Deficits in acquiring language structure: The importance of using prosodic cues

The study investigates and supports the hypothesis that (1) specifically language-impaired (SLI) children have deficits in processing and using the rhythmic-prosodic structure of speech; and that (2) these deficits impede the implicit learning of formal regularities of input language. The ability of SLI children to exploit prosodic cues in rule learning was tested in an experimental design using a miniature language. Twenty-four SLI children (mean age 6;5) learned a small set of sentences generated by a content-free rule system. The sample sentences were presented either with or without prosodic cues to the underlying formal regularities. The experimental groups were matched by various cognitive and language indicators. To assess whether they had acquired some regularities of the miniature language, a grammaticality judgement task was presented. In addition, their ability to reproduce rule-structured and rule-violating strings was tested. The experimental as well as some additional correlational data support the basic theoretical assumptions. The children had deficits in processing and exploiting prosodic cues in rule learning, and these deficits covaried with their rhythmic ability as indicated by a rhythm discrimination task.