The impact of attentional allocation capacities on nonword repetition in children with specific language impairment

Abstract

This study aimed at directly assessing the hypothesis that attentional allocation capacity influences poor nonword repetition (NWR) performances in children with specific language impairment (SLI), using an attention demanding visual search task given concurrently with the NWR task. Twenty-one children with SLI, 21 typically developing children matched on age and 21 typically developing children matched on nonword span performed an immediate serial recall task of nonwords. The nonword lists were presented either alone or concurrently with the visual search task. Overall, results revealed a resource-sharing trade-off between the two tasks. Children with SLI were affected to the same extent as their span-matched controls by the necessity to allocate their attentional resources between the two tasks. Interestingly, nonword processing strategies seemed to differ among groups: age-matched controls allocated a larger part of their attentional resources to the encoding stage, whereas nonword recall was more attention demanding in children with SLI and younger controls.

Rational inattention: A new theory of neurodivergent information seeking

“…Similar effects are reported by Leclercq et al (2015), who provide perhaps some of the best examples of adaptive engagement preferences in neurodivergent children to date. Leclercq et al (2015) used what is known as a cross-modal dual-task paradigm, in which a linguistic and a non-linguistic task are administered concurrently.…”

“…Similar effects are reported by Leclercq et al (2015), who provide perhaps some of the best examples of adaptive engagement preferences in neurodivergent children to date. Leclercq et al (2015) used what is known as a cross-modal dual-task paradigm, in which a linguistic and a non-linguistic task are administered concurrently. In this study, children with and without DLD aged 9-11 years were tested in a non-word span task and a non-verbal visual search task that required participants to identify the complete circle in an array of broken circles.…”

“…Only through the adaptive discounting of the subjectively imprecise speech stimuli and the resulting attentional boost for the simultaneously presented shape stimuli, which are expected to reliably support information gain and overall task performance, may we explain this performance advantage. Importantly, Leclercq et al (2015) report that language-matched control children, too, show a performance advantage relative to agematched control children in the visual search task. This speaks to the idea that rational inattention is unconstrained by the neurotypical and neurodivergent distinction.…”

“…Importantly, the non-word encoding phase happened at the same time as the visual search task, with a non-word recall test conducted later after the visual search task was complete. A striking feature of Leclercq et al's (2015) data was that children with DLD outperformed same-age peers without DLD in the visual search task (note that Kaldy et al, 2011 report a similar advantage in children with autism). Despite the small sample size of Leclercq et al's (2015) study, which makes replication essential, this performance advantage is intriguing because there is little empirical basis for assuming that children with DLD are in general better at visual search than their peers.…”

“…Indeed, a much larger study of 242 children with DLD reported slightly below-population-mean performance in tasks measuring non-verbal cognition (Conti-Ramsden et al, 2012). Furthermore, as Leclercq et al (2015) note, the apparent visual search performance advantage is not easily reconciled with the attentional capacity bottleneck hypothesis of DLD (e.g. Anobile et al, 2013;Askenazi & Henik, 2010;Ebert & Kohnert, 2011;Rabiner & Coie, 2000).…”