The sentence repetition task: A powerful diagnostic tool for French children with specific language impairment

Abstract

This study assesses the diagnostic accuracy and construct validity of a sentence repetition task that is commonly used for the identification of French children with specific language impairment (SLI). Thirty-four school-aged children with a confirmed, diagnostically based diagnosis of SLI, and 34 control children matched on age and nonverbal abilities performed the sentence repetition task. Two general scoring measures took into account the verbatim repetition of the sentence and the number of words accurately repeated. Moreover, five other scoring measures were applied to their answers in order to separately take into account their respect of lexical items, functional items, syntax, verb morphology, and the general meaning of the sentence. Results show good to high levels of sensitivity and specificity at the three cut-off points for all scoring measures. A principal component analysis revealed two factors. Scoring measures for the respect of functional words, syntax and verb morphology provided the largest loadings to the first factor, while scoring measures for the respect of lexical words and general semantics provided the largest loadings to the second factor. Sentence repetition appears to be a valuable tool to identify SLI in French children, and the ability to repeat sentences correctly is supported by two factors: a morphosyntactic factor and a lexical factor.

Diagnostic accuracy of repetition tasks for the identification of specific language impairment (SLI) in bilingual children: evidence from Russian and Hebrew

“…To recap, SRep tasks have been shown to be highly reliable for identifying SLI in monolingual children in a variety of languages (e.g., Conti-Ramsden et al 2001, Thordardottir et al 2011, Leclercq et al 2014, Stokes et al 2006. However, less is known about the diagnostic accuracy of SRep tasks in bilingual children.…”

Lexical access in children with hearing loss or specific language impairment, using the cross-modal picture–word interference paradigm

“…Language difficulties cannot be accounted for by hearing loss or brain damage (Bishop, 2006). Researchers have argued that deficits in phonological working memory, particularly non-word repetition (e.g., Bishop, North, & Donlan, 1996; Conti-Ramsden & Hesketh, 2003; de Vasconcellos Hage, Nicolielo, & Guerreiro, 2014), sentence repetition (e.g., Conti-Ramsden, Botting, & Faragher, 2001; Leclercq, Quémart, Magis, & Maillart, 2014), and verb morphology (e.g., Rice, Hoffman, & Wexler, 2009; Verhoeven, Steenge, & van Balkom, 2011) serve as typical clinical markers of SLI. Furthermore, it is assumed that children with SLI have poorly specified semantic and phonological representations of words (Gray, 2005; Gray et al, 2012; Mainela-Arnold, Evans, & Coady, 2010; McGregor et al, 2002) and phonological encoding deficits (Edwards & Lahey, 1998).…”

Evaluer les compétences syntaxiques des enfants et des adolescents dysphasiques à l’oral : Quand et pourquoi utiliser la narration ?

“…Furthermore, SLI and TD adolescent did not differ when producing a narrative of a personal event. In conclusion, the use of sentence repetition task appears to be more sensitive and specific for diagnosing specific language impairment in French (Leclercq, Quémart, Magis & Maillart, 2014) as in english (Conti-Ramsden, Botting & Faragher, 2001). In addition, the narrative of a personal event allows assessing changes with age of the oral syntactic skills in children and adolescents with specific language impairment.…”

“…Leclercq, Quémart, Magis et Maillart (2014) ont montré que le test prédictif au diagnostic de dysphasie est la répétition d'énoncés parce qu'elle est sensible et spécifique : sensible parce qu'elle permet de mettre en avant l'existence d'une dysphasie lorsqu'elle existe et spécifique parce qu'elle permet d'écarter l'existence d'une dysphasie lorsqu'elle n'existe pas, notamment dans les situations de retard de langage. Conti-Ramsden, Botting et Faragher (2001) ont montré qu'en langue anglaise c'est également la répétition d'énoncés qui a la meilleure valeur prédictive au diagnostic de dysphasie.…”