Decreased Sensitivity to Long-Distance Dependencies in Children With a History of Specific Language Impairment: Electrophysiological Evidence.

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Title:	Decreased Sensitivity to Long-Distance Dependencies in Children With a History of Specific Language Impairment: Electrophysiological Evidence.
Authors:	Purdy, J. D.¹, Leonard, Laurence B.¹ xdxl@purdue.edu, Weber-Fox, Christine¹, Kaganovich, Natalya¹
Source:	Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research. Jun2014, Vol. 57 Issue 3, p1040-1059. 20p. 6 Graphs.
Subject Terms:	Experimental design, Comparative grammar, *Psychological tests, Analysis of variance, Auditory evoked response, Electroencephalography, Electrophysiology, Language disorders in children, Research funding, Wave analysis, Descriptive statistics
Abstract:	Purpose: One possible source of tense and agreement limitations in children with specific language impairment (SLI) is a weakness in appreciating structural dependencies that occur in many sentences in the input. This possibility was tested in the present study. Method: Children with a history of SLI (H-SLI; n = 12; M = 9;7 [years;months]) and typically developing same-age peers (TD; n = 12; M = 9;7) listened to and made grammaticality judgments about grammatical and ungrammatical sentences involving either a local agreement error (e.g., “Every night they talks on the phone”) or a long-distance finiteness error (e.g., “He makes the quiet boy talks a little louder”). Electrophysiological (ERP) and behavioral (accuracy) measures were obtained. Results: Local agreement errors elicited the expected anterior negativity and P600 components in both groups of children. However, relative to the TD group, the P600 effect for the long-distance finiteness errors was delayed, reduced in amplitude, and shorter in duration for the H-SLI group. The children’s grammaticality judgments were consistent with the ERP findings. Conclusion: Children with H-SLI seem to be relatively insensitive to the finiteness constraints that matrix verbs place on subject–verb clauses that appear later in the sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
	Copyright of Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research is the property of American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
Database:	Education Research Complete

Description
Abstract:	Purpose: One possible source of tense and agreement limitations in children with specific language impairment (SLI) is a weakness in appreciating structural dependencies that occur in many sentences in the input. This possibility was tested in the present study. Method: Children with a history of SLI (H-SLI; n = 12; M = 9;7 [years;months]) and typically developing same-age peers (TD; n = 12; M = 9;7) listened to and made grammaticality judgments about grammatical and ungrammatical sentences involving either a local agreement error (e.g., “Every night they talks on the phone”) or a long-distance finiteness error (e.g., “He makes the quiet boy talks a little louder”). Electrophysiological (ERP) and behavioral (accuracy) measures were obtained. Results: Local agreement errors elicited the expected anterior negativity and P600 components in both groups of children. However, relative to the TD group, the P600 effect for the long-distance finiteness errors was delayed, reduced in amplitude, and shorter in duration for the H-SLI group. The children’s grammaticality judgments were consistent with the ERP findings. Conclusion: Children with H-SLI seem to be relatively insensitive to the finiteness constraints that matrix verbs place on subject–verb clauses that appear later in the sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
ISSN:	10924388
DOI:	10.1044/2014_JSLHR-L-13-0176