decoding and reading comprehension. To date, few research studies have examined the children's written language. The aim of the present study was to (a) evaluate the nature and extent of the children's difficulties with writing and (b) investigate the relationship between oral and written language. Eleven children with SLI were identified (mean age = 11 years) and were compared with a group of children matched for chronological age (CA; mean age = 11;2 [years;months]) and language age (LA; mean CA = 7;3). All groups completed standardized measures of language production, writing, and reading decoding. The writing assessment revealed that the SLI group wrote fewer words and produced proportionately more syntax errors than the CA group, but they did not differ on a measure of content of written language or on the proportion of spelling errors. The SLI group also produced proportionately more syntax errors than the LA group. The relationships among oral language, reading, and writing differed for the 3 groups. The nature and extent of the children's written language problems are considered in the context of difficulties with spoken language.

Case-Control Studies↗

PubMed2005

Language development in preschool-age children adopted from China.

This study examined the language development of 55 preschool-age children adopted from China who had resided in their permanent homes for approximately 2 years or longer. Slightly over 5% of the children scored below average on 2 or more measures from a battery of standardized speech-language tests normed on monolingual English speakers. However, the vast majority scored within or well above the average range on 2 or more measures. Contrary to other reports on the language development of internationally adopted children, the results suggest that "second first language" acquisition proceeds rapidly in the majority of preschool-age children adopted as infants and toddlers. For the children in the sample who scored below average, results indicated that they were among the children who had been exposed to English for the least amount of time. The results of this study demonstrate both the robustness of the language system in the majority of adopted children from China as well as slower growth in a small subset of lower performers in the 1st years after adoption.

Adoption↗

PubMed2005

Effects of computer-based intervention through acoustically modified speech (Fast ForWord) in severe mixed receptive-expressive language impairment: outcomes from a randomized controlled trial.

Seventy-seven children between the ages of 6 and 10 years, with severe mixed receptive-expressive specific language impairment (SLI), participated in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of Fast ForWord (FFW; Scientific Learning Corporation, 1997, 2001). FFW is a computer-based intervention for treating SLI using acoustically enhanced speech stimuli. These stimuli are modified to exaggerate their time and intensity properties as part of an adaptive training process. All children who participated in the RCT maintained their regular speech and language therapy and school regime throughout the trial. Standardized measures of receptive and expressive language were used to assess performance at baseline and to measure outcome from treatment at 9 weeks and 6 months. Children were allocated to 1 of 3 groups. Group A (n = 23) received the FFW intervention as a home-based therapy for 6 weeks. Group B (n = 27) received commercially available computer-based activities designed to promote language as a control for computer games exposure. Group C (n = 27) received no additional study intervention. Each group made significant gains in language scores, but there was no additional effect for either computer intervention. Thus, the findings from this RCT do not support the efficacy of FFW as an intervention for children with severe mixed receptive-expressive SLI.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2005

The onset of tense marking in children at risk for specific language impairment.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate measures reflecting the onset of tense marking for children between the ages of 2;0 (years;months) and 3;0. METHOD: The validity of 4 cumulative measures of tense marker emergence and productivity was evaluated relative to existing measures of early grammatical development in a sample of 20 children followed longitudinally. Fourteen children were at risk for specific language impairment (AR-SLI group), and 6 children had low average language abilities (LA group). RESULTS: All measures of onset were highly correlated with the traditional measures; however, children's progress toward mastery of grammatical tense marking was best explained by the productivity of their tense marking systems. Finally, the onset measures imposing productivity requirements best differentiated children in the LA group from those in the AR-SLI group. CONCLUSIONS: The clinical implications for using the late onset of tense marking to improve the early identification of SLI are discussed.

Child Language↗

PubMed2006

Sampling context affects MLU in the language of adolescents with Down syndrome.

PURPOSE: The authors describe the procedures used to explain an unexpected finding that adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) had a lower mean length of utterance (MLU) than typically developing (TD) children in interviews without picture support, but not in narratives supported by wordless picture books. They hypothesize that the picture support of the narrative context increased the MLU for the group with DS alone. METHOD: Adolescents with DS (n = 14) and TD children (n = 14) matched for receptive syntax narrated picture storybooks and participated in interviews. Transcription reliability, intelligibility/fluency, grammatical errors, discourse and sampling contexts, and discourse characteristics were examined for their effects on MLU. RESULTS: The DS group showed a greater responsiveness to adult questions than the TD group; an alternate MLU without yes/no responses showed the same interaction of group and context as the original finding. An additional comparison of MLUs, obtained from narratives present in the interview and narratives elicited using picture books, showed that picture support in narrative increased MLUs only for the group with DS. CONCLUSION: Picture support, rather than narrative context alone, increased MLUs for the group with DS. Clinical use of narratives and picture support in assessment and intervention with individuals with DS is discussed.

Adolescent↗