Arithmetic Calculation, Short-Term Memory, and Language Performance in Children With Specific Language Impairment

Abstract

A 5-year follow-up of the arithmetic calculation abilities of low-income children with specific language impairment (SLI) is reported. The performance of fourth- and fifth-grade children with SLI was compared with that of typically developing low-income peers and with younger, typically developing low-income children. Short-term memory, language, and arithmetic calculation abilities were assessed. Compared to their age-matched peers, the SLI group exhibited low scores on a number recall task, a marked difficulty with mathematical calculation under timed conditions, and numerous errors when retrieving rote math facts such as 7 x 6 =. Although children with SLI made more written calculation errors than their age-matched peers, they did not differ in the type of errors made. However, strategies used to solve written calculation differed among the groups. Rather than use automatic math fact retrieval, children with SLI were more likely to use counting strategies to solve calculation problems. These findings offer further evidence that children with SLI have difficulty with rote memory. The findings also document the real-world consequences of slow, inefficient memory retrieval in children with SLI.

Specific Language Impairment is not Specific to Language: the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis

“…Indeed, the subjects with SLI in one study were reported to benefit significantly from using hand gestures in order to remember poems, whereas cognitive-and languagematched controls recalled the same percentage of the poems across the conditions (i.e., with and without gesture cues) (Fazio, 1997). Similarly, children with SLI have been shown to utilize counting strategies to remember math facts (which are also expected to depend on declarative memory) significantly more than age-and language-matched controls (Fazio, 1999).…”

“…These data suggest that in both experimental and naturalistic expressive language contexts, children with SLI are likely to be particularly slow at word-finding, even when they have intact lexical knowledge. Interestingly, fast automatic retrieval is also difficult for children with SLI in non-linguistic domains like counting numbers and reciting math facts (Fazio, 1996;Fazio, 1999), suggesting a similar pattern for other types of information in declarative memory, as predicted by the PDH.…”

“…Tests of lexical abilities that involve word retrieval, such as object naming and word or list recall, are often impaired in SLI (Bishop, 1997;Fazio, 1998;Fazio, 1999;Kamhi and Catts, 1986;Katz et al, 1992;McGregor and Appel, 2002;Royle et al, draft;Weckerly et al, 2001). In contrast, tasks probing receptive lexical abilities, such as comprehension and especially recognition tasks, are often relatively spared (Clarke and Leonard, 1996;Dollaghan, 1987;Kiernan, 1998;Vargha-Khadem et al, 1995;Weismer and Hesketh, 1996).…”

“…These data suggest that in both experimental and naturalistic expressive language contexts, children with SLI are likely to be particularly slow at word-finding, even when they have intact lexical knowledge. Interestingly, fast automatic retrieval is also difficult for children with SLI in non-linguistic domains like counting numbers and reciting math facts (Fazio, 1996;Fazio, 1999), suggesting a similar pattern for other types of information in declarative memory, as predicted by the PDH.It is important to point out, however, that it has also been argued that word retrieval and word knowledge cannot be as easily dissociated as has often been assumed . In studies that have probed the relation between lexical-semantic representation and naming (McGregor and Appel, 2002;, not only were children with SLI impaired at naming, but in addition there was a significant correlation, across items, between naming errors and an inability both to create accurate drawings of the words and to produce their definitions.…”

“…Indeed, the subjects with SLI in one study were reported to benefit significantly from using hand gestures in order to remember poems, whereas cognitive-and languagematched controls recalled the same percentage of the poems across the conditions (i.e., with and without gesture cues) (Fazio, 1997). Similarly, children with SLI have been shown to utilize counting strategies to remember math facts (which are also expected to depend on declarative memory) significantly more than age-and language-matched controls (Fazio, 1999).Even when SLI subjects' performance at tasks requiring lexical retrieval is as accurate as control subjects', it tends to be slower. Thus children and adults with SLI have been reported to name words as accurately as control subjects (Lahey and Edwards, 1996; Vargha-Khadem et al, 1995l;, even when the control subjects are age-matched (Leonard et al, 1983).…”