The link between prosody and language skills in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and/or dyslexia.

BACKGROUND: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) and dyslexia are known to have impairments in various aspects of phonology, which have been claimed to cause their language and literacy impairments. However, 'phonology' encompasses a wide range of skills, and little is known about whether these phonological impairments extend to prosody. AIMS: To investigate certain prosodic abilities of children with SLI and/or dyslexia, to determine whether such children have prosodic impairments, whether they have the same pattern of impairments, and whether prosodic impairments are related to language and literacy deficits. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Six subtests of the Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems - Child version (PEPS-C) were used to investigate discrimination/comprehension and imitation/production of prosodic forms that were either independent of language or that had one of two linguistic functions: chunking (prosodic boundaries) and focus (contrastive stress). The performance of three groups of 10-14-year-old children with SLI plus dyslexia, SLI, and dyslexia were compared with an age-matched control group and two younger control groups matched for various aspects of language and reading. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The majority of children with SLI and/or dyslexia performed well on the tasks that tested auditory discrimination and imitation of prosodic forms. However, their ability to use prosody to disambiguate certain linguistic structures was impaired relative to age-matched controls, although these differences disappeared in comparison with language-matched controls. No, or only very weak, links were found between prosody and language and literacy skills in children with SLI and/or dyslexia. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Children with SLI and/or dyslexia aged 10-14 years show an impaired ability to disambiguate linguistic structures for which prosody is required. However, they are able on the whole to discriminate and imitate the actual prosodic structures themselves, without reference to linguistic meaning. While the interaction between prosody and other components of language such as syntax and pragmatics is problematic for children with SLI and/or dyslexia, prosody itself does not appear to be a core impairment.

Derivational morphology in children with grammatical-specific language impairment.

Although it is well-established that children with Specific Language Impairment characteristically optionally inflect forms that require tense and agreement marking, their abilities with regards to derivational suffixation are less well understood. In this paper we provide evidence from children with Grammatical-Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI) that derivational suffixes, unlike tense and agreement suffixes, are not omitted in elicitation tasks. We investigate two types of derivation - comparative/superlative formation and adjective-from-noun formation - and reveal that G-SLI children supply these suffixes at high rates, equivalent to their language matched peers. Moreover, increasing the phonological or morphological complexity of the stimulus does not trigger suffix omission, although it results in non-target forms that are not characteristic of typically developing children. We discuss what these results reveal about the nature of the deficit in G-SLI within the context of three hypotheses of SLI: the Extended Optional Infinitive, Implicit Rule and Computational Grammatical Complexity Hypotheses.

Meta-syntactic therapy using visual coding for children with severe persistent SLI.

The results of a pilot study into meta-syntactic therapy using visual coding for four children (age 11-13 years) with severe receptive and expressive specific language impairment (SLI) are presented. The coding system uses shapes, colours and a system of arrows to teach grammatical rules. A time-series design established baseline pre-therapy measures of comprehension and production of both passives and 'wh' questions. All participants made progress with passives and this was significant in three cases of the four. Comprehension and production of 'wh' questions also improved in all participants, although this did not always reach statistical significance. The results indicate that meta-syntactic therapy of grammatical rules, capitalizing on visual strengths, can improve both comprehension and production in secondary age children with severe persistent SLI.

Lexical word formation in children with grammatical SLI: a grammar-specific versus an input-processing deficit?

An ongoing controversy is whether an input-processing deficit or a grammar-specific deficit causes specific language impairment (SLI) in children. Previous studies have focussed on SLI childrens' omission of inflectional morphemes or impaired performance on language tasks, but such data can be accounted for by either theory. To distinguish between these theories we study compound formation in a subgroup of SLI children with 'grammatical (G)-SLI'. An input-processing account (e.g. Leonard, L. (1998). Children with specific language impairment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), in which perception and production of inflections requires extra processing resources, would predict that G-SLI children will omit the regular plural -s in compounds (e.g. rat-eater). A grammar-specific deficit account (e.g. Ullman, M. & Gopnik, M. (1994) The production of inflectional morphology in hereditary specific language impairment. The McGill Working Papers in Linguistics, 10, 81-118; van der Lely, H. K. J. & Ullman, M. (1996). The computation and representation of past-tense morphology in normally developing and specifically language impaired children. In A. Stringfellow, D. Cahana-Amitay, E. Hughes & A. Zukowski, Proceedings of the 20th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 816-827). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press), in which G-SLI children are impaired in regular inflectional morphology, would predict that G-SLI children will produce regular plural -s forms inside compounds (e.g. *rats-eater). We compared the responses of 16 G-SLI subjects (aged 10 years 4 months to 18 years) with those of 36 normally developing control children (24 matched on language ability and 12 matched on age and cognitive ability). All the groups produced irregular plural nouns in compounds (mice-eater). The normally developing children and teenagers rarely, if ever. produced regular plural nouns inside compounds (*rats-eater), whereas the G-SLI subjects did so often. This pattern of results conflicts with the predictions ofthe input-processing deficit account. The findings support the grammar-specific deficit hypothesis. The data rovide further evidence that specialized grammatical abilities may be differentially impaired within the language system.

Evidence for a grammar-specific deficit in children.

BACKGROUND: Specific language impairment (SLI) is a disorder in which language acquisition is impaired in an otherwise normally developing child. SLI affects around 7% of children. The existence of a purely grammatical form of SLI has become extremely controversial because it points to the existence and innateness of a putative grammatical subsystem in the brain. Some researchers dispute the existence of a purely grammatical form of SLI. They hypothesise that SLI in children is caused by deficits in auditory and/or general cognitive processing, or social factors. There are also claims that the cognitive abilities of people with SLI have not yet been sufficiently characterised to substantiate the existence of SLI in a pure grammatical form. RESULTS: We present a case study of a boy, known as AZ, with SLI. To investigate the claim for a primary grammatical impairment, we distinguish between grammatical abilities, non-grammatical language abilities and non-verbal cognitive abilities. We investigated AZ's abilities in each of these areas. AZ performed normally on auditory and cognitive tasks, yet exhibited severe grammatical impairments. This is evidence for a developmental grammatical deficit that cannot be explained as a by-product of retardation or auditory difficulties. CONCLUSIONS: The case of AZ provides evidence supporting the existence of a genetically determined, specialised mechanism that is necessary for the normal development of human language.

Binding theory and grammatical specific language impairment in children.

This study investigates the intrasentential assignment of reference to pronouns (him, her) and anaphors (himself, herself) as characterized by Binding Theory in a subgroup of "Grammatical specifically language-impaired" (SLI) children. The study aims to (1) provide further insight into the underlying nature of Grammatical SLI in children and (2) elucidate the relationship between different sources of knowledge, that is, syntactic knowledge versus knowledge of lexical properties and pragmatic inference in the assignment of intrasentential coreference. In two experiments, using a picture-sentence pair judgement task, the children's knowledge of the lexical properties versus syntactic knowledge (Binding Principles A and B) in the assignment of reflexives and pronouns was investigated. The responses of 12 Grammatical SLI children (aged 9:3 to 12:10) and three language ability (LA) control groups of 12 children (aged 5:9 to 9:1) were compared. The results indicated that the SLI children and the LA controls may use a combination of conceptual-lexical and pragmatic knowledge (e.g., semantic gender, reflexive marking of the predicate, and assignment of theta roles) to help assign reference to anaphors and pronouns. The LA controls also showed appropriate use of the syntactic knowledge. In contrast, the SLI children performed at chance when syntactic information was crucially required to rule out inappropriate coreference. The data are consistent with an impairment with the (innate) syntactic knowledge characterized by Binding Theory which underlies reference assignment to anaphors and pronouns. We conclude that the SLI children's syntactic representation is underspecified with respect to coindexation between constituents and the syntactic properties of pronouns. Support is provided for the proposal that Grammatical SLI children have a modular language deficit with syntactic dependent structural relationships between constituents, that is, a Representational Deficit with Dependent Relationships (RDDR). Further consideration of the linguistic characteristics of this deficit is made in relation to the hypothesized syntactic representations of young normally developing children.

Narrative discourse in Grammatical specific language impaired children: a modular language deficit?

This paper provides a further investigation into the linguistic abilities of a subgroup of 12 Grammatical specific language impaired (SLI) children (aged 10;2 to 13;11). The study investigates the use of referential expressions (e.g. pronouns) in a narrative discourse, and provides insight into the underlying nature of Grammatical SLI, thereby contributing to the modularity debate. Previous investigations indicate that Grammatical SLI children have a deficit with dependent structural relationships, i.e. a Representational Deficit for Dependent Relationships (RDDR). Grammatical SLI children's RDDR appears to be a modular language deficit. To test this claim, linguistic representations of dependent structural relationships which are not part of the modular language system are investigated using a narrative discourse based on the picture book Frog where are you? The SLI children's pattern of referential expressions was compared with 36 language ability controls (aged 6;4 to 9;8). The findings indicated that the Grammatical SLI children have relatively mature linguistic development in the use of referential expressions to produce a cohesive, structured narrative discourse. The view of the organisation of the mind in which a modular language system can be differentially impaired from aspects of language which rely on the central system can most easily account for the data. Thus, the data support the hypothesized modular nature of Grammatical SLI children's underlying linguistic deficit. The implications of the findings for language acquisition are discussed.

A grammatical specific language impairment in children: an autosomal dominant inheritance?

The aim of this study is to provide further characterization of a subgroup of so-called "Grammatical specific language-impaired (SLI)" children. The Grammatical SLI children have a persistent and disproportionate impairment in grammatical comprehension and expression of language. Previous research has indicated that their language impairment may be characterized by a domain-specific and modular language deficit. This study provides an initial investigation as to whether there is a genetic basis underlying their disorder as has been found for other forms of SLI and for SLI in general. The incidence of familial aggregation of language impairment was investigated in 12 Grammatical SLI children (aged 9:3 to 12:10). A familial language impairment (LI) history was classified as positive if one or more of the probands' relatives had a history of a speech/language or reading/writing problem which required speech therapy or any other form of remedial help. Case history information provided an initial indication that the Grammatical SLI children had a significantly higher incidence of a positive familial LI history than could be expected by chance. A questionnaire provided evidence of a positive LI history in the first-degree relatives of the SLI probands and 49 normally developing control probands. The SLI probands had a clearly and significantly higher incidence of a positive familial LI history than the control probands (77.8 vs. 28.5%, respectively). The results are consistent with a genetic basis underlying Grammatical SLI. The pattern of impairment in the SLI probands' relatives is consistent with an autosomal dominant genetic inheritance. In contrast to the control probands, the SLI probands' impaired relatives did not show a male gender bias. Thus, the gene does not appear to be sex-linked. The data indicate that further research is warranted to investigate the nature of the LI in the relatives of the Grammatical SLI probands and the genetic characteristics of this subgroup. The implications for the biological, domain-specific, and modular bases to language are discussed.

Are children with autism deaf to gricean maxims?

Department of Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK High-functioning children with autism show a severe deficit in the development of pragmatics whereas their knowledge of syntax and morphology is relatively intact. In this study we investigated further their selective communication impairment by comparing them with children with specific language impairment (SLI) and normally developing children. We used a pragmatic task that involved the detection of utterances that violate conversational maxims (avoid redundancy, be informative, truthful, relevant, and polite). Most children with autism performed at chance on this task, whereas all children with SLI and all normal controls performed above chance. In addition, the success of children with autism on the pragmatics task was related to their ability to attribute false beliefs. These results are consistent with the idea that communication deficits in autism result from a selective impairment in representing propositional attitudes. Their implications for domain-specific views of cognitive development are discussed.

Canonical linking rules: forward versus reverse linking in normally developing and specifically language-impaired children.

Canonical linking rules for mapping thematic roles with syntactic functions were studied. Three experiments were undertaken to investigate the nature of productive forward linking (from semantics to syntax) and productive reverse linking (from syntax to semantics). I proposed that reverse linking, in contrast to forward linking, requires more detailed specification of the syntactic structure; that is, a syntactic representation which specifies each particular syntactic frame and all the argument positions within that frame. Six specifically language-impaired children (aged 6;1 to 9;6) were matched on language abilities to 17 younger, normally developing children (language age 3;1 to 6;6). In Experiment 1--forward linking--the children were shown the meaning of a novel verb and had to describe the event using the novel verb. Experiment 2--a comprehension task--required acting out sentences containing the newly learned verbs. In Experiment 3--reverse linking--the children were told a sentence with a novel verb and had to act out its meaning, assigning thematic roles on the basis of the syntactic frame. Group and individual analysis generally revealed no significant differences between the specifically language-impaired children and the language age control children in Experiments 1 and 2, but a significant difference was found for Experiment 3. The normally developing children showed a good use of productive forward and reverse linking. The specifically language-impaired children demonstrated good productive forward linking but were significantly worse at reverse linking. An interpretation of the data, showing differences in the syntactic representation required for forward versus reverse linking, can account for the findings. I propose that a deficit in the area of "government" or "locality" which underlies c-selection and specifies the syntactic relationship between constituents can account for the data from this study and the data from previous investigations of specifically language-impaired children.

Children with specific language impairment: linguistic impairment or short-term memory deficit?

This study is concerned with characteristics of short-term memory (STM) in children with specific language impairment (SLI). The linguistic requirements of the test procedure, the characteristics of the test materials, and the development of linguistic representations were considered. Two experimental tasks were used: a verbal-repetition and a picture-pointing procedure. The tasks used auditory presentation and were designed to explore different underlying processes during immediate recall. The linguistic characteristics of the test materials were designed to explore the influence of semantic, lexical, and phonological factors on STM. Six SLI children (aged 6:1 to 9:6) (years:months) were individually matched on comprehension and expression of language to 17 younger children (age 3:4 to 6:5). Both groups were differentially influenced by the materials as a function of the test procedure. In general, both group and individual analyses found no significant difference between the performance of the SLI children and language-age (LA) controls. The implications of the results in relation to previous findings from investigations of STM and the underlying cause of SLI in children are discussed.

Specific language impairment in children: research findings and their therapeutic implications.

This paper reports the findings from a research project investigating a subgroup of specifically language-impaired (SLI) children. The subgroup of SLI children consists of those characterised by persisting grammatical deficits in comprehension and expression of language. The paper summarises the findings in order to highlight the therapeutic implications from the investigations. The main focus of the investigations was to characterise the SLI children's grammatical knowledge of sentence comprehension, specifically their ability to learn the semantic and syntactic properties of verbs. In addition, an investigation of verbal short-term memory (STM) was carried out, and an analysis was undertaken of the expressive morpho-grammatical characteristics of the children. The investigations revealed that the SLI children did not differ in their STM abilities from children carefully matched on language abilities. Thus, the data do not provide support for therapy directed at increasing auditory memory with an aim of improving expression or comprehension of sentences. It is hypothesised that the SLI children have a deficit in syntactic representations and are unable to specify the structural relationships between constituents in syntax. The implications of the study are that this subgroup of SLI children may be unable to use syntactic cues to help learn semantic properties of verbs, but semantic cues may facilitate learning the syntactic properties of verbs.

Comprehension of reversible sentences in specifically language-impaired children.

This study investigated comprehension of reversible sentences in specifically language-impaired (SLI) children. Two experiments, using different paradigms, were undertaken. In Experiment 1, 14 SLI children (aged 4:10-7:10) were compared with children matched on chronological age and language age (LA). Subjects acted out 36 semantically reversible sentences that varied in thematic content (transitives, locatives, and datives) and in the order of thematic roles (canonical and noncanonical). The SLI children performed at a significantly lower level than both control groups. In Experiment 2, the same sentences were presented using a picture-pointing task. A single word vocabulary test preceded the test sentences to assess semantic knowledge of the predicates. Sixteen SLI children were compared with language age controls. No significant differences were found between the performance of the two groups on the vocabulary test, and in general, the results of Experiment 2 supported those of Experiment 1. Analysis of individual children's error patterns identified qualitative differences between the SLI children and the LA controls. The majority of SLI children had a very high proportion of word order errors. The proportion of word order errors of the SLI children, unlike those of the LA controls, was unrelated to language age. These findings are considered in relation to the processes involved in sentence comprehension.