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

Abstract

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.

Reading as a Predictor of Complex Syntax. The Case of Relative Clauses

“…Third, children with stronger reading skills are more accurate in the comprehension of relative clauses. This finding is consistent with previous studies, such as Bar-Shalom et al (1993), Casalis et al (2013), and Arosio et al (2017). In all the previous studies, it was found that children with reading difficulties have additional problems in parsing object relative clauses in comparison to TD children.…”

“…We predict that performance on relative clauses will be modulated by reading, so the effect of complexity will become gradually larger in correspondence of gradually lower reading skills. Though with a different grouping and analysis, our predictions are based on previous results investigating reading and relative clauses, such as Bar-Shalom et al (1993), Leikin and Bouskila (2004), Casalis et al (2013), and Arosio et al (2017). Our predictions are consistent with two observations:…”

“…Seminal work by Bar-Shalom et al (1993) shows that problems with object relative clauses are observed in children with dyslexia, and are more evident than those observed in typically developing children. The result was replicated cross-linguistically in French (Casalis et al, 2013), Hebrew (Leikin and Bouskila, 2004), and Italian (Arosio et al, 2017). In a study that directly addressed the relation between working memory and comprehension of relative clauses in children with dyslexia, Robertson and Joanisse (2010) showed that children with dyslexia perform worse overall than controls in the comprehension of object relatives.…”

“…The comprehension of relative clauses is a widely studied phenomenon and the asymmetry in the comprehension of subject relatives (e.g., show me the lion that washes the elephant) vs. object relatives (show me the lion that the elephant washes) is one of the most consistent results in the psycholinguistic literature. The result was reported in different languages, such as English (Brown, 1972; Keenan and Comrie, 1979), Italian (Contemori and Belletti, 2014), Hebrew (Friedmann et al, 2009), Chinese (Hu et al, 2016), Cypriot Greek (Theodorou and Grohmann, 2012), Spanish (Betancort et al, 2009), and it was reported in TD children (ibid), children with SLI (Adani et al, 2014), children with Dyslexia (Cantiani et al, 2013; Casalis et al, 2013; Arosio et al, 2017).…”

Complex syntax and working memory in children with specific learning difficulties

“…Additionally, crosslinguistic evidence from older children shows that individuals with dyslexia perform poorly on tough constructions, such as relatives and passives, when compared to age-matched controls (see Leikin & Bouskila, 2004 for Hebrew; Talli et al, 2013 for Greek; Bar-Shalom et al, 1993; Robertson & Joanisse, 2010; C. L. Stein et al, 1984 for English; Arosio et al, 2017 and Cardinaletti & Volpato, 2015 for Italian; and Sevcenco et al, 2014 for Romanian). To our knowledge, no research has investigated the possibility that children with dyscalculia demonstrate difficulties in syntax, although it would be reasonable to assume this is the case if dyslexia and dyscalculia share a common deficit in verbal WM.…”