Inhibition Control and Working Memory Capacity in Children With Sli

Abstract

This study examined the "inefficient inhibition hypothesis" (IIH; Bjorklund & Harnishfeger, 1990;Wilson & Kipp, 1998) in three groups: children with specific language impairment (SLI), age-matched and language-matched controls. The IIH suggests that individuals with efficient inhibition skills perform better on working memory tasks because they are able to keep out irrelevant information from working memory. Children with SLI show processing capacity limitations. This study examined whether the working memory limitations are impacted by inhibition problems in this population. Working memory capacity was measured with a listening span task and children's inhibition errors were categorized. These errors reflected either immediate or delayed inhibition problems and they indicated either contextual distractions or perseverations. Children with SLI produced more inhibition errors than their peers in most categories. The results show an association between inhibition control and working memory capacity, but the direction of causality is not clear.

Analogical mapping across modalities in children with specific language impairment (SLI)

“…Children with SLI have difficulties with working memory (Isaki, Spaulding, & Plante, 2008;Marton, Kelmenson, & Pinkhasova, 2007) that is inseparable from analogical mapping (Cho et al, 2007;Morrison et al, 2001). Children had to maintain elements in memory and had to manipulate them in order to complete the third sequence.…”

Articulating Novel Words: Children's Oromotor Skills Predict Nonword Repetition Abilities

“…Children with LIwho tend to fare poorly on tasks of non-word repetition (Graf-Estes et al, 2007) -are also apt to show impairments in a range of other skills (Bishop, 2006). For instance, children with LI show differences from typically developing children in their speed of processing and motor response latency (Miller et al, 2001;Schul et al, 2004), attentional resource capacity/allocation (Marton et al, 2007;Finneran et al, 2009;Montgomery et al, 2008) and auditory or phonemic discrimination and processing (Bishop, 2006;Fox et al, 2011, cf. Bishop et al, 2012, amongst other skills.…”

“…Second, to characterize individual differences in selective auditory attention and integration, we included a non-linguistic analogue of the "cocktailparty" scenario (Leech et al, 2009;Krishnan et al, submitted). The younger child cohort also completed a measure of sustained attention and response inhibition (Finneran et al, 2009;Montgomery et al, 2008;Marton et al, 2007;Marton et al, 2008).…”

Working Memory as a Construct in Cognitive Science: An Illustrious Past and a Highly Promising Future

“…Jarrold & Bayliss, 2007;Kane & Engle, 2003;Kane, Poole, Tuholski, & Engle, 2006). In the current issue, Marton, Kelmenson, and Pinkhasova (2007) follow this research direction, examining the listening span (one of the family of working memory span tasks) and inhibitory control abilities in children with specific language impairment. Thus their work illustrates the relevant of complex span at the same time as it demonstrates how working memory has been applied to an understanding of developmental issues, including the trajectories in atypical development (see Jarrold, 2001).…”

“…This is especially welcome because for some time working memory has been applied to issues of children's cognition (e.g. Halliday & Hitch, 1988;Nicolson, 1981) and Marton et al (2007) show that this continues to be a fruitful line of enquiry to pursue.…”