Picture naming in typically developing and language-impaired children: the role of sustained attention

Abstract

Background: Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have problems not only with language performance but also with sustained attention, which is the ability to maintain alertness over an extended period of time. Although there is consensus that this ability is impaired with respect to processing stimuli in the auditory perceptual modality, conflicting evidence exists concerning the visual modality. Aims: To address the outstanding issue whether the impairment in sustained attention is limited to the auditory domain, or if it is domain-general. Furthermore, to test whether children's sustained attention ability relates to their word-production skills. Methods & Procedures:Groups of 7-9 year olds with SLI (N = 28) and typically developing (TD) children (N = 22) performed a picture-naming task and two sustained attention tasks, namely auditory and visual continuous performance tasks (CPTs). Outcomes & Results:Children with SLI performed worse than TD children on picture naming and on both the auditory and visual CPTs. Moreover, performance on both the CPTs correlated with picture-naming latencies across developmental groups. Conclusions & Implications:These results provide evidence for a deficit in both auditory and visual sustained attention in children with SLI. Moreover, the study indicates there is a relationship between domain-general sustained attention and picture-naming performance in both TD and language-impaired children. Future studies should establish whether this relationship is causal. If attention influences language, training of sustained attention may improve language production in children from both developmental groups.

Language Proficiency and Sustained Attention in Monolingual and Bilingual Children with and without Language Impairment

“…This effect was stable, emerging on vocabulary and morphology, at wave 2 and 3, in the monolingual and bilingual group. These findings are in line with previous research that indicated positive associations between language and sustained attention in children with LI (Montgomery, 2008; Montgomery et al, 2009; Duinmeijer et al, 2012; Ebert et al, 2012, 2014; Blom and Boerma, 2016; Jongman et al, 2016). Although we hypothesized that sustained attention effects would be more pronounced on vocabulary than morphology, as a result of their susceptibility to input effects (Chondrogianni and Marinis, 2011), reliable differences between the two language domains were not found.…”

“…In addition, work on the relation between sustained attention and language in bilingual children with LI is sparse, only including the intervention studies of Ebert et al (2012, 2014) with Spanish-English bilingual participants with LI. Like the work with monolingual samples (Montgomery, 2008; Montgomery et al, 2009; Duinmeijer et al, 2012; Blom and Boerma, 2016; Jongman et al, 2016), these studies suggest that sustained attention may also contribute to the language difficulties of children with LI growing up in bilingual learning settings. The current research will further explore this.…”

“…Work by Montgomery showed that auditory sustained attention accounted for more than 45% of the variance in the online sentence processing of children with LI (Montgomery, 2008), and correlated highly with simple and complex sentence comprehension (Montgomery et al, 2009). Moreover, both auditory and visual sustained attention were positively correlated with picture-naming performance of children with LI and TD (Jongman et al, 2016), and auditory sustained attention was furthermore found to be associated with story generation skills (Duinmeijer et al, 2012). Blom and Boerma (2016) also investigated narrative abilities and showed that the effect of LI on story generation was mediated by sustained attention, measured with an integrated auditory and visual continuous performance task (CPT).…”

“…Previous work with children with LI showed that limitations in sustained attention are predictive of narrative skills (Blom and Boerma, 2016), and associated with sentence processing (Montgomery, 2008) and picture-naming (Jongman et al, 2016). We anticipated that sustained attention, and in particular auditory sustained attention, would also play a role in explaining the effect of LI on two core language areas, i.e., vocabulary and morphology, which are known to be influenced by a limited amount of input (e.g., Scheele et al, 2010; Blom et al, 2012) and thus likewise by the functional equivalent: incomplete processing of input.…”

Sustained Attention of Children with and without Specific Language Impairment and the Relations with Quick Incidental Learning Using Eye-Tracker

“…SLI = specific language impairment; TD = typically developing children. (Finneran et al, 2009;Jongman et al, 2017) 청각적인 지속주의력에서만 결함이 나타난다는 주장에 힘을 실어준다 (Dodwell & Bavin, 2008;Noterdaeme et al, 2001;Spaulding et al, 2008 ORCID 윤소망(제1저자, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0891-3253); 임동선(교신저자, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8254-9504)…”