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

Abstract

Purpose One possible source of tense and agreement limitations in children with SLI is a weakness in appreciating structural dependencies that occur in many sentences in the input. We tested this possibility in the present study. Method Children with a history of SLI (H-SLI; N = 12; M age 9;7) and typically developing same-age peers (TD; N = 12; M age 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. Conclusions 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.

Input sources of third person singular -sinconsistency in children with and without specific language impairment

“…Earlier we noted that a recent study by Purdy et al (in press) lends support to this interpretation. Children with a history of a protracted period of tense/agreement inconsistency exhibited event-related potentials (ERPs) indicating that they were successfully detecting local errors (e.g.…”

“…This expectation seems especially plausible given a recent study by Purdy, Leonard, Weber-Fox, and Kaganovich (in press). These investigators found that children with a history of SLI, including inconsistent use of tense/agreement morphology, had a tendency to treat sentences such as We watch the happy girl climbs up the ladder as acceptable, as measured both behaviorally and through electrophysiological measures.…”

Children with specific language impairment and their contribution to the study of language development

“…Leonard and Deevy (2011) and Purdy, Leonard, Weber-Fox, and Kaganovich (in press) provide comprehension data consistent with this interpretation, and Leonard and Deevy also give examples of how this same assumption can lead to well documented word order errors in languages such as German and Swedish. As can be seen, the protracted period of children with SLI making errors such Him hold the worm and She eating my candy has enabled investigators to propose specific hypotheses about the nature of inappropriate input extraction.…”

Targeting Complex Sentences in Older School Children With Specific Language Impairment: Results From an Early-Phase Treatment Study

“…Friedmann & Novogrodsky, 2004;Montgomery & Evans, 2009;van der Lely, Jones, & Marshall, 2011). An investigation by Purdy and colleagues tested the influence of sentence complexity on listening comprehension in a direct way (Purdy et al, 2014). School-age children with and without SLI were asked to make grammatical judgments of verb agreement and finiteness errors in one-clause (simple) sentences (e.g., every night they talks on the phone) versus two-clause (complex) object complement sentences (he makes the quiet boy talks a little louder).…”

“…A number of grammatical features contribute to sentence complexity; these include embedding/ subordination, word order variations, and long-distance dependencies as found in wh-object questions or object relative clauses (Thompson & Shapiro, 2007). In comparison with age peers, there is considerable evidence that school-age children and adolescents with SLI find complex sentences more difficult to comprehend and produce (Fey, Catts, Proctor-Williams, Tomblin, & Zhang, 2004;Gillam & Johnston, 1992;Marinellie, 2004;Montgomery & Evans, 2009;Nippold, Mansfield, Billow, & Tomblin, 2008Purdy, Leonard, Weber-Fox, & Kaganovich, 2014;Scott & Windsor, 2000). In this article, we are concerned with the first type of complexity: sentences with two clauses-one main clause and one subordinate clause.…”