English Grammar Skills in Dutch Grade 4 Children: Examining the Relation Between L1 and L2 Language Skills.

Second language proficiency may be related to first language acquisition (Ganschow & Sparks, 1991), but relatively little is known about the relation between first and second language grammatical proficiency in primary school children who are in their first stages of foreign language learning. This study aims to determine whether differences in Dutch and English vocabulary and Dutch grammar skills predict differences in English grammatical proficiency in Dutch speaking children who are in grade 4 in primary school. The selected participants are monolingual Dutch pupils (N = 152), aged 9;0-10;0. To measure the children's vocabulary the PPVT was used in Dutch (Schlichting, 2005) and in English (Dunn & Dunn, 2007). In addition, two grammar tasks in English and one in Dutch of the CELF (Semel et al., 2003) were used. The results show that English vocabulary is a strong predictor of English grammar skills, and that the Dutch vocabulary skills are weaker predictors of English grammar skills. Moreover, Dutch grammar skills predict English grammar skills for one of the grammar tasks. These results are discussed vis-à-vis hypotheses about cross-domain transfer and cross-linguistic transfer (Blom et al., 2012; Cummins, 1979; Ganschow & Sparks, 1991; Paradis, 2011; Sparks, 1995).

Kindergarteners Use Cross-Situational Statistics to Infer the Meaning of Grammatical Elements.

Many studies demonstrate that detecting statistical regularities in linguistic input plays a key role in language acquisition. Yet, it is unclear to what extent statistical learning is involved in more naturalistic settings, when young children have to acquire meaningful grammatical elements. In the present study, we address these points, by investigating whether statistical learning is involved in acquiring a morpho-syntactic structure from input that resembles natural languages more closely. We exposed 50 kindergarteners (M = 5 years, 5 months) to a miniature language in which they had to learn a grammatical marker that expressed number, and which could only be acquired on the basis of the distributional properties in the input. Half of the children performed an attention check during the experiment. Results show that young children are able to learn this meaning. We found no clear evidence that facilitating attention to the input increases learning performance.

The contribution of individual differences in statistical learning to reading and spelling performance in children with and without dyslexia.

Using an individual differences approach in children with and without dyslexia, this study investigated the hypothesized relationship between statistical learning ability and literacy (reading and spelling) skills. We examined the clinical relevance of statistical learning (serial reaction time and visual statistical learning tasks) by controlling for potential confounds at the participant level (e.g., non-verbal reasoning, attention and phonological skills including rapid automatized naming and phonological short-term memory). A 100 Dutch-speaking 8- to 11-year-old children with and without dyslexia participated (50 per group), see also van Witteloostuijn et al. (2019) for a study with the same participants. No evidence of a relationship between statistical learning and literacy skills is found above and beyond participant-level variables. Suggestions from the literature that the link between statistical learning and literacy attainment, and therefore its clinical relevance, might be small and strongly influenced by methodological differences between studies are not contradicted by our findings.

School-Aged Children Learn Novel Categories on the Basis of Distributional Information.

Categorization of sensory stimuli is a vital process in understanding the world. In this paper we show that distributional learning plays a role in learning novel object categories in school-aged children. An 11-step continuum was constructed based on two novel animate objects by morphing one object into the other in 11 equal steps. Forty-nine children (7-9 years old) were subjected to one of two familiarization conditions during which they saw tokens from the continuum. The conditions differed in the position of the distributional peaks along the continuum. After familiarization it was tested how the children categorized the stimuli. Results show that, in line with our expectations, familiarization condition influenced categorization during the test phase, indicating that the frequency distribution of tokens in the input had induced novel object category formation. These results suggest that distributional learning could play an important role in categorizing sensory stimuli throughout life.

Assessing Visual Statistical Learning in Early-School-Aged Children: The Usefulness of an Online Reaction Time Measure.

Visual statistical learning (VSL) was traditionally tested through offline two-alternative forced choice (2-AFC) questions. More recently, online reaction time (RT) measures and alternative offline question types have been developed to further investigate learning during exposure and more adequately assess individual differences in adults (Siegelman et al., 2017b, 2018). We assessed the usefulness of these measures for investigating VSL in early-school-aged children. Secondarily, we examined the effect of introducing a cover task, potentially affecting attention, on children's VSL performance. Fifty-three children (aged 5-8 years) performed a self-paced VSL task containing triplets, in which participants determine the presentation speed and RTs to each stimulus are recorded. Half of the participants performed a cover task, while the other half did not. Online sensitivity to the statistical structure was measured by contrasting RTs to unpredictable versus predictable elements. Subsequently, participants completed 2-AFC (choose correct triplet) and 3-AFC (fill blank to complete triplet) offline questions. RTs were significantly longer for unpredictable than predictable elements, so we conclude that early-school-aged children are sensitive to the statistical structure during exposure, and that the RT task can measure that. We found no evidence as to whether children can perform above chance on offline 2-AFC or 3-AFC questions, or whether the cover task affects children's VSL performance. These results show the feasibility of using an online RT task when assessing VSL in early-school-aged children. This task therefore seems suitable for future studies that aim to investigate VSL across development or in clinical populations, perhaps together with behavioral tasks.

Statistical learning abilities of children with dyslexia across three experimental paradigms.

Statistical learning (SL) difficulties have been suggested to contribute to the linguistic and non-linguistic problems observed in children with dyslexia. Indeed, studies have demonstrated that children with dyslexia experience problems with SL, but the extent of the problems is unclear. We aimed to examine the performance of children with and without dyslexia across three distinct paradigms using both on- and offline measures, thereby tapping into different aspects of SL. 100 children with and without dyslexia (aged 8-11, 50 per group) completed three SL tasks: serial reaction time (SRT), visual statistical learning (VSL), and auditory nonadjacent dependency learning (A-NADL). Learning was measured through online reaction times during exposure in all tasks, and through offline questions in the VSL and A-NADL tasks. We find significant learning effects in all three tasks, from which we conclude that, collapsing over groups, children are sensitive to the statistical structures presented in the SRT, VSL and A-NADL tasks. No significant interactions of learning effect with group were found in any of the tasks, so we cannot conclude whether or not children with dyslexia perform differently on the SL tasks than their TD peers. These results are discussed in light of the proposed SL deficit in dyslexia.

Acquiring diminutive allomorphs: taking item-specific characteristics into account.

Phonological characteristics and frequencies of stems and allomorphs have been explored as possible factors causing differences in production accuracies between allomorphic forms. However, previous findings are not consistent and the relative contributions of these factors are unclear. This study investigated target and erroneous productions of the Dutch diminutive, which has five allomorphs with varying type frequencies and of which the selection depends on the phonological characteristics of the stems. Typically developing children (N = 115, 5;1-10;3) were tested on their production of real and nonce diminutives. Linear mixed effects modelling was used to analyse the data taking nonverbal IQ into account. Type frequencies of the allomorphs and differences in phonological characteristics of the stems were found to be related to differences in production accuracies between the allomorphs. However, phonological characteristics of the stems appeared to have a bigger impact, mainly due to the phonological complexity of these characteristics.

On the Relation Between Procedural Learning and Syntactic Proficiency in Gifted Children.

Gifted children are described as very talented children who achieve more than their age mates in one or more domains (Steiner and Carr in Educ Psychol Rev 15(3):215-246, 2003). These children potentially share a cognitive advantage enabling them to excel in language, but also in other domains. In the present study we explored whether gifted children have a relatively advanced procedural memory. We further investigated the relation between procedural memory and complex syntactic comprehension. 25 gifted children and as many non-gifted children between ages 8 and 13 were administered a serial reaction time (SRT) task and a relative clause comprehension task. Results from the SRT task showed no significant difference between gifted children and their TD peers, whereas gifted children showed significant better comprehension of object relative clauses. No significant correlations were found between the two tasks. There was thus no evidence that gifted children excel in procedural memory. Possibly some other factor, such as meta-linguistic knowledge or a beneficial social environment, contributed to their advanced linguistic comprehension.

The effects of phonological skills and vocabulary on morphophonological processing.

Morphophonological processing involves the phonological analysis of morphemes. Item-specific phonological characteristics have been shown to influence morphophonological skills in children. This study investigates the relative contributions of broad phonological skills and vocabulary to production and judgement accuracies of the Dutch past tense and diminutive, two morphophonological processes. Typically developing children (age 5;0-10;0, N = 114) were asked to produce and judge real and nonce diminutives and regular past tenses. Phonological processing skills were measured using a phonological awareness, digit span and nonword repetition task; vocabulary using the PPVT. Phonological skills and vocabulary contributed significantly to the production and judgement of the past tense and diminutive. The results underline the relation between phonological skills and the lexicon and the processing of morphophonology. These findings go further than showing the importance of the item-specific phonological context of the stem and suffix: they indicate that more general skills in the domain of phonology and vocabulary are involved.

Statistical Learning in Specific Language Impairment: A Meta-Analysis.

Purpose: The current meta-analysis provides a quantitative overview of published and unpublished studies on statistical learning in the auditory verbal domain in people with and without specific language impairment (SLI). The database used for the meta-analysis is accessible online and open to updates (Community-Augmented Meta-Analysis), which facilitates the accumulation and evaluation of previous and future studies on statistical learning in this domain. Method: A systematic literature search identified 10 unique experiments examining auditory verbal statistical learning in 213 participants with SLI and 363 without SLI, aged between 6 and 19 years. Data from qualifying studies were extracted and converted to Hedges' g effect sizes. Results: The overall standardized mean difference between participants with SLI and participants without SLI was 0.54, which was significantly different from 0 (p < .001, 95% confidence interval [0.36, 0.71]). Conclusion: Together, the results of our meta-analysis indicate a robust difference between people with SLI and people without SLI in their detection of statistical regularities in the auditory input. The detection of statistical regularities is, on average, not as effective in people with SLI compared with people without SLI. The results of this meta-analysis are congruent with a statistical learning deficit hypothesis in SLI. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5558074.

Visual artificial grammar learning in dyslexia: A meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Literacy impairments in dyslexia have been hypothesized to be (partly) due to an implicit learning deficit. However, studies of implicit visual artificial grammar learning (AGL) have often yielded null results. AIMS: The aim of this study is to weigh the evidence collected thus far by performing a meta-analysis of studies on implicit visual AGL in dyslexia. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Thirteen studies were selected through a systematic literature search, representing data from 255 participants with dyslexia and 292 control participants (mean age range: 8.5-36.8 years old). RESULTS: If the 13 selected studies constitute a random sample, individuals with dyslexia perform worse on average than non-dyslexic individuals (average weighted effect size=0.46, 95% CI [0.14 … 0.77], p=0.008), with a larger effect in children than in adults (p=0.041; average weighted effect sizes 0.71 [sig.] versus 0.16 [non-sig.]). However, the presence of a publication bias indicates the existence of missing studies that may well null the effect. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: While the studies under investigation demonstrate that implicit visual AGL is impaired in dyslexia (more so in children than in adults, if in adults at all), the detected publication bias suggests that the effect might in fact be zero.

Shortened Nonword Repetition Task (NWR-S): A Simple, Quick, and Less Expensive Outcome to Identify Children With Combined Specific Language and Reading Impairment.

Purpose: The purpose of this research note was to validate a simplified version of the Dutch nonword repetition task (NWR; Rispens & Baker, 2012). The NWR was shortened and scoring was transformed to correct/incorrect nonwords, resulting in the shortened NWR (NWR-S). Method: NWR-S and NWR performance were compared in the previously published data set of Rispens and Baker (2012; N = 88), who compared NWR performance in 5 participant groups: specific language impairment (SLI), reading impairment (RI), both SLI and RI, one control group matched on chronological age, and one control group matched on language age. Results: Analyses of variance showed that children with SLI + RI performed significantly worse than other participant groups in NWR-S, just as in NWR. Logistic regression analyses showed that both tasks can predict an SLI + RI outcome. NWR-S holds a sensitivity of 82.6% and a specificity of 95.4% in identifying children with SLI + RI. The sensitivity of the original NWR is 87.0% with a specificity of 87.7%. Conclusions: As the original NWR, the NWR-S comprising a subset of 22 nonwords scored with a simplified scoring system can identify children with combined SLI and RI while saving a significant amount of the needed assessment time. Supplemental Materials: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5150116.

Word recognition and nonword repetition in children with language disorders: the effects of neighborhood density, lexical frequency, and phonotactic probability.

PURPOSE: The effects of neighborhood density (ND) and lexical frequency on word recognition and the effects of phonotactic probability (PP) on nonword repetition (NWR) were examined to gain insight into processing at the lexical and sublexical levels in typically developing (TD) children and children with developmental language problems. METHOD: Tasks measuring NWR and word recognition were administered to 5 groups of children: 2 groups of TD children (5 and 8 years old), children with specific language impairment (SLI), children with reading impairment (RI), and children with SLI+RI (all 7-8 years old). RESULTS: High ND had a negative effect on word recognition in the older TD children and in the children with RI only. There was no ND effect in the younger children or in the children with SLI, who all had lower receptive vocabulary scores than the age-matched TD children and the RI groups. For all groups, NWR items with low PP were more difficult to repeat than items with high PP. This effect was especially pronounced in children with RI. CONCLUSION: Both the stage of vocabulary development and the type of language impairment (SLI or RI) impact the way ND and PP affect word recognition and NWR.

Past tense productivity in Dutch children with and without SLI: the role of morphophonology and frequency.

This study focuses on morphophonology and frequency in past tense production. It was assessed whether Dutch five- and seven-year-old typically developing (TD) children and eight-year-old children with specific language impairment (SLI) produce the correct allomorph in regular, irregular, and novel past tense formation. Type frequency of the allomorph, token frequency and phonotactic probability (PP) of the novel verb form are considered. The results showed all groups were sensitive to the phonological cue. PP did not contribute to past tense inflection of novel verbs in any of the groups, but type frequency did in all three groups. Only the seven-year-old typically developing children relied on token frequency for inflection of regulars. The findings point to an important role of phonology and frequency in past tense acquisition for both TD children and children with SLI. We discuss how the SLI performance pattern relates to theories on SLI.

Nonword repetition: the relative contributions of phonological short-term memory and phonological representations in children with language and reading impairment.

PURPOSE: This study investigates the relative contributions of phonological short-term memory and phonological representations to nonword repetition (NWR). This was evaluated in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and/or reading impairment (RI); it was also studied from a developmental perspective by comparing 2 groups of typically developing (TD) children who differed in age. METHOD: NWR, digit span, vocabulary, and word and nonword discrimination were tested in 2 groups of TD children: one group matched on chronological age (CA TD group: n = 41, mean age = 7;8 [months;years]), and one language age-matched control group (LA TD group: n = 16, mean age = 5;8). Also, 10 children with SLI, 14 children with RI, and 23 children with SLI and RI (hereafter, SLI + RI) participated and were matched to the age of the CA TD group. RESULTS: For the TD children, NWR was predicted by discrimination, digit span, and age. The interaction between discrimination ability and age was also significant. Children with SLI + RI were significantly impaired on NWR compared with all other groups. A regression analysis, including the CA TD group and the children with SLI and/or RI, showed that digit span, discrimination ability, and group (SLI + RI) contributed significantly to NWR. CONCLUSIONS: Phonological short-term memory and phonological representations both significantly contribute to NWR. The predictive strength of the quality of phonological representations changes during development.

Non-word repetition in Dutch-speaking children with specific language impairment with and without reading problems.

Recently, English studies have shown a relationship between non-word repetition (NWR) and the presence of reading problems (RP). Children with specific language impairment (SLI) but without RP performed similarly to their typically developing (TD) peers, whereas children with SLI and RP performed significantly worse on an NWR task. The current study was undertaken to investigate whether this difference in NWR performance is also found in a language with a transparent orthography--Dutch. The study included 15 TD children and 29 children with SLI. All children performed an NWR task that included non-words of 2-5 syllables in length. Children with SLI - RP (N = 11) did not differ on any of the four conditions from the TD group, whereas the children with SLI + RP (N = 18) scored more poorly on the 3-, 4-, and 5-syllable items compared to the TD group. NWR performance was significantly poorer on the 3- and 4-syllable conditions for children with SLI + RP compared to SLI - RP. To conclude, NWR is specifically affected in children with SLI + RP who are learning to read and write in a transparent orthography. Our data underline the dependency relation between literacy development and NWR performance in children with SLI.

Non-word repetition in Dutch children with (a risk of) dyslexia and SLI.

It has been proposed that poor non-word repetition is a marker of specific language impairment (SLI), and a precursor and marker of dyslexia. This study investigated whether a non-word repetition deficit underlies both disorders. A group of Dutch preschool SLI children and children at familial risk of dyslexia, as well as school-going groups of SLI and dyslexic children were presented with a non-word repetition task. The results showed that the SLI and the (at-risk of) dyslexia groups performed more poorly than the control children. Furthermore, with the exception of one child, all preschool SLI children scored significantly below the mean of the preschool control group, suggesting that non-word repetition performance is a marker of SLI. Approximately half of the at-risk group were poor performers, which was expected on the basis of the familial risk factor of the at-risk group. The results show that a non-word repetition deficit is attested early in life and underlies both dyslexia and SLI.

Subject-verb agreement and phonological processing in developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment (SLI): a closer look.

BACKGROUND: Problems with subject-verb agreement and phonological (processing) skills have been reported to occur in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and in those with developmental dyslexia, but only a few studies have compared such problems in these two groups. Previous studies have claimed a causal relationship between phonological processing deficits and morphosyntactic problems. AIMS: The following questions were addressed in this study: (1) Are children with developmental dyslexia and SLI comparable in the level of sensitivity to subject-verb agreement, phonological awareness, and non-word repetition? (2) Are children with developmental dyslexia and SLI comparable in their performance profiles on tasks tapping subject-verb agreement, phonological awareness, and non-word repetition? (3) Are deficits in phonological processing skills related to morphosyntactic deficits? METHODS & PROCEDURES: Forty-five children (mean age = 8;6 years) with developmental dyslexia, SLI and typically developing children participated. The sensitivity to subject-verb agreement, phonological awareness, and non-word repetition was measured. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Both the children with dyslexia and with SLI made more errors than the control children on the subject-verb agreement task, with the children with dyslexia scoring significantly better than the children with SLI. Similarly, the children with SLI and dyslexia both performed more poorly on the phoneme-deletion task than the control group. Both clinical groups performed more poorly on the non-word repetition task than the control children, with the children with dyslexia outperforming the children with SLI. In all three tasks differences in performance profiles were found between the children with developmental dyslexia and SLI. Across all three groups non-word repetition was correlated with morphosyntactic sensitivity. CONCLUSIONS: The results show similarities between the performances of children with SLI and dyslexia on tasks tapping subject-verb agreement, phonological awareness, and non-word repetition: they scored more poorly than typically developing children. Qualitative analyses revealed, however, differences in the error patterns on all three tasks. Associations between non-word repetition and sensitivity to subject-verb agreement were found, suggesting that problems with phonological processing impact on morphosyntactic skills.

Brain responses to subject-verb agreement violations in spoken language in developmental dyslexia: an ERP study.

This study investigates the presence and latency of the P600 component in response to subject-verb agreement violations in spoken language in people with and without developmental dyslexia. The two groups performed at-ceiling level on judging the sentences on their grammaticality, but the ERP data revealed subtle differences between them. The P600 tended to peak later in the left posterior region in the dyslexic group compared with the control group. In addition, the group of dyslexic subjects did not show a P600 in response to sentences with a plural NP subject. These results suggest that brain activation involved in syntactic repair is more affected by linguistic complexity in developmental dyslexia compared with non-dyslexic individuals.

Verbs: some properties and their consequences for agrammatic Broca's aphasia.

It has repeatedly been shown that agrammatic Broca's aphasics have serious problems with the retrieval of verbs on action naming tests (Miceli, Silveri, Villa & Caramazza, 1984; Kohn, Lorch & Pearson, 1989; Basso, Razzano, Faglioni & Zanobio, 1990; Jonkers, 1998; Kim & Thompson, 2000). Less attention has been paid to the production of verbs at the sentence level (but see Miceli, Mazzuchi, Menn & Goodglass, 1983; Thompson, Shapiro, Li & Schendel, 1995; Thompson, Lange, Schneider & Shapiro, 1997; Bastiaanse & Van Zonneveld, 1998; Bastiaanse, Rispens & Van Zonneveld, 2000; Friedmann, 2000), although it has been mentioned that in agrammatic spontaneous speech verbs are lacking (Saffran, Berndt & Schwartz, 1989; Thompson et al., 1995, but see Bastiaanse & Jonkers, 1998).In this paper, three cross-linguistic studies are discussed to show that these problems with verbs have consequences for other grammatical morphemes and structures that have been mentioned to be impaired in agrammatic speech and that these consequences are different per language, depending on linguistic characteristics. The first study focuses on finiteness and compares the production of finite verbs in matrix and embedded clauses in Dutch and English, showing that a linguistic rule in Dutch (Verb Second), which does not exist in English, can explain the different performance of Dutch and English agrammatic Broca's aphasics. The second study focuses on determiners and (finite) verbs in German and shows that poor determiner production is directly related to poor verb production. The last study demonstrates that the ability to construct negative sentences is dependent on the language specific relation between verb movement and negation: Dutch and Norwegian agrammatics perform equally well on affirmative and negative sentences, whereas English and Spanish agrammatics are more impaired on negative sentences.Overall, these studies show that the problems agrammatics encounter with verbs and their properties have a spin-off on the production of other word-classes and that the characterization 'problems with grammatical morphemes' is too general for telegraphic speech.