Clinical markers for specific language impairment in Italian: the contribution of clitics and non‐word repetition

Bortolini, Umberta; Arfé, Barbara; Caselli, María Cristina; Degasperi, Luisa; Deevy, Patricia; Leonard, Laurence B.

doi:10.1080/13682820600570831

Cited by 132 publications

(157 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…For instance, in a recent study, Arosio and colleagues (Arosio et al 2016) report that a consistent number of children with DD fail to produce 3 rd person singular direct object clitic pronouns. This phenomenon is identified as a persistent clinical marker of SLI in Italian (Arosio et al 2014;Bortolini et al 2006). At a clinical level, our study recommends that an evaluation of ORC comprehension should be included in testing materials for identifying language deficits.…”

Section: Discussion For Studymentioning

confidence: 72%

The comprehension of Italian relative clauses in poor readers and in children with Specific Language Impairment

et al. 2017

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Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and children with Developmental Dyslexia (DD) have problems comprehending relative clauses (RCs) and find object RCs more difficult than subject RCs, as do typically developing children. Few studies have compared these groups directly, leaving it unclear whether the problems observed in children with DD are similar to those described in SLI. Work with typically developing children has shown that the comprehension of passive RCs is less challenging than that of object RCs. It is argued that this asymmetry depends on intervention effects as modelized in a Relativized Minimality framework. Since movement is challenging for children with SLI and those with DD, examining and comparing their comprehension of object RCs and passive RCs can broaden our understanding of their language deficits. In fact, both structures involve movement, but the moved element and the movement configuration are different.In our study we investigated the comprehension of subject RCs, object RCs and passive RCs in 12 Italian monolingual children with SLI (mean age: 7;6), 13 Italian monolingual children with DD (mean age: 10;7) and 50 typically developing controls matched for age, grammar and vocabulary. Results from a picture selection task show that: (i) subject RCs are unproblematic for all children; (ii) object RCs are challenging for children with SLI, children with DD and younger typically developing controls; (iii) passive RCs are better understood than object RCs in all groups, but still problematic for children with SLI and younger typically developing controls. Our data show that intervention effects are found in children with SLI and children with DD and that those with SLI have a deficit in transferring thematic roles to moved elements. Our results point out that some of the children with DD have a mild grammatical deficit that was undetected or escaped standardized tests.

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Section: Discussion For Studymentioning

confidence: 72%

The comprehension of Italian relative clauses in poor readers and in children with Specific Language Impairment

et al. 2017

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“…In Italian, for instance, the period of optional use of the clitic is more prolonged than in typically developing children and can persist even at age 6 (Bortolini et al 2006;Bortolini et al 2002;Leonard and Dispaldro 2013). Although this stage is generally over at 7 years of age, difficulties are found in school-aged children, who still tend to avoid the clitic and replace it with a full DP, an option which is grammatical but not appropriate from the pragmatic point of view (Arosio et al 2014).…”

Section: The Production Of Clitic Pronouns: Children With Specific Lamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Clitic production is therefore considered a good clinical marker for SLI in Italian, with high degrees of sensitivity and specificity (Bortolini et al 2006;Arosio et al 2014).…”

Section: The Production Of Clitic Pronouns: Children With Specific Lamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Clitic Production in Bilingual Children: When Exposure Matters

2018

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Abstract:The aim of this work is to investigate how bilingual children perform with respect to monolingual children in a task eliciting direct object clitic pronouns in Italian. Clitic production is considered a good clinical marker for Italian monolingual children suffering from specific language impairment (SLI) (Bortolini et al. 2006). Moreover, this task is reported to be particularly challenging for early second language children (EL2), who are less accurate than their peers in this task (Vender et al. 2016). Even though the typology of errors committed by the two populations (non-impaired bilinguals and SLI children) is generally different, it can be difficult to keep them apart from each other and, as a consequence, to identify a language impairment in bilingual children. However, it has been suggested that the difficulties exhibited by EL2 children in clitic production are related to their competence in their L2 and that they should disappear as soon as their mastery of the L2 increases. To test this prediction, we assessed clitic production in a group of 31 bilingual children having Italian as their L2 (mean age 10;2), comparing their performance to that of a group of 33 Italian monolingual children (mean age 10;2). The bilingual children used their L1 on a daily basis, as assessed by means of a bilingual exposure questionnaire, and had on average eight years of exposure to Italian; moreover, they performed similarly to monolinguals in a receptive vocabulary task, indicating that their competence in Italian was good. Consistently with our predictions, we found that bilingual children performed very accurately in the clitic elicitation task, similarly to monolinguals, confirming that the deficits previously found in EL2 children were not related to bilingualism itself, but more likely to their still incomplete competence in Italian.

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“…This author observed that for 5-year-old children the nonword repetition task (and the past tense generation task) was the most accurate marker of SLI. In Italian, a language more phonologically related to Spanish than French or English, a study was conducted with 33 typically developing children and children with SLI (Bortolini et al, 2006). The authors found the nonword repetition task yielded excellent values for both specificity and sensitivity (both over 80).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Baremación de una tarea de repetición de pseudopalabras para la evaluación del desarrollo léxico

et al. 2017

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Título: Baremación de una tarea de repetición de pseudopalabras para la evaluación del desarrollo léxico. Resumen: La habilidad para repetir pseudopalabras se ha mostrado como un buen marcador de desarrollo léxico en multitud de lenguas incluyendo el español. Además, permite discriminar en buena medida entre niños con desarrollo típico y niños con trastornos y retrasos del lenguaje. Sin embargo, pese a su potencial importancia para su uso clínico e investigador, en español no contamos con baremos para una lista de estímulos determinada. Con el objetivo salvar esta notable carencia, se realiza una tarea de repetición de pseudopalabras a una muestra total de 342 niños y niñas monolingües españoles de entre cuatro y siete años. Tras el análisis de los resultados se elaboró un baremo con el objeto de aportar referencias poblacionales a colegas que trabajan en las citadas áreas clínico-educativas y de investigación. Los resultados muestran un efecto techo de esta tarea a los 6 años, así como para los estímulos monomorfémicos y bisílabos. Las implicaciones de estos resultados y baremo obtenido son discutidas en el apartado correspondiente. Palabras clave: Baremación; Desarrollo léxico; Repetición de pseudopalabras; Español; Infancia; Marcador clínico. Abstract:It has been demonstrated that the ability to repeat non-words is a good marker of lexical development in a number of languages, including Spanish. In addition, the ability to repeat nonwords has been used as a good discriminator between typically developing children and children with language delays or other language difficulties. However, despite its potential usefulness for clinical and research purposes, there is no validated scale in Spanish. To address this situation, we present a scale based on a sample of 342 monolingual Spanish-speaking children aged from four to seven years. After data analysis, a scale was elaborated to provide populational references for colleagues working in educational, clinical and research fields. The results show a ceiling effect for six years olds, as well as for monomorphemic and bisyllabic items. Implications of these scores are discussed in the corresponding section.

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Clinical markers for specific language impairment in Italian: the contribution of clitics and non‐word repetition

Cited by 132 publications

References 29 publications

The comprehension of Italian relative clauses in poor readers and in children with Specific Language Impairment

The comprehension of Italian relative clauses in poor readers and in children with Specific Language Impairment

Clitic Production in Bilingual Children: When Exposure Matters

Baremación de una tarea de repetición de pseudopalabras para la evaluación del desarrollo léxico

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