Family history interview of a broad phenotype in specific language impairment and matched controls.

The aim was to study a broader phenotype of language-related diagnoses and problems in three generations of relatives of children with specific language impairment (SLI). Our study is based on a family history interview of the parents of 59 children with SLI and of 100 matched control children, exploring the prevalence of problems related to language, reading, attention, school achievement and social communication as well as diagnoses such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, Asperger syndrome, dyslexia, mental retardation, cleft palate and stuttering. The results show a spectrum of language-related problems in families of SLI children. In all three generations of SLI relatives, we found significantly higher prevalence rates of language, literacy and social communication problems. The risk of one or both parents having language-related diagnoses or problems was approximately six times higher for the children with SLI (85%) than for the control children (13%) (odds ratio = 37.2). We did not find a significantly higher prevalence of the diagnoses ADHD, autism or Asperger syndrome in the relatives of the children with SLI. However, significantly more parents of the children with SLI had problems with attention/hyperactivity when compared with the parents of controls. Our findings suggest common underlying mechanisms for problems with language, literacy and social communication, and possibly also for attention/hyperactivity symptoms.

Working memory and novel word learning in children with hearing impairment and children with specific language impairment.

BACKGROUND: Working memory is considered to influence a range of linguistic skills, i.e. vocabulary acquisition, sentence comprehension and reading. Several studies have pointed to limitations of working memory in children with specific language impairment. Few studies, however, have explored the role of working memory for language deficits in children with hearing impairment. AIMS: The first aim was to compare children with mild-to-moderate bilateral sensorineural hearing impairment, children with a preschool diagnosis of specific language impairment and children with normal language development, aged 9-12 years, for language and working memory. The special focus was on the role of working memory in learning new words for primary school age children. METHODS & PROCEDURES: The assessment of working memory included tests of phonological short-term memory and complex working memory. Novel word learning was assessed according to the methods of. In addition, a range of language tests was used to assess language comprehension, output phonology and reading. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Children with hearing impairment performed significantly better than children with a preschool diagnosis of specific language impairment on tasks assessing novel word learning, complex working memory, sentence comprehension and reading accuracy. No significant correlation was found between phonological short-term memory and novel word learning in any group. The best predictor of novel word learning in children with specific language impairment and in children with hearing impairment was complex working memory. Furthermore, there was a close relationship between complex working memory and language in children with a preschool diagnosis of specific language impairment but not in children with hearing impairment. CONCLUSIONS: Complex working memory seems to play a significant role in vocabulary acquisition in primary school age children. The interpretation is that the results support theories suggesting a weakened influence of phonological short-term memory on novel word learning in school age children.

Giving the crucial information: performance on a referential communication task in Swedish children with language impairment.

The study focused on the performance of a group of Swedish children with language impairment (LI) on a referential communication task as a step in the investigation of their pragmatic skills. The task entailed choosing a single card from a selection of 16 depicting a face and describing it well enough for the opponent in order for him/her to pick the correct one from his/her identical array of cards laid out behind a barrier. To give an adequate description, the player had to understand that four dimensions had to be described in order for the other person to choose the correct card. The participating children had been part of a previous study on narrative skills in children with LI. A few of them with rather poor language comprehension had shown utterances during story generation judged to be irrelevant to both the listener and the task. In the present study, language comprehension did not significantly correlate to performance on the referential communication task. The participants performed at the level of their peers without LI and there was no significant difference between the amount of relevant or irrelevant information when the children with LI interacted with an adult or with a friend. The results are discussed in relation to recent research.

A preliminary version of a computerized naming test for preschool children with language impairment.

The most prevailing hypothesis regarding mechanisms behind specific language impairment today is the hypothesis of general limitations of processing capacity. Such an hypothesis can hardly be tested by available language assessment tools, especially not by instruments in use for clinical assessment of the lexical-semantic domain in children. Reduced naming speed is by some researchers considered as a core deficit in dyslexia and a better predictor of some aspects of reading proficiency than phonological processing. The overall purpose of the present study was therefore to develop a processing dependent tool, that could capture dynamic aspects of naming; response latencies, hesitation phenomena and contextual influence. We also present data from 30 children (4-6 years old) with normal language development. We believe that, with some modifications, the naming test has a potential of becoming a processing dependent measure of naming and a necessary complement to the assessment of vocabulary skills in children with language impairment.

Conversation versus narration in pre-school children with language impairment.

The study focuses on two elicitation methods for language sampling in children with language impairment: conversation and narration. It has been noted in other studies on different clinical groups that language elicited in different speaking contexts varies in aspects such as MLU, fluency and syntactic complexity. The purpose of this study was to compare genre effects on different aspects of language production in a group of pre-school children with language impairment. The results show that there are differences in language production during conversation compared with narration. Intelligibility and fluency were found to be higher in conversation than in narration, whereas MLU in words was higher in narration. The narrative task elicited more phrasal expansions and grammatical morphemes per utterance than the conversation. However, the children used more complex verb forms in conversation than in narration. The results are discussed in relation to recent research.

Non-word repetition in children with language impairment--pitfalls and possibilities.

Specific language impairment has, although not without controversy, been considered as a consequence of a phonological memory deficit. Non-word repetition has been proposed as a reliable index of phonological memory and also as predictive of lexical and grammatical development in normally developing and language-impaired children. The main aim was to study the relationship between repetition of words and non-words and expressive language skills (phonology and grammar) in 27 5-year-old children with language impairment. The authors also wanted to explore the influence of lexical stress on repetition skills. The results showed that words were significantly easier to repeat than non-words and that non-word repetition skills were significantly correlated to phonological and grammatical development. The most important predictor of non-word repetition skills was output phonology. The conclusion is that non-word repetition is not a single, reliable index of phonological memory in preschool children with language impairment. Also, the influence of prosodic variables on segmental aspects of speech production should not be overlooked in non-word construction, since it was found that unstressed syllables were omitted six times more often in prestressed than in post-stressed positions of the words and non-words.

Context and comprehension: a neurolinguistic and interactional approach to the understanding of semantic-pragmatic disorder.

In the present study we provide thorough descriptions of two children with a semantic-pragmatic disorder, a subgroup within the group of specific and severe developmental language disorders, from a neurolinguistic and interactional perspective. We argue that the pragmatic problems, at least in these two girls, are most probably secondary to their semantic/conceptual deficit. If sufficient contextual cues are provided comprehension is improved and, as a consequence, the pragmatic problems are reduced.