The acquisition of complex predicates in japanese specifically language-impaired and normally developing children

Japanese exhibits two different types of morphological processes. Some morphologically complex predicates are generated within the domain of the lexicon, whereas others are generated outside the domain of the lexicon. An elicited production task involving both types of complex predicates was administered to six Japanese children with specific language impairment (JSLI) and six children with normal language development (JNLD). The JSLI children experienced significant difficulty forming the lexicon-external complex predicates but much less difficulty with the lexicon-internal complex predicates while the performance of the JNLD children exhibited no such asymmetry. These preliminary results suggest that the deficit of SLI affects the ability to construct implicit procedural rules for morphology that are generated outside the lexicon while their lexical operations for morphology that are generated within the domain of the lexicon remain relatively unimpaired.     

Comprehension of reversible relative clauses in specifically language impaired and normally developing Greek children

This paper aims to investigate the syntactic comprehension of reversible relative clauses in a group of eight Greek children with specific language impairment (SLI) and two control groups of normally developing children matched on chronological and language age, respectively. An experiment using an acting out procedure was undertaken. Group analysis revealed that SLI children's performance is qualitatively different than that of both control groups. Interpreting the data, processes involved in syntactic comprehension are taken into consideration. It is claimed that processing demands impede SLI children's performance due to a deficit in their competence grammar.     

LF-interpretability and language development: a study of verbal and nominal features in Greek normally developing and SLI children

This paper includes (i) a comparison of the developmental pattern of certain morphosyntactic features in normally developing (ND) Greek children with similar data from a group of children with specific language impairment and (ii) a new analysis of the differences found. The analysis is based on a minimalist notion of LF interpretability. Depending on the feature-specification of lexical items (i.e., [+/- interpretable] at LF), a different route of development follows. In addition, phonological salience of both interpretable and noninterpretable features is argued to play an important role in an account of crosslinguistic differences in both normal and exceptional development.     

Controversies about CP: a comparison of language acquisition and language impairments in Broca's aphasia

In both language acquisition research and the study of language impairments in Broca's aphasia there is an ongoing debate whether or not phrase-structure representations contain the Complementizer Phrase (CP) layer. To shed some light on this debate, I will provide data on German child language and on German agrammatic Broca's aphasia. Analyses of subordinate clauses, wh-questions, and verb placement indicate that early child grammars do not generate the CP layer yet, whereas the ability to project the CP layer is retained in agrammatism.     

Verb movement in acquisition and aphasia: same problem, different solutions-evidence from Dutch

This paper focuses on verb movement in agrammatism and child language. We present data from a sentence completion experiment with 6 Dutch agrammatic aphasics and 21 Dutch-speaking children. The experiment compares completion of matrix clauses (which require verb movement) and embedded clauses (where such movement is not required) in these two populations. The results reveal a clear asymmetry: Both agrammatics and children do very well with embedded clauses but fail in 50% with the matrix clauses. It is concluded that the problem which both populations are facing is one of verb movement rather than verb inflection. An error analysis of the responses reveals that, although both agrammatics and children try to avoid movement, they apply different strategies to achieve this goal.     

Early and late mismatch negativity elicited by words and speech-like stimuli in children

In auditory perception the brain's attentional and preattentional mechanisms select certain stimuli for preferential processing and filter out irrelevant input. This study investigated nonattentive auditory processing in children. Event-related potentials (ERPs) provide a means to study neural correlates related to language and speech-sound processing. Mismatch negativity (MMN) is an ERP wave that indicates attention-independent perceptual change detection. In this study cortical ERPs were elicited by complex tones, naturally spoken words, and pseudowords, with each stimulus type containing equal acoustical elements. Tones elicited a bifurcated mismatch negativity (MMN), with early MMN (peaking at 150-200 ms) being more dominant. On the other hand, words elicited a strong late MMN, peaking at about 400-450 ms after stimulus onset. The MMN wave form was significantly weaker for pseudowords than for words. The late MMN wave, especially for word differences, was found to reflect summating MMN generators and memory trace formation on gestalt bases. Results suggest that the auditory processing, even nonattended, is highly associated with the cognitive meaning of the stimuli.     

Hemispheric asymmetry in lexical decisions: the effects of grammatical class and imageability

It has been suggested that neural systems for lexical processing of nouns and verbs are anatomically distinct. The aim of the present study was to investigate if brain asymmetry for the processing of these two grammatical classes is also different. Neurologically intact adults performed a lateralized lexical decision task with grammatically unambiguous words of high, medium, and low degrees of imagery. For error scores a right visual field (RVF) advantage and an overall effect of imageability were obtained. For latency scores grammatical class and imageability modified visual field differences: in the noun class a RVF advantage was obtained only for low imagery nouns, while for the verbs the RVF advantage was present for both medium and low imagery verbs. These results suggest that the participation of right hemisphere neural systems in the processing of verbs is more limited than in the processing of nouns.     

The effects of presentation and content on syllogistic reasoning by children with and without specific language impairment

This study examines performance at a syllogistic reasoning task for a group of children (age 10 years) with specific language impairment (SLI) along with age- and language-matched controls. The syllogisms were presented either verbally or verbally/pictorially, and contained two types of item: imaginary versus real, both intended not to evoke strong beliefs. Children with SLI performed worse than age-matched controls, and equivalently to language-matched controls. Patterns of performance indicate this may be due to cognitive ability deficits rather than specific language deficits. For all groups, pictorial presentation interfered with reasoning processes. It is suggested that, for syllogisms, this pictorial information contextualises the interpretation of the task, and that in turn either raises working memory load or evokes belief bias. Additionally, these results suggest that caution should be exhibited before using visual aids to help children with SLI in the classroom.     

The role of working memory and updating in Coloured Raven Matrices performance in typically developing children

A large body of evidence indicates that working memory correlates with performance on fluid intelligence tasks such as Raven's tests. However, light still needs to be shed on which particular aspects of working memory might be most critically related to fluid intelligence, and whether working memory updating—which appears crucial to intellectual functioning—has a prominent role. To address these issues more closely, our study presented participants (aged 5–11 years) with the Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices, an updating task, and a battery of working memory tasks. Our findings confirm that working memory indeed plays an important part in explaining fluid intelligence, in particular that updating information in working memory is critical to fluid intelligence in the context of development.     

Lexicality, morphological structure, and semantic transparency in the processing of German ver-verbs: The complementarity of on-line and off-line evidence

Two types of experiments investigate the visual on-line and off-line processing of German ver-verbs (e.g., verbittern ‘to embitter'). In Experiments 1 and 2 (morphological priming), latency patterns revealed the existence of facilitation effects for the morphological conditions (BITTER-VERBITTERN and BITTERN-VERBITTERN) as compared to the neutral conditions (SAUBER-VERBITTERN and SÄUBERN-VERBITTERN). In Experiments 3 and 4 (rating tasks) participants had to judge whether the target (VERBITTERN) “comes from,” “contains a form of,” or “contains the meaning of” the root (BITTER) or the root+en substring (BITTERN). Taken together, these studies revealed the combined influence of the three factors of lexicality (real word status), morphological structure, and semantic transparency.     

The processing of rhythmic structures in music and prosody by children with developmental dyslexia and developmental language disorder

Rhythm perception seems to be crucial to language development. Many studies have shown that children with developmental dyslexia and developmental language disorder have difficulties in processing rhythmic structures. In this study, we investigated the relationships between prosody and musical processing in Italian children with typical and atypical development. The tasks aimed to reproduce linguistic prosodic structures through musical sequences, offering a direct comparison between the two domains without violating the specificities of each one. About 16 Typically Developing children, 16 children with a diagnosis of Developmental Dyslexia, and 16 with a diagnosis of developmental language disorder (age 10–13 years) participated in the experimental study. Three tasks were administered: an association task between a sentence and its humming version, a stress discrimination task (between couples of sounds reproducing the intonation of Italian trisyllabic words), and an association task between trisyllabic nonwords with different stress position and three‐notes musical sequences with different musical stress. Children with developmental language disorder perform significantly lower than Typically Developing children on the humming test. By contrast, children with developmental dyslexia are significantly slower than TD in associating nonwords with musical sequences. Accuracy and speed in the experimental tests correlate with metaphonological, language, and word reading scores. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed within a multidimensional model of neurodevelopmental disorders including prosodic and rhythmic skills at word and sentence level.     

The role of representational status and item complexity in parent–child conversations about pictures and objects

Mother–child conversations about pictures systematically differ from mother–child conversations about objects: Pictures are more likely than objects to elicit talk about kinds, whereas objects are more likely than pictures to elicit talk about individuals. The purpose of the current study is to examine whether this difference between pictures and objects is explained by differences in item complexity. Mothers and their 4-year-old children were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: simple or complex. In each condition, participants viewed 12 toy objects and 12 pictures, matched for content. The items were either highly detailed (complex condition) or very plain (simple condition). Replicating previous research, mothers and children provided relatively more focus on kinds when talking about pictures, and relatively more focus on individuals when talking about objects. The current results go further, however, to demonstrate that this effect is independent of the items’ complexity. We therefore propose that the picture–object difference is not due to low-level differences in amount of perceptual detail provided, but rather is due to the greater ease with which pictures serve as representations [DeLoache, J. S. (1991). Symbolic functioning in very young children: Understanding of pictures and models. Child Development, 62, 736–752]. These data indicate the ways in which a fundamental conceptual distinction between kinds and individuals arises in different linguistic expressions and in different contexts.