Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T10:12:50.542Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Complex sentence profiles in children with Specific Language Impairment: Are they really atypical?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2016

NICK G. RICHES
NICK G. RICHES*
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle, UK
*
Nick G. Riches, University of Newcastle – Education Communication and Language Sciences, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne and Wear, NE1 7RU. e-mail: nick.riches@newcastle.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have language difficulties of unknown origin. Syntactic profiles are atypical, with poor performance on non-canonical structures, e.g. object relatives, suggesting a localized deficit. However, existing analyses using ANOVAs are problematic because they do not systematically address unequal variance, or fully model random effects. Consequently, a Generalised Linear Model (GLM) was used to analyze data from a Sentence Repetition (SR) task involving relative clauses. seventeen children with SLI (mean age 6;7), twenty-one Language Matched (LM) children (mean age 4;8), and seventeen Age Matched (AM) children (mean age 6;5) repeated 100 canonical and non-canonical sentences. ANOVAs found a significant Group by Canonicity interaction for the SLI versus AM contrast only. However, the GLM found no significant interaction. Consequently, arguments for a localized deficit may depend on statistical methods which are prone to exaggerate profile differences. Nonetheless, a subgroup of SLI exhibited particularly severe structural language difficulties.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , March 2017 , pp. 269 - 296
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

I would like to thank the British Academy for funding this project (Award Number PDF/2007/460), and colleagues at the Universities of Reading and Newcastle for their support and advice. In particular I would like to thank Thomas King, David Howard, Christos Salis, and Nils Braakmann for their statistical input. Thanks also to Kerry Davis and Christos Pliatsikas for help with data collection and coding and the three anonymous reviewers. Finally, a massive thank you for those teachers, speech and language therapists, and above all the children who participated.

References

REFERENCES

Adani, F., Forgiarini, M., Guasti, M. T. & van der Lely, H. K. J. (2014). Number dissimilarities facilitate the comprehension of relative clauses in children with (Grammatical) Specific Language Impairment. Journal of Child Language 41(4), 811–41.Google Scholar
Arnon, I. (2010). Rethinking child difficulty: the effect of NP type on children's processing of relative clauses in Hebrew. Journal of Child Language 37(1), 27–57.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J. & Bates, D. M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language 59(4), 390–412.Google Scholar
Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C. & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language 68(3), 255–78.Google Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B. & Walker, S. (2014). lme4: linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4. Online: <http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4> (last accessed 12 January 2016).+(last+accessed+12+January+2016).>Google Scholar
Bernstien Ratner, N. (2000). Elicited imitation and other methods for the analysis of trade-offs between speech and language skills in children. In Menn, L. (ed.), Methods for studying language production, 291–312. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M. (2005). Test of Reception of Grammar – Electronic. London: Harcourt Assessment.Google Scholar
Booth, J. R., MacWhinney, B. & Harasaki, Y. (2000). Developmental differences in visual and auditory processing of complex sentences. Child Development 71(4), 981–1003.Google Scholar
British National Corpus, version 2 (2002). Oxford: BNC Consortium.Google Scholar
Burnage, G. (1990). CELEX: a guide for users. Nijmegen: CELEX.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H. (1973). The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy: a critique of language statistics in psychological research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 12(4), 335–59.Google Scholar
Clay, M. M. (1971). Sentence repetition: elicited imitation of a controlled set of syntactic structures by four language groups. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 36(3), 1–85.Google Scholar
Conti-Ramsden, G., Botting, N. & Faragher, B. (2001). Psycholinguistic markers for specific language impairment (SLI). Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines 42(6), 741–8.Google Scholar
Conti-Ramsden, G. & Jones, M. (1997). Verb use in Specific Language Impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 40, 1298–313.Google Scholar
Deevy, P. & Leonard, L. B. (2004). The comprehension of wh-questions in children with Specific Language Impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47(4), 802–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Villiers, J. G. (2003). Defining SLI: a linguistic perspective. In Levy, Y. & Schaeffer, J. (eds), Language competence across populations: toward a definition of specific language impairment, 425–47. Mahwah, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Dixon, P. (2008). Models of accuracy in repeated-measures designs. Journal of Memory and Language 59(4), 447–56.Google Scholar
Dollaghan, C. A. (2004). Taxometric analyses of specific language impairment in 3- and 4-year-old children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47(2), 464–75.Google Scholar
Dollaghan, C. A. (2011). Taxometric analyses of specific language impairment in 6-year-old children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 54, 1361–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunn, L. M., Whetton, C. & Burley, J. (1997). The British Picture Vocabulary Scale. Windsor: NFER – Nelson.Google Scholar
Epstein, B., Hestvik, A., Shafer, V. L. & Schwartz, R. G. (2013). ERPs reveal atypical processing of subject versus object Wh -questions in children with specific language impairment: atypical wh-question processing in SLI. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 48(4), 351–65.Google Scholar
Field, A. (2000). Discovering statistics using SPSS for Windows. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Forster, K. I. & Forster, J. C. (2003). DMDX: a Windows display program with millisecond accuracy. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers 35(1), 116–24.Google Scholar
Friedmann, N. & Novogrodsky, R. (2007). Is the movement deficit in syntactic SLI related to traces or to thematic role transfer? Brain and Language 101(1), 50–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Friedmann, N. & Novogrodsky, R. (2011). Which questions are most difficult to understand? The comprehension of Wh questions in three subtypes of SLI. Lingua 121, 367–82.Google Scholar
Gathercole, S. E. & Baddeley, A. D. (1996). The Children's test of Non-word Repetition. Hove: The Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Gibson, E. (1998). Linguistic complexity: locality of syntactic dependencies. Cognition 68, 1–76.Google Scholar
Gibson, E. & Pearlmutter, N. J. (1998). Constraints on sentence comprehension. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2(7), 262–8.Google Scholar
Gordon, P. C., Hendrick, R. & Johnson, M. (2001). Memory interference during language processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 27(6), 1411–23.Google Scholar
Hakansson, G. & Hansson, K. (2000). Comprehension and production of relative clauses: a comparison between Swedish impaired and unimpaired children. Journal of Child Language 27, 313–33.Google Scholar
Hewitt, L. E., Hammer, C. S., Yont, K. M. & Tomblin, J. B. (2005). Language sampling for kindergarten children with and without SLI: mean length of utterance, IPSYN, and NDW. Journal of Communication Disorders 38(3), 197–213.Google Scholar
Howell, D. C. (2013). Statistical methods for psychology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.Google Scholar
Hudgins, J. C. & Cullinan, W. L. (1978). The effect of sentence structure on sentence elicited imitation responses. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 21, 809–19.Google Scholar
Jaeger, T. F. (2008). Categorical data analysis: away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards Logit Mixed Models. Journal of Memory and Language 59(4), 434–46.Google Scholar
Jefferies, E., Lambon-Ralph, M. & Baddeley, A. D. (2004). Automatic and controlled processing in sentence recall: the role of long-term and working memory. Journal of Memory and Language 51(4), 623–42.Google Scholar
Jensen de López, K., Olsen, L. S. & Chondrogianni, V. (2014). Annoying Danish relatives: comprehension and production of relative clauses by Danish children with and without SLI. Journal of Child Language 41(1), 51–83.Google Scholar
Just, A. J. & Carpenter, P. A. (1992). A capacity theory of comprehension: individual differences in working memory. Psychological Review 99(1), 122–49.Google Scholar
Kail, R. V. (1994). A method of studying the generalised slowing hypothesis in children with Specific Language Impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 37, 418–21.Google Scholar
Leonard, L. B. (2000). Children with Specific Language Impairment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Leonard, L. B. (2014). Children with Specific Language Impairment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Leonard, L. B., Weismer, S. E., Miller, C. A., Francis, D. J., Tomblin, J. B. & Kail, R. V. (2007). Speed of processing, working memory, and language impairment in children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 50(2), 408–28.Google Scholar
Levenshtein, V. I. (1966). Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions, and reversals. Soviet Physics – Doklady 10, 707–10.Google Scholar
Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, Where Are You? New York, NY: Dial.Google Scholar
McDade, H. L., Simpson, M. A. & Lamb, D. E. (1982). The use of elicited imitation as a measure of expressive grammar: a question of validity. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders 47, 19–24.Google Scholar
Miles, S. (2006). Sampling context affects MLU in the language of adolescents with Down syndrome. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49(2), 325–37.Google Scholar
Miller, J. F. (1981). Assessing language production in children: experimental procedures. Baltimore: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Montgomery, J. W., Magimairaj, B. M. & Finney, M. C. (2010). Working memory and specific language impairment: an update on the relation and perspectives on assessment and treatment. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 19(1), 78–94.Google Scholar
Novogrodsky, R. & Friedmann, N. (2006). The production of relative clauses in syntactic SLI: a window to the nature of the impairment. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 8(4), 364–75.Google Scholar
Pickering, M. J. & Ferreira, V. S. (2008). Structural priming: a critical review. Psychological Bulletin 134(3), 427–59.Google Scholar
Potter, M. C. & Lombardi, L. (1998). Syntactic priming in immediate recall of sentences. Journal of Memory and Language 38(3), 265–82.Google Scholar
Quené, H. & Van den Bergh, H. (2008). Examples of mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects and with binomial data. Journal of Memory and Language 59(4), 413–25.Google Scholar
R Development Core Team. (2014). R: a language environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.Google Scholar
Reilly, S., Tomblin, J. B., Law, J., McKean, C., Mensah, K., Morgan, A. & Wake, M. (2014). Specific Language Impairment: a convenient label for whom? International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 49(4), 416–51.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. (1991). The Bus Story: a test of continuous speech, 2nd ed. Oxford: Published by author.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. (1997). Action Picture Test. Oxford: Speechmark.Google Scholar
Rice, M. L. (2013). Language growth and genetics of specific language impairment. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 15(3), 223–33.Google Scholar
Rice, M. L., Wexler, K. & Cleave, P. (1995). Specific Language Impairment as a period of extended optional infinitive. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 38, 850–63.Google Scholar
Riches, N. G. (2012). Sentence repetition in children with specific language impairment: an investigation of underlying mechanisms. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 47(5), 499–510.Google Scholar
Riches, N. G., Loucas, T., Charman, T., Simonoff, E. & Baird, G. (2010). Sentence repetition in adolescents with specific language impairments and autism: an investigation of complex syntax. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 45(1), 47–60.Google Scholar
Rizzi, L. (1990). Relativized Minimality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Roddie, S. & Terry, M. (2003). The Gossipy Parrot. Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Seeff-Gabriel, B., Chiat, S. & Dodd, B. (2010). Sentence imitation as a tool in identifying expressive morphosyntactic difficulties in children with severe speech difficulties. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders 45(6), 691–702.Google Scholar
Skaug, H., Fournier, D., Nielsen, A., Magnusson, A. & Bolker, B. (2011). glmmADMB: generalized linear mixed models using AD Model Builder. R Package Version 0.6 5, r143. Online: <http://admb-project.org/>.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. & Welsh, C. A. (1968). Elicited imitation as a research tool in developmental psycholinguistics. Working Papers of the Language Behavior Research Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley 10.Google Scholar
Stavrakaki, S. (2001). Comprehension of reversible relative clauses in Specifically Language Impaired and normally developing Greek children. Brain and Language 77(3), 419–31.Google Scholar
Tomblin, J. B., Records, N. L., Buckwalter, P. & Zhang, X. (1997). Prevalence of specific language impairment in kindergarten children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 40(6), 1245–60.Google Scholar
Tomblin, J. B. & Zhang, X. (2006). The dimensionality of language ability in school-age children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49(6), 1193–208.Google Scholar
Tyack, D. & Ingram, D. (1977). Children's production and comprehension of questions. Journal of Child Language 4(2), 211–24.Google Scholar
van der Lely, H. K. J. (2005). Domain-specific cognitive systems: insight from Grammatical-SLI. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9(2), 53–9.Google Scholar
van der Lely, H. K. J. & Battel, J. (2003). Wh-movement in children with grammatical SLI: a test of the RDDR hypothesis. Language 79, 153–81.Google Scholar
van der Lely, H. K. J., Jones, M. & Marshall, C. R. (2011). Who did Buzz see someone? Grammaticality judgement of wh-questions in typically developing children and children with Grammatical-SLI. Lingua 121(3), 408–22.Google Scholar
van der Lely, H. J. K. & Ullman, M. (2001). Past tense morphology in specifically language impaired and normally developing children. Language and Cognitive Processes 16(2/3), 177–217.Google Scholar
Wechsler, D. (2002). Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence – 3rd en. New York: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Wiig, E. H., Secord, W. & Semel, E. (1992). Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals – Preschool. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.Google Scholar
Willis, C. & Gathercole, S. E. (2001). Phonological short-term memory contributions to sentence processing in young children. Memory 9(4), 349–63.Google Scholar
Wong, A. M.-Y., Leonard, L. B., Fletcher, P. & Stokes, S. F. (2004). Questions without movement: a study of Cantonese-speaking children with and without specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47(6), 1440–1453.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Riches supplementary material

Appendices 1-3

Download Riches supplementary material(File)
File 30.2 KB