The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the amount of language models (i.e., dose frequency) that Spanish-English bilingual children with and without specific language impairment (SLI) require in order to consistently produce challenging target grammatical forms for 6 morphemes, 3 in English and 3 in Spanish, via a structural priming task. Participants included two 2nd grade children with SLI, five typically developing kindergarten children, and three typically developing 2nd grade peers. Participants were administered 10 control and 10 experimental cloze phrase computer tasks for each morpheme. In the control condition participants finished cloze phrase sentences which targeted the target morpheme while in the experimental task participants heard a model of the target morpheme and were subsequently required to finish the cloze phrase. Results replicated results of structural priming for all groups in each language. Results also indicated that Spanish was more robust in producing morphological priming effects in comparison to English morphological forms possibly due to linguistic differences. Clinical and research implications are discussed. / text

The current study investigated the effectiveness of a Literacy Based Intervention (LBI) on English Language Learners (ELLs) with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Specifically this report focuses on the effects of LBI on vocabulary skills (e.g. naming and defining). Nineteen ELLs (ages 74 to 104 months) participated in the intervention study, which lasted eight weeks and consisted of 50-minute sessions, three times a week. The LBI focused on rich vocabulary instruction of words that were from storybook readings. Vocabulary naming and definition probes were used to assess vocabulary progress. Results revealed that vocabulary increases did not occur until the second half of the intervention (e.g. week six or seven). LBI shows promise to be successful for increasing vocabulary skills in ELLs with SLI. / text

Rationale. Definition of complex behavioral disorders is generally phenomenological in nature and guided by pragmatic, rather than genetic, concerns. Consequently, important aspect of genetic analysis is the search for novel phenotypic definitions from the familial/genetic perspective. SLI study 1. SLI denotes an inability to acquire normal language in the absence of peripheral hearing impairment, neurological disorder, and mental retardation. Sibling resemblance for several theoretically derived specific components of the SLI phenotype was examined in families of SLI children. In 38 sib-pairs from 10 French-speaking pedigrees, Verb Tense Morphology sub-tests (Real and Non-real Words) showed nonparametric correlations of 0.39 and 0.35, respectively (p < 0.05, 2-tailed). In a densely affected Anglophone pedigree, 41 sib-pair showed familial resemblance with respect to Derivational Morphology (r = 0.52, p < 0.01). SLI study 2. Family history study in 27 families examined the relationship between attention deficit/hyperactivity in SLI children and familial risk of speech/language disorders. Higher odds of speech/language disorders were observed in first-degree relatives of 13 SLI children who also had a medical record of attention deficit/hyperactivity (15/27 vs. 4/46, p = 0.001). Alcoholism study 1. Latent class analysis (LCA) including gender and 15 antisocial behaviors (>15yr) was performed in 236 broadly ascertained alcohol-dependent subjects (121 males, 115 females). Evidence for 3 qualitative behavioral classes was obtained: Socially Adjusted Adults, SAA; Antisocial Non-Aggressive Adults, ANAA; and Antisocial Aggressive Adults, AAA. In both, genders, the AAA class had the earliest age of onset for alcohol dependence (p = 0.001), more alcoholic first-degree relatives and more of other psychopathology. In females, the ANAA class was intermediate. In the ANAA males, socially adjusted childhood behavior differentiated the late onset from the intermediate ons

On évoque souvent des difficultés à interagir socialement chez les enfants ayant une dysphasie. Ces difficultés sont généralement attribuées aux troubles du langage, mais elles pourraient aussi provenir d’un problème à décoder les émotions des autres. Le but de la présente recherche est d’explorer cette voie chez les enfants dysphasiques de 9 à 12 ans. Différents stimuli émotionnels leur ont été présentés sous forme de vidéos ainsi qu’à des enfants d’un groupe contrôle selon cinq conditions : parole non filtrée, parole filtrée, visage dynamique, visage dynamique accompagné de la parole non filtrée, et visage dynamique avec parole filtrée. Les enfants dysphasiques et les enfants du groupe contrôle ne se comportent pas différemment de manière significative en fonction des émotions présentées et des conditions testées. Par contre, un sous-groupe d’enfants ayant une dysphasie mixte commet significativement plus d’erreurs pour l’ensemble de la tâche que le sous-groupe d’enfants sans dysphasie de même âge chronologique. En fait une part seulement des enfants dysphasiques mixtes ont des scores plus faibles. Ces mêmes enfants présentent un QI non verbal faible tandis que leur compréhension du langage est équivalente à celle de leur sous-groupe (enfants dysphasiques mixtes). Malgré ces différences significatives, les scores des enfants dysphasiques mixtes restent relativement élevés et les difficultés observées sont subtiles. Sur le plan clinique, les praticiens (orthophonistes, psychologues, éducateur) devront systématiser l’évaluation des habiletés de décodage des émotions chez l’enfant dysphasique dont les difficultés ne sont pas forcément évidentes dans la vie quotidienne. La recherche devra développer un outil de dépistage sensible aux troubles de décodage émotionnel et des stratégies thérapeutiques adaptées. / Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) can have social problems that are often explained by their language disorders. However, the ability to identify other people’s emotions could be caused by their emotion processing difficulties. We explore this question in children with SLI aged 9 to 12 years old. Children with and without SLI were tested on five emotional stimuli presented in dynamic video and audio format: unfiltered speech, filtered speech, facial expressions, facial expressions with unfiltered speech, and facial expressions with filtered speech. The children with impaired language do not differ significantly from the unimpaired children across all modalities and emotions. However, a subgroup of SLI children with mixed (expressive-receptive) delay commits more errors on the task than their age-matched peers. In fact only a subgroup of these children shows lower scores. These same children also show low IQ scores but language comprehension as good as their subgroup. Despite these significant differences the mixed SLI group’s scores are quite high, showing that deficits are subtle. Clinical implications of this study militate for a systematization of the evaluation by health practitioners of these abilities in children with SLI who might not show obvious signs of deficits in this domain in their everyday activities. Research should pursue the development of a sensitive evaluation tool to identify emotional decoding difficulties and should evaluate therapeutic strategies adapted to this population.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-163). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed April 3, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 118-131).

A compreensão da relação entre linguagem oral e escrita tem se concentrado nos estudos sobre o processamento fonológico (PF). Limitações neste processamento são apontadas como responsáveis pelas dificuldades fonológicas, lexicais, de compreensão e de escrita das crianças com Distúrbio Especifico de Linguagem (DEL). Os objetivos desta dissertação foram: verificar a ocorrência de alteração nas habilidades da linguagem escrita e nas habilidades do PF em crianças com DEL; comparar o desempenho entre crianças com DEL e com Desenvolvimento Típico de Linguagem (DTL) quanto as habilidades do PF e verificar se ha associação entre as habilidades do PF e as de linguagem escrita em crianças com DEL, e ainda, se ha uma habilidade do PF que se destaca nesta associação. Participaram deste estudo 40 sujeitos: 20 com diagnostico de DEL (GE) e 20 com DTL (GC) com idades entre 7 e 10 anos de ambos os sexos. Para avaliação das habilidades do PF foram aplicados os seguintes procedimentos: prova de repetição de não palavras para avaliação da Memória de Trabalho Fonológica (MTF), Teste de Nomeação Automatizada Rápida (RAN) para avaliação do Acesso Lexical (AL) e Perfil de Habilidades Fonológicas para avaliação da Consciência Fonológica (CF). Para avaliação da linguagem escrita os seguintes sub-testes do Teste de Analise de Leitura e Escrita (TALE) foram utilizados: leitura e compreensão de texto, ditado e escrita espontânea. Para analise estatística foi utilizado o teste Qui Quadrado, sendo adotado nível de significância estatística 0,05. A ocorrência de alterações na linguagem escrita na grande maioria dos sujeitos com DEL na amostra estudada foi constatada. As crianças deste grupo apresentaram desempenhos significantemente piores nas provas do PF quando comparadas as do GC. A existência de associação entre desempenho em provas de leitura e escrita e o desempenho em provas do PF foi confirmada. As analises estatísticas evidenciaram que a MTF foi aquela que apresentou maior nível de significância com as provas de leitura e de escrita. Pode-se concluir que a grande maioria das crianças com DEL apresentam alteração nas habilidades de linguagem escrita e do PF; elas apresentaram desempenho significantemente pior em relação aquelas com DTL nas habilidades do PF; ha associação entre desempenho em provas de leitura e escrita e provas do PF, sendo que as dificuldades nas habilidades do PF podem justificar as dificuldades de linguagem escrita; a MTF foi aquela que apresentou maior associação, o que reforça a hipótese de que defasagem na MTF e um forte marcador psicolingüístico nos quadros de DEL. / The understanding of the relationship between oral language and written language hás focused on studies on the phonological processing (PP). Limitations in this area have been identified as one of those responsible, in addition for lexical difficulties and comprehension difficulties, for the phonological disorders of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and the consequent alteration in the written language. This study aimed: verifying the occurrence of alterations in the written language skills and abilities of the PP in children with SLI; compare the performance between children with SLI and typical language development (TLD) and the abilities of the PP; check the association between the PP and the skills of written language in children with SLI, and, if there is one skill of the PP that stands out in these association. Participated of these study 40 subjects: 20 with SLI (EG) and 20 with TDL (CG), with ages between 7 and 10 years old, of the both sexes. For evaluation of the PP the following procedures had been used: non words repetition proof of the Prova de Memoria de Trabalho Fonologica, Teste de Nomeacao Automatizada e Rapida (RAN), for evaluation the lexical acces, and the Perfil de Habilidades Fonologicas, for evaluate the phonological awareness. For evaluation of written language the following subtests of the Teste de Analise de Leitura e Escrita TALE had been used: reading and understanding of text, dictated and spontaneous writing. Statistical analysis was performed using the Qui Quadrado test, and adopted level of statistical significance 0.05. The occurrence of alteration in the written language in most of the subjects with SLI in the sample was found. Children in this group had significantly worse performance in tests of PP when compared to the CG. The existence of the association between performance in tests of reading and writing and performance in tests of PP was confirmed. Statistical analysis showed that the phonological working memory (PWM) was one that showed higher level of significance with the proof reading and writing. It was observed that the majority of children with SLI have alterations in the skills of written language and the PP, they performed significantly worse for those with skills in TDL of PF; there is association between performance in tests of the PP and evidence reading and writing, and that difficulties in the abilities of the PP may explain the difficulties of written language. The PWM was what stood out most in this association, which reinforces the hypothesis, that deficit the PWM is a strong psycholinguistics marker of SLI.

Procedural learning abilities have been shown to be deficient in children who meet criteria for Developmental Dyslexia (DD) and those who meet criteria for Specific Language Impairment (SLI; Lum et al., 2010; Menghini et al., 2006). Further, grammatical understanding has been linked to implicit sequence learning abilities across SLI and typically developing children (Lum, 2012). The present study examined implicit sequence learning, measured by the Serial Reaction Time Task (SRTT), in children who met criteria for DD with or without SLI. Implicit sequence learning was modeled using multi-level growth models of initial reaction time and learning slope across the repeated sequences of the SRTT. We further examined the predictive contributions of grammatical understanding, vocabulary abilities, phonological awareness, and diagnostic groups on implicit learning performance on the SRTT. Results showed language abilities and diagnostic group did not relate strongly to rates of implicit learning.

L’objectif de cette thèse est de déterminer si le déficit auditif des enfants dysphasiques est spécifique au domaine verbal et d’étudier les liens qu’entretiennent les habiletés verbales et musicales chez ces enfants. Nous avons testé 18 dysphasiques et des enfants au développement du langage typique (DLT) âgés de 7 à 12 ans. Dans la première étude, nous avons étudié leurs capacités de détection des syllabes dans des phrases chantées et parlées. Nos résultats ont confirmé les déficits de détection des syllabes chez les dysphasiques. Nous n’avons toutefois pas observé d’effet facilitateur du chant sur la détection des syllabes. Dans une seconde étude, nous avons exploré leur perception musicale à l’aide de la MBEMA (Peretz et al., 2013). Une part importante de ces enfants a montré des troubles de perception mélodique et rythmique. Une corrélation positive a été retrouvée entre les scores aux tests de perception rythmique et de conscience phonologique, étayant les liens entre le traitement temporel et la perception verbale chez les dysphasiques. Dans la troisième étude, nous avons exploré leurs capacités de chant avec une épreuve de reproduction de notes et de mélodies. Les dysphasiques montraient des troubles importants dans ces deux conditions. Des troubles de production et de perception musicale ont été mis en évidence chez la plupart des dysphasiques et les capacités de conscience phonologique semblaient liées au traitement temporel en musique. Ces résultats en faveur d’un déficit auditif plus global chez la plupart des dysphasiques suggèrent l’importance d’évaluer les capacités auditives non verbales dans la prise en charge diagnostique et thérapeutique de ces enfants. / The aim of this thesis is to determine whether the auditory deficit of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is specific to verbal stimuli, and to examine the relation between language and musical abilities in these children. We tested 18 children with SLI and groups of children with Typical Language Development (TLD) aged from 7 to 12 years. In the first study, we examined syllable detection in sung and spoken sentences. Results confirmed the detection syllable deficit in children with SLI. However, we did not observe a facilitation effect of sung over spoken stimuli. In the second study, we explored musical perception abilities in the same children with the MBEMA (Peretz et al. 2013). Our results showed that a large proportion of the children with SLI present deficits in melodic and rhythmic perception. A positive correlation was found between scores in Rhythm and phonological awareness tasks, documenting a link between language and temporal processing in children with SLI. In the third study, we assessed singing abilities in children with SLI: we created a singing reproduction task and tested the pitch matching condition and the melodic reproduction condition. The SLI showed deficits for both conditions. These results suggested deficits in music perception and production in children with SLI for most of them and that development of phonological awareness abilities seems related to the auditory temporal processing in music. The findings seem to support the existence a more general auditory dysfunction in a majority of children with SLI emphasizing the relevance of systematically assessing nonverbal abilities for the diagnostic and rehabilitation of SLI.

No description available.