Verbal working memory and sentence comprehension in children with specific language impairment.

In this study we examined the influence of verbal working memory on sentence comprehension in children with SLI. Twelve children with SLI, 12 normally developing children matched for age (CA), and 12 children matched for receptive vocabulary (VM) completed two tasks. In the verbal working memory task, children recalled as many real words as possible under three processing load conditions (i.e., no-load condition; single-load condition, where words were recalled according to physical size of word referents; and dual-load condition, where words were recalled by semantic category and physical size of word referents). In the sentence comprehension task, children listened to linguistically nonredundant (shorter) and linguistically redundant (longer) sentences. Results of the memory task showed that the children with SLI recalled fewer words in the dual-load condition than their CA peers, who showed no condition effect. The SLI and VM groups performed similarly overall, but both groups showed poorer recall in the dual-load condition than in the other conditions. On the sentence comprehension task, children with SLI comprehended fewer sentences of both types than the CA children and fewer redundant sentences relative to themselves and to the VM children. Results were interpreted to suggest that children with SLI (a) have less functional verbal working memory capacity (i.e., ability to coordinate both storage and processing functions) than their CA peers and (b) have greater difficulty managing both their working memory abilities and general processing resources than both age peers and younger children when performing a "complex" off-line sentence processing task.

Recognition of gated words by children with specific language impairment: an examination of lexical mapping.

In this study we examined the lexical mapping stage of auditory word recognition in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Twenty-one children with SLI, 21 children matched for chronological age (CM), and 21 vocabulary-matched (VM) children participated in a forward gating task in which they listened to successive temporal chunks of familiar monosyllabic nouns. After each gate, children guessed the identity of the word and provided a confidence rating of their word guess. Results revealed that the children with SLI performed comparably to the CM and VM children on all seven dependent measures related to lexical mapping. The findings were interpreted to suggest that children with SLI and their normally developing peers demonstrate a comparable lexical mapping phase (i.e., acoustic-phonetic analysis) of auditory word recognition.

Real-time inflectional processing by children with specific language impairment: effects of phonetic substance.

In this study, we examined the processing of low-phonetic-substance inflections (e.g., third-person-singular -s, past-tense -ed) versus a higher-phonetic-substance inflection (e.g., present-progressive -ing) by children with specific language impairment (SLI) in two types of receptive tasks. Twenty-one children with SLI (Age: 8 years;6 months), 21 chronological age matched (CA; Age: 8;7), and 21 receptive syntax matched (RS; Age: 6;8) children participated in a word-recognition reaction time (RT) task and an off-line task requiring grammaticality judgments. On the RT task, the children with SLI demonstrated RT sensitivity only to the presence of a higher-phonetic-substance inflection, unlike the CA and RS controls who displayed sensitivity to both higher-substance and low-substance inflections. On the grammaticality judgment task, the children with SLI performed more poorly than the CA controls only on sentences missing obligatory low-substance inflections (e.g., "Carl already jump over the fence"). The findings are discussed within the framework of the surface account, which predicts that children with SLI should have greater difficulty processing and making grammatical judgments about low-substance inflections compared to higher-substance inflections.

Sentence comprehension in children with specific language impairment: the role of phonological working memory.

This study examined the influence of phonological working memory on sentence comprehension in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Fourteen children with SLI and 13 with normal language (NL) participated in two tasks. In the first, a nonsense word repetition task (index of phonological working memory), subjects repeated nonsense words varying in length from one syllable to four. In a sentence comprehension task, subjects listened to sentences under two conditions varying in linguistic redundancy (redundant, nonredundant). On the nonsense word repetition task, between- and within-group analyses revealed that subjects with SLI repeated significantly fewer 3-syllable and 4-syllable nonsense words. On the sentence comprehension task, between- and within-group analyses determined that subjects with SLI comprehended significantly fewer redundant (longer) sentences than nonredundant (shorter) sentences. A positive correlation was found between subjects' performance on the nonsense word repetition and sentence comprehension tasks. Results were interpreted to suggest that children with SLI have diminished phonological working memory capacity and that this capacity deficit compromises their sentence comprehension efforts.

Haptic recognition of children with specific language impairment: effects of response modality.

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have been shown to exhibit deficient nonlinguistic symbolic functioning as indexed by their poor haptic recognition. Previous findings from conventional haptic tasks may be confounded because subject responses required cross-modal processing. The present study compared the haptic processing of children with SLI and children with normal language (NL) using one cross-modal and two tactile response conditions to isolate the influence of cross-modal processing on haptic recognition. Results showed that children with SLI and those with NL performed (a) similarly when the response modality was tactile and task requirements were minimal and (b) differently when the response demands included cross-modal processing or increased symbolic and memory processing. The results were interpreted to suggest that (a) children with SLI and those with NL possess comparable nonlinguistic representational abilities as indexed by haptic processing and (b) deficient cross-modal processing and limited capacity processing are two likely sources of the overall poorer haptic functioning of children with SLI.

Easily overlooked language disabilities during childhood and adolescence. A cognitive-linguistic perspective.

The population of individuals with LLD make up a heterogeneous group. The identification of individuals with LLD may vary depending on the type(s) and adequacy of the tests used. Assessment protocols for evaluating the language functioning of older school-aged and adolescent individuals are few and far between. This state of affairs necessitates speech-language pathologists to begin to develop a variety of informal tools to assess the higher level (and perhaps more subtle) language abilities of these individuals. Because language functioning entails the convergence of a variety of cognitive and linguistic processes, these informal protocols must be informed by the developmental literature so as to take into account both language-specific (e.g., lexical knowledge, syntactic structure, semantic complexity) and general cognitive processes. Careful task and process analyses must be done to characterize the language performance of any individual.

THE MANGANESE MERCURY STAR pi(1) BOOTIS.

High-dispersion plates secured with the Coudé spectrograph of the Lick 120 inch telescope have been used to analyze the peculiar A star pi(1) Bootis. Spectral-energy distribution measurements are combined with line-intensity data for iron and manganese in two stages of ionization to obtain a fit with model atmospheres for T(eff) = 13,000 degrees K and log g = 4. The influence of adopted T and g on the derived abundances is discussed. Although C, O, Mg, Si, Ti, Cr, and Fe appear to have nearly normal (i.e., solar) abundances, strontium appears to be enhanced in abundance by an order of magnitude, and scandium is about 50 times overabundant, while manganese and yttrium appear to be two orders of magnitude overabundant. If the identification of gallium is correct, this element is overabundant by a factor approaching 100,000; while if lambda3983.90 is to be attributed to HgII, as Bidelman suggests, the overabundance of this element is many orders of magnitude.