Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Language impairment'
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Norbury, Courtenay Frazier. "Pragmatic language impairment : where autistic spectrum disorder meets specific language impairment." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.404362.
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Collins, Anna. "Metapragmatic awareness in children with typical language development, pragmatic language impairment and specific language impairment." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2013. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/metapragmatic-awareness-in-children-with-typical-language-development-pragmatic-language-impairment-and-specific-language-impairment(67bb77e7-bda0-40d2-ac62-772bbab8bb25).html.
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Metapragmatic awareness (MPA) is the ability to explicitly reflect upon the pragmatic rules that govern conversation. There is a paucity of research on how MPA develops in childhood and whether it is impaired in children with pragmatic impairments. Despite this, MPA is often cited as an intervention tool for children with pragmatic language impairments (cwPLI) and children with specific language impairments (cwSLI). There are currently no published assessments of MPA ability and practice would benefit from application of a formalised assessment methodology. This thesis reports the phases of development of a novel clinical assessment of MPA for school-aged children called the Assessment of Metapragmatics (AMP). The AMP task is a set of 13 Video Items each depicting a conversation between pairs of school-aged children. Each Video Item portrays a different pragmatic rule violation. After viewing each AMP Video Item the participants were asked a set of Assessor Questions designed to measure MPA. The AMP Video Items were shown to 40 children with typical language development (cwTLD), 34 cwPLI and 14 cwSLI. Preliminary analyses revealed the AMP to be sensitive to age-related changes in MPA and to demonstrate good internal reliability. For the cwTLD there was a distinct developmental shift in MPA ability around seven years of age. At this age there was an increase in the child’s ability to use explicit metapragmatic vocabulary to describe a pragmatic rule violation. CwTLD demonstrated superior MPA ability in comparison to the cwPLI and the cwSLI. No differential impairment in MPA abilities was present between the cwPLI and cwSLI. Considerable variability in MPA abilities occurred for both the cwPLI and cwSLI and this was associated with language ability. This suggests that where MPA is found to be impaired, the child’s language ability should be taken into account and that language ability should be remediated before MPA is targeted in intervention. Where MPA is impaired, raising awareness of pragmatic rule may be the first step for intervention. Where MPA is age-appropriate, the child’s ability to monitor their use of the pragmatic rule, or their motivation to use the pragmatic rule, may be a more effective target of intervention in order to change behaviour. The relationship between MPA and social understanding for the pragmatic rule violation is also discussed and further studies of MPA are considered.
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Nudel, Ron. "Molecular genetics of language impairment." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:70249129-ef2e-4508-b8f6-50d6eae8e78b.
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Developmental language impairments are neurodevelopmental disorders in which the acquisition of language, a task which children typically perform with ease, is hindered or fraught with difficulty. This work focuses on specific language impairment (SLI), a common and highly heritable language impairment in which language development is abnormal while other developmental domains are normal. Additionally, a case-study of a child with a broader linguistic and behavioural phenotype is also presented. The work described in this thesis includes both genetic and functional investigations which were aimed at identifying candidate genes for language impairment and provide insight into the genetic mechanisms that underlie language development. I performed a genome-wide association study of SLI which included child genotype effects, maternal genotype effects, parent-of-origin effects, and maternal-foetal interaction effects. This study found significant paternal parent-of-origin effects with the gene NOP9 on chromosome 14, and suggestive maternal parent-of-origin effects with a region on chromosome 5 which had previously been implicated in autism and ADHD. Case-control and quantitative association analyses of HLA genes and SLI identified several risk alleles and protective alleles. A case-control association analysis for related individuals which used an isolated population affected by SLI identified a non-synonymous coding variant in the gene NFXL1 which was significantly more frequent in affected individuals than in unaffected individuals. High-throughput sequencing of the coding regions of NFXL1 and LD blocks surrounding associated variants in ATP2C2, CMIP and CNTNAP2 (as reported in previous studies) identified novel or rare non-synonymous coding variants in NFXL1 and ATP2C2 in SLI families as well as intronic variants in all four genes that were significantly more frequent in SLI probands than in population controls. I describe a functional study of NFXL1 examining its expression in various brain regions, the presence of different splice variants across several tissues, its effect on genes it potentially interacts with, and the subcellular localisation of the protein. Finally, I present the case-study of a child with language impairment who had chromosomal rearrangements which spanned the location of FOXP2. I examine the potential influence the chromosomal rearrangements had on FOXP2 expression and describe a lincRNA gene which was disrupted by the chromosomal inversion. In conclusion, this work identified new candidate genes for language impairment, provided further support for the involvement of previously-identified candidate genes in SLI and contributed to the understanding of the molecular function of a newly-identified candidate gene for SLI.
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Graves, Tracey A. "Etiologies of specific language impairment." Columbus, Ohio : Ohio State University, 2003. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1061396940.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003.Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xi, 122 p.; also includes graphics (some col.). Includes abstract and vita. Advisor: Robert A. Fox, Dept. of Speech and Hearing Science. Includes bibliographical references (p. 116-122).
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Rohrer, J. D. "Language impairment in frontotemporal lobar degeneration." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2010. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/516148/.
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The term frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) describes a heterogeneous group of neurodegenerative disorders associated with frontal and temporal lobe atrophy. Within this spectrum, two progressive aphasia syndromes, progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA) and semantic dementia (SD), are well described. FTLD is commonly a genetic disorder and mutations in two genes, microtubule-associated protein tau (MAPT) and progranulin (GRN) account for a large proportion of familial cases. A retrospective imaging study using cortical thickness measures shows involvement of the anteroinferior temporal lobes in SD and the left inferior frontal lobe/insula in PNFA. Studies of disease severity and of longitudinal imaging reveal spread through the left hemisphere and into the right hemisphere in both groups. A genetics and heritability study shows that PNFA can be familial, although much less than the behavioural variant of FTLD, and that this is often due to mutations in GRN. Differing patterns of atrophy are shown between different genetic mutations and also between different pathologies with the same clinical syndrome. Evidence from the neurological, neuropsychological, neuroanatomical, genetic and pathological features of the nonfluent aphasias suggests that there are at least three nonfluent aphasia syndromes: a disorder with motor speech impairment with or without agrammatism, a disorder with agrammatism but no apraxia of speech (found in patients with progranulin mutations) and a disorder without agrammatism or apraxia of speech but with word-finding pauses (consistent with descriptions of logopenic/phonological aphasia and pathologically associated with Alzheimer’s disease). Studies of specific deficits (single word processing, prosody, neologistic jargon, apraxia and behavioural symptoms) in the progressive aphasias provide further insight into the disease. This thesis therefore provides neurological, neuropsychological and imaging data with related genetic and pathological information that can provide greater insights into the natural history and classification, and therefore pathophysiological basis of the neurodegenerative disorders that cause primary progressive language impairment.
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Fahim, Donia. "Developmental language impairment in Egyptian Arabic." Thesis, Birkbeck (University of London), 2005. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1445435/.
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Three longitudinal case studies were conducted to investigate developmental language impairment (1)1.1) in Egyptian Arabic (EA). While there have been descriptions of adult acquired aphasic deficits in Arabic, this study details the linguistic characteristics of children with impairments specific to language. To select the subjects, an exclusionary checklist was used based on the criteria used for specific language impairment (SLI, Ixronard, 1998). The subjects consisted of two males and one female, first seen at less than 5 (X) years and recorded longitudinally (21 -36 months). Data from 12 normally developing children, aged between 1 00 4,04 years, was also collected for comparative purposes and to detail normal developmental errors in EA. Patterns of language impairment and development were investigated using spontaneous language measures and specific structured tasks. The language samples were phonetically transcribed from video tapes during non-directive therapy and parent child play sessions. The spontaneous language measures included, Mean Morphemes per Unit (MPU), percent structural errors, functional analysis of utterances and an error analysis of specific grammatical morphemes. 'Ihe three EA-DLI children shared similar patterns of errors although cognitively they had different strengths. 'Their patterns of impairment reflected primarily morpho-syntactic difficulties. Many of the linguistic characteristics observed in the EA-DLI children's language were also produced by the controls, but less frequendy. The EA-DLI children's MPUs were found to be restricted with higher percentages of morphological errors than the language matched controls. An unmarked default verb form resembling the Imperfective-stem was a frequent substitution error. The functional analysis revealed that the EA-DLI children were similar to the controls in their use of requests and labels, however they produced more Learnt Repetitive phrases and disordered sentences and fewer Intravcrbals due to their difficulties with abstract verbal reasoning. 'ihe difficulties described in this study compnse of some linguistic features specific to EA and other features that have been reported in cross-linguistic studies of SLI. The shared features included difficulty with grammatical morphology, lack of master)' at expected developmental stages and limited use of inflectional morphology leading to agreement errors. Verbs were difficult, percentages of errors were high and fewer verbs were produced than nouns. In contrast to the findings of SLI in other languages Tense and Aspectual marking was not problematic, but difficulty was with subject verb agreement for gender, number and person. Prepositions, pronouns, plurals and negative particles were either omitted or substituted resulting in error patterns. The grammatical theories developed to account for SLI reported in English, German and Swedish (Hakansson et al., 2003 Clahsen and Hansen, 1997 van der Lely, 2002) were judged against the evidence acquired in this study on the three EA-DLI children. The limitations of these theories are discussed and alternative interpretations are provided.
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Alhanai, Tuka(Tuka Waddah Talib Ali Al Hanai). "Detecting cognitive impairment from spoken language." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019. https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122724.
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Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2019Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 141-165).
Dementia comes second only to spinal cord injuries in terms of its debilitating effects; from memory-loss to physical disability. The standard approach to evaluate cognitive conditions are neuropsychological exams, which are conducted via in-person interviews to measure memory, thinking, language, and motor skills. Work is on-going to determine biomarkers of cognitive impairment, yet one modality that has been relatively less explored is speech. Speech has the advantage of being easy to record, and contains the majority of information transmitted during neuropsychological exams. To determine the viability of speech-based biomarkers, we utilize data from the Framingham Heart Study, that contains hour-long audio recordings of neuropsychological exams for over 5,000 individuals. The data is representative of a population and the real-world prevalence of cognitive conditions (3-4%). We first explore modeling cognitive impairment from a relatively small set of 92 subjects with complete information on audio, transcripts, and speaker turns. We loosen these constraints by modeling with only a fraction of audio (~2-3 minutes), of which the speaker segments are defined through text-based diarization. We next apply this diarization method to extract audio features from all 7,000+ recordings (most of which have no transcripts), to model cognitive impairment (AUC 0.83, spec. 78%, sens. 79%). Finally, we eliminate the need for feature-engineering by training a neural network to learn higher-order representations from filterbank features (AUC 0.85, spec. 81%, sens. 82%). Our speech models exhibit strong performance and are comparable to the baseline demographic model (AUC 0.85, spec. 93%, sens. 65%). Further analysis shows that our neural network model automatically learns to detect specific speech activity which clusters according to: pause followed by onset of speech, short burst of speech, speech activity in high-frequency spectral energy bands, and silence.
by Tuka Alhanai.
Ph. D.
Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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Stojanovik, Vesna. "Williams Syndrome, specific language impairment and modularity." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2003. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/14751/.
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It has been widely claimed that the language abilities in individuals with Williams Syndrome (WS) provide evidence for dissociations between verbal and non-verbal cognitive processes, thereby supporting the modularity hypothesis. Although previous research has delineated a variety of skills and weaknesses in the WS profile, the reported results have been conflicting and inconsistent. It has also been claimed that WS is the 'opposite' of Specific Language Impairment (SLI), that is, that, in contrast to SLI, individuals with WS have relatively well preserved linguistic abilities in the face of cognitive deficits. However there have not been any studies that have directly compared the two populations on verbal and non-verbal tasks. The aims of the present thesis are: to investigate whether individuals with WS show superior verbal abilities in comparison to their non-verbal cognitive functioning; to investigate whether the individuals with WS show the 'opposite' profile to that of individuals with SLI; and to address the question of whether WS offers support for modular views of language. Case study series of five participants with WS and five participants with SLI were carried out. The study not only gathered information from a range of standardised verbal and non-verbal tests but, most importantly, combined these results with analysis of conversational interaction and narrative discourse, which has not been done previously. The results suggest there is a wide variability among individuals with WS (and those with SLI), and that the linguistic abilities of individuals with WS can often be severely impaired, sometimes being even inferior to those of children with SLI. Furthermore, there seems to be no statistically significant difference between the WS and the SLI profile with regard to their linguistic abilities, although the two profiles are clearly distinct regarding their non-verbal abilities. The results are discussed in light of the relevant literature and the current theoretical debates on modularity.
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Mickelson, Serena Marita Louisa. "Social Networks of Children with Language Impairment." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2013. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/3697.
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Children with language impairment (LI) often exhibit social difficulties along with language issues that can affect their friendships with peers. This study sought to identify the self-reported social networks of children with LI and compare them to the self-reported social networks of children with typical language development. Sixteen children with LI (9 girls and 7 boys) between the ages of 5-11 years, and sixteen children with typical language development matched for age and gender were studied. Children were asked to name interactants in four social circles (Blackstone & Hunt Berg, 2003): family, friends, acquaintances, and paid interactants. A parent also completed a shortened version of this questionnaire. Additionally, children completed an informal picture task (Fujiki, Brinton, & Todd, 1996) to determine the number of peers they interacted with in various activities (e.g., eating lunch at school). The number of family and close friends named by children in each group did not significantly differ. Children with typical language skills did name more interactional partners who were considered to be casual peer acquaintances and paid interactants than did the children with LI. Parent and child responses differed on several of the comparisons. The groups also differed on the number of peers named on the picture task activity, replicating previous results.
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Whitworth, Erin. "Social Circles of Children with Language Impairment." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2012. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/3240.
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Children with language impairment (LI) often demonstrate difficulties in social communication. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the quantity and quality of the social interactions of children with LI and their typical peers through an analysis of the social networks or circles of each child. Eight children with LI as well as eight children with typically developing language and their parents were interviewed. Children's social networks were organized by social circles to effectively paint a picture of each child's social communication (Blackstone & Hunt Berg, 2003). Children with LI were found to have overall fewer contacts in their social circles than children with typical language; they also interacted with fewer peers than did children with typical language. The children with LI interacted with more adults who were paid or obligated to interact with them than did their typical peers. Information about the nature of social interactions of children with LI as well as those of children with typical language was obtained from parent interviews. Qualitative observations from the parent interviews demonstrated that the Internet was not used as a significant mode of communication for children in this age group, although the children who used it to communicate were all from the Typical group. Most parents reported that children spent the most time and talked the most with immediate family members. A greater number of parents of children with LI than parents of children with typical language skills reported their children to have people they would like to talk to but did not. Parents of children with LI also reported their children to use fewer topics in conversation than were reported by parents of their typical peers. With few exceptions, parents of children in both groups reported that their children talked mostly about concrete rather than abstract topics. More parents of children with LI than those with typical language indicated that their children had topics they would like to talk about but did not or lacked the ability to do so.
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Haskill, Allison Marie. "A Comparison of morphosyntactic and phonological profiles of children with specific language impairment and children with phonological-language impairment /." abstract and full text PDF (UNR users only), 2001. http://0-gateway.proquest.com.innopac.library.unr.edu/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3024486.
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Plante, Elena, Dianne Patterson, Michelle Sandoval, Christopher J. Vance, and Arve E. Asbjørnsen. "An fMRI study of implicit language learning in developmental language impairment." ELSEVIER SCI LTD, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/625217.
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Individuals with developmental language impairment can show deficits into adulthood. This suggests that neural networks related to their language do not normalize with time. We examined the ability of 16 adults with and without impaired language to learn individual words in an unfamiliar language. Adults with impaired language were able to segment individual words from running speech, but needed more time to do so than their normal-language peers. ICA analysis of fMRI data indicated that adults with language impairment activate a neural network that is comparable to that of adults with normal language. However, a regional analysis indicated relative hyperactivation of a collection of regions associated with language processing. These results are discussed with reference to the Statistical Learning Framework and the sub-skills thought to relate to word segmentation. (C) 2017 The University of Arizona. Published by Elsevier Inc.
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Moses, Patricia Anne. "Language as a Predictor of Reticence in Children with Language Impairment." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2010. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2209.
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This study examined the relationship between language skills and reticence in 37 children with language impairment (LI) and 37 typically developing peers matched for age (ranging from 6;11 to 10;1 years) and gender. Subtests of the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (E. Carrow-Woolfolk, 1999) were used to evaluate language ability. The Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (C. H. Hart & C. C. Robinson, 1996) was used to evaluate reticence. The current study replicated previous research by documenting significantly higher levels of reticence in children with LI when compared to typical peers. Significant group differences were also found in paragraph comprehension, syntax construction, and pragmatic judgment skills, with children with LI performing poorer on each language subtest compared to typical peers. No significant gender differences were observed on any of the comparisons. Multiple regression analyses were applied to evaluate the relationship between the language subtests and reticence in the group with LI and the typical group. Results for both groups indicated that paragraph comprehension, syntax construction, and pragmatic judgment skills were not significant predictors of reticent withdrawal behavior, either in combination or independently. Results suggest that language alone cannot predict reticence in either children with LI or their typical peers.
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Cheung, Ching-wan Jackie. "Classifier use by children with specific language impairment." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2002. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B36208176.
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Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2002."A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, May 10, 2002." Also available in print.
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Morsi, Ranya Ahmad Abdelaziz. "Specific Language impairment in Egyptian Arabic : Apreliminary investigation." Thesis, University of Reading, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.519869.
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Addis, Laura. "An investigation into the genetics of language impairment." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.525253.
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Thatcher, Karen L. "Phonological awareness in children with specific language impairment." Virtual Press, 2003. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/1263923.
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This study investigated the phonological awareness abilities of children who were typical and atypical. The primary purpose of this study was to determine whether there were developmental differences in the phonological awareness abilities (i.e., syllable, onset/rime, phonemes) of the two groups of participants through a sound segmentation task. The participants were arranged into preschool, kindergarten, and first grade groups. Stimuli included one and two syllable words, which were originally used by Treiman and Zukowski (1991) when they investigated the sound segmentation abilities of typical children. As part of the sound segmentation task, participants were asked to listen to a pair of words and indicate if the one and two syllable words had any sounds in common, either at the phoneme, onset/rime, or syllable levels.An analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was performed and results revealed a significant difference between children who were typical and children that were specific language impaired (SLI) on segmenting. The children who were typical were more effective at segmenting than children who were SLI. Results also revealed that there was a significant different between the first grade children and the preschool children in both groups to segment words at all three conditions. Significant differences were also noted between the types of phonological task completed among participants. The phoneme task was significantly different than the onset/rime and syllable tasks. Also, the onset/rime task was significantly different that the phoneme and syllable task.The combined data from this study revealed developmental trends in phonological awareness for the typical population. However, the developmental trend was not observed in the SLI population. It was noted that the typical population was more efficient in segmentation of words than the SLI population.The data that were obtained provides additional information on the phonological awareness development in typical children and children with SLI. The data may also assist researchers and clinicians in the identification and treatment of children with language impairments. The results may also provide researchers and practitioners important insight into literacy development, given the strong correlation between sound segmentation and the ability to read and write.Department of Special Education
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Carta, Caroline. "Automatic and executive language impairment in Alzheimer's disease." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2016. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/17755/.
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Marshall, Chloe Ruth. "The morpho-phonological interface in specific language impairment." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2005. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1445744/.
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This thesis investigates the nature of the interface between two components of language - morphology and phonology - in children with Grammatical-Specific Language Impairment (G-SLi), compared to those with typically-developing language. I focus principally on the impact of phonological complexity on past tense inflection, but I also investigate other areas of rnorpnotogy. More specifically, I show that for G-SLI children:- There exists a phonological impairment that is independent of morphology. This impairment is characterised by the simplification of complex syllable structure, and by syllabic and segmental errors when the word starts with an initial unstressed syllable. There exists an impairment in past tense morphology, characterised by suffix omission, that is independent of phonology. Phonological factors affect past tense morphology. Specifically, suffix omission rates are higher when inflection (i) creates clusters at the word-end or (ii) requires the syllabic allomorph lidJ. Phonological factors also affect plural and present progressive formation. Unlike past tense morphology, derivational morphology is not subject to suffix omission. However, non-target derivational forms result when stimuli are morphologically or phonologtcally complex. I argue that grammar has a modular structure, and I propose that deficits in one or more of the following modules - syntax, morphology and phonology - can impact on past tense inflection. This model, termed the 'Computational Grammatical Complexity* (CGC) hypothesis, can account for why tense is an area of exceptional difficulty for children with SLI. This investigation is underpinned by a rigorous theoretical framework. Not only does using a cognitive scientific and linguistic framework further our understanding of the nature of the deficit in SLI, but SLI provides a valuable testing ground for theories of language acquisition and the representation of language in the brain.
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Rewaj, Phillipa Jane. "Nature of language impairment in motor neurone disease." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/9744.
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Background: Language impairment associated with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) has been documented since the late 19th century, yet little is understood about the pervasiveness or nature of these deficits. The common clinical view among healthcare professionals is that communication difficulties can be attributed solely to the motor speech disorder dysarthria. Recent literature raises the possibility of more central processing deficits. Impairments in naming ability and comprehension of complex grammatical constructs have been frequently reported in some patients with MND. However, there is now growing evidence of spelling impairment, which could suggest the contribution of a more phonologically based deficit. In addition, the close relationship between MND and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) raises questions about the connection between the language impairments seen in MND patients and those documented in patients with the primary progressive aphasia (PPA) syndromes associated with FTD. Aims: This thesis examines the nature of speech and language deficits in people with MND and the extent to which expressive communication impairment can occur above and beyond dysarthria. In particular, the study explores: i) to what extent these language impairments can be attributed to deficits in working memory, executive functioning and/or disease severity; ii) what spelling errors can reveal about the integrity of lexical, phonological and orthographic processing; iii) whether similar patterns of impairment can be seen in PPA syndromes; iv) the relationship between language impairment and bulbar onset; and v) the impact these findings have on clinical management of MND patients. Methods: MND patients from across Scotland with changes in speech and/or language were tested using a neuropsychological battery of experimental and standardised tests of naming, spelling, syntactic comprehension, prosody and phonological and orthographical awareness. Patients were also screened for levels of dysarthria, executive functioning and working memory deficits, and results compared to those of matched controls. Findings: As a group, MND participants performed significantly worse than matched controls on measures of naming, spelling, orthographical awareness, grammatical comprehension, affective prosody and verbal fluency, but not working memory. However, based on patterns of individual impairment, of which spelling impairment formed a distinctive marker, the patient group divided into dichotomous subgroups, with 44% of participants categorised as ‘linguistically impaired’, while the remainder displayed little to no impairment. Those participants identified as linguistically impaired did not differ significantly from other MND participants on measures of disease severity, disease duration or dysarthria severity, although significantly more bulbar onset than limb onset participants were linguistically impaired. Spelling error patterns were suggestive of deficits at both a lexical and sublexical level, and were comparable to those reported in PPA literature. These findings suggest that dysarthria may be masking linguistic deficits in almost half of dysarthric MND patients, and highlight the importance of multidimensional assessment of language for effective clinical management.
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Anderson, Diane Ellen. "Language impairment : morphosyntactic development and its neurological correlates /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 1998. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p9906478.
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Nash, Marysia Christine. "Vocabulary deficits in children with specific language impairment." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/23132.
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Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have unexpected difficulty developing language in the absence of a clear aetiology. Slowness to acquire their first words is a hallmark of SLI and a proportion of the children continue to have a vocabulary deficit (poor receptive and/or expressive vocabulary) compared with their peers. Some recent research suggests that children with SLI are poorer than controls at learning new words in experimental settings, but the nature and source of their word learning difficulties are still poorly understood. In particular it is unclear what aspects of new vocabulary are particularly hard to learn and which underlying cognitive processes are impaired. This thesis presents two sequentially related investigations which aim firstly to clarify the extent and nature of word learning deficits in children with SLI, and then to explore the source of their difficulties. In both studies 16 children with SLI, including poor receptive vocabulary, were compared to two control groups, one matched for age and non-verbal ability and another for receptive vocabulary and non-verbal ability. In the first investigation, four unfamiliar words were introduced six times in each of two contexts: a Story context and an Explicit Teaching context. Assessments exploring whether children had learned the sound (phonological form) and the meaning of the experimental words were carried out. Children with SLI were significantly poorer than the age matched controls on all tests of word learning. They were similar to the vocabulary matched controls on all measures except the naming task on which they were significantly poorer. The results suggest that children with SLI have global word learning problems but that they may have particular difficulty acquiring the phonological form of new words. The second study investigated whether SLI children’s word learning difficulties were due to problems in acquiring new phonological forms and/or in linking components of lexical representations. To study phonological learning, a paired association task was used in which children had to learn to associate nonwords with familiar words. Lexical linking was explored using the same procedure but with pairs of real words. The groups were also compared on seven measures of phonological processing and the relationship between phonological learning and processing was analysed in each group.
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Christou, Spyros. "Language comprehension in children with Specific Language Impairment: an Eye-Tracking study." Doctoral thesis, Universitat de Barcelona, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/586187.
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[eng] Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) show considerable difficulties in the linguistic production of verbal morphology marks and function words. The present study analyzes the capacity of children with SLI (n=24; age range 4:06-12), children with typical language development (n=48; age range 4:03-12) and adults (n=24; age range 18-30) to process the mentioned linguistic elements of the Spanish language in six online comprehension tasks. Simple sentences structures were used with the objective to reduce, as much as possible, the lexical difficulty in order to focus the analysis on the morphological dimension, with the minimum possible distraction. All the experimental tasks were based on the visual world paradigm which allows, through the technology of eye tracking, optimal conditions of psycholinguistic experimentation. Under the main hypothesis, the morphological characteristics of the linguistic stimulus guide the comprehension of the sentence and the visual analysis of the graphic scene. In this sense, it was expected that children with SLI would obtain worse results than children among control groups, considering the possibility of a deficit in the comprehension of the mentioned linguistic elements. The empirical data reveal that the children with SLI - in the present experimental conditions and in the context of the simple sentence - present a less atypical comprehension in comparison to the initial hypothesis. The results of the study allow us to suggest the possibility that the apparent difficulty in language comprehension of children with SLI follows a pattern where the accumulation of small processing difficulties in quantitative terms causes an impact in qualitative terms, which is manifested as a lower general comprehension. We suggest that the apparent difficulty in the linguistic comprehension of children with SLI might be more related to a pattern of accumulation of the difficulty, and less to isolated linguistic elements, such as verbal morphology and function words.
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Adams, C., Kelli Morgan, Julie Phillips, Emilee Rehm, Brianna Stampler, and Kerry Proctor-Williams. "The Narrative Skills of Children with Specific Language Impairment and Typical Language." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2018. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/1815.
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Phillips, Julie, Courtney Adams, Kelli Morgan, Emilee Rehm, Brianna Stampler, and Kerry Proctor-Williams. "The Narrative Skills of Children with Specific Language Impairment and Typical Language." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2017. https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu-works/1818.
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Purpose. The purpose of this research project was to compare the narrative content organization (macrostructure) of young children with specific language impairment (SLI) and those with typical language development (TL). While it is well-known that young children with SLI display poorer use of grammar (microstructure) than their TL language similar peers (Leaonard, 2014; Rice et al., 1998) less is known about their use of macrostructure. Thus, the research question was: What are the narrative skills of children with SLI as compared to their language similar peers with development TL? Based on research with older children (Gillam et al., 2016), it was hypothesized that children with SLI will have poorer narrative macrostructure of narratives than those with TL. Method. The experiment compared 6 children with SLI (mean age: 5 years, 2 months) and 8 language similar children with TL (mean age: 4 years, 8 months). Language equivalency was determined based on administration of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Preschool-2 and the Rice/Wexler Test of Early Grammatical Impairment. As well, all the participants passed a hearing screening and performed in the average range on the Preschool Test of Nonverbal Intelligence. Researchers read two books, Gossie and Gossie & Gertie (Dunrea, 2002, 2002) to each child. After reading each book, the child retold the story while looking through the pictures as a guide, yielding 12 SLI samples and 16 TL samples. The stories were audio-recorded and transcribed using a consensus method of reliability. Researchers then coded the stories for presence and quality of the following components: Character, Setting, Initiating Event, Internal Response, Plan, Action/Attempt, and Consequence. Once coded, the components were then scored on a 3-point scale using Gillam et al. (2012) narrative development progressmonitoring tool. Results and Conclusions. First, outcomes of the two stories were compared using an ANOVA design with Story Components and Story as within group factors. Because Gossie & Gertie had one more character than Gertie, it naturally scored significantly higher on Characters. Otherwise, the stories did not reliably differ and were combined for further analysis. Next a mixed model ANOVA design with Story Components as a within group factor and Group as a between group faction was conducted. The results indicated no statistically significant main effects or interactions. The findings did not support the hypothesis, suggesting that the narrative skills of children with SLI are equivalent to their language similar peers with TL. It may be as children get older and their narratives become more complex, children with SLI begin to fall further behind yielding the differences reported in the literature. This project prompts future questions about narrative macrostructure skills of young age-matched children with SLI and TL and use of macrostructure skills in more complex stories.
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Harrington, Val. "Analysis of the lived experiences of young adults with specific language impairment and/or pragmatic language impairment to inform counselling psychology practice." Thesis, University of Wolverhampton, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/2436/209937.
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Some seven percent of children in the general population are affected by Specific Language Impairment and/or Pragmatic Language Impairment with numerous cases undiagnosed. It is known that difficulty in communication affects psychosocial functioning and is likely to be a source of mental distress but the data on people’s access to and benefit from psychological intervention are limited. There is also limited understanding of psychologists’ capacity to meet these clients’ needs although their problems continue into adulthood. This research questions the population of counselling and clinical psychologists about their knowledge and experience of these disorders using an electronic questionnaire. Qualitative methods were then adopted with three participants with SLI/PLI and four psychologist practitioners familiar with such clients; this involved semi-structured interviews analysed using IPA and TA respectively. The purpose was to interpret and develop the clients' lived experiences into themes which were then used to look for possible connecting themes in the psychologists’ transcripts. This process was termed "interconnection" and was intended to reveal the coincidence and convergence of the two sides of the client/psychologist dyad. Results showed that whereas findings demonstrated the young men possessed a spectrum of coping and defence strategies as constituent parts of resilience, including self-esteem, self-identity and self-efficacy, the psychologists did not see the client as a congruent whole, addressing either their impairment or their mental health problem. Client resiliencies were not used in therapy and psychosocial difficulties were not recognised as a focus of distress although they did endeavour to modify their therapeutic approaches. Finally, consideration is given to whether the research aim is met, the implications for counselling psychology and possible future research. It is proposed that this methodology of interconnection has the potential to provide a novel approach to inform any future research and service development for this and other client groups in the way it takes patients/clients into account and connects them with professional working.
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Millet, Deborah. "Automated grammatical tagging of language samples from children with and without language impairment /." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access:, 2001. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd35.pdf.
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Millet, Deborah. "Automated Grammatical Tagging of Language Samples from Children with and without Language Impairment." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2003. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/1139.
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Grammatical classification ("tagging") of words in language samples is a component of syntactic analysis for both clinical and research purposes. Previous studies have shown that probability-based software can be used to tag samples from adults and typically-developing children with high (about 95%) accuracy. The present study found that similar accuracy can be obtained in tagging samples from school-aged children with and without language impairment if the software uses tri-gram rather than bi-gram probabilities and large corpora are used to obtain probability information to train the tagging software.
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Anderson, Alida Lorraine. "Literate language feature use in preschool age children with specific language impairment and typically developing language." College Park, Md. : University of Maryland, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1903/3427.
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Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2006.Thesis research directed by: Special Education. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.
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Hayiou-Thomas, Marianna. "Perceptual and cognitive processing limitations in specific language impairment." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2002. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0a3c8903-a93a-4473-9fc5-fe1ef87656c9.
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The experiments presented in this thesis explored the possibility that an underlying cause of specific language impairment (SLI) may be a deficit in perceptual or cognitive information processing. The first three studies tested the hypothesis that children with SLI have impaired perception of the dynamic elements of visual and auditory stimuli, as proposed in the magnocellular hypothesis for developmental dyslexia. The experimental predictions were that a) children with SLI would have poor sensitivity to coherent motion (but not coherent form) stimuli relative to chronological-age matched controls; b) children with SLI would have poorer sensitivity than controls to slow (but not fast) rates of frequency modulation in a tone; c) sensitivity to slow rates of frequency modulation (FM) would correlate with children's performance on a set of tests of phonological skill. Overall, these predictions were not corroborated by the results, and the conclusion drawn from this set of studies is that a magnocellular impairment of the type reported in dyslexia is unlikely to be a causal factor in SLI. The second three studies used a grammaticality judgement task to focus on inflectional morphology, an area of language which poses particularly marked difficulty for many children with SLI. The findings from Study 4 suggested that children's performance on the grammaticality judgement task overall was strongly related to phonological discrimination ability, but was unaffected by the specific inflectional allomorph tested. The final two studies manipulated the information processing load of the grammaticality judgement task, in Study 5 to simulate (successfully) SLI-like performance in a group of typically developing children, and in Study 6 to attempt (unsuccessfully) to improve performance in a group of children with SLI. These results are compatible with the idea that the profile of language difficulties experienced by many children with SLI is due to a processing deficit in the early stages of language acquisition which interrupts the establishment of robust linguistic representations. The nature of this processing deficit is as yet unclear, though the current findings do not support the suggestion of a central auditory impairment. It is possible that a number of distinct deficits, such as poor phonological memory or reduced speed of processing, may produce a broadly similar linguistic profile in different individuals.
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Wadman, Ruth Elizabeth. "Socioemotional functioning in adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI)." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.488649.
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Specific language impairment (SLI) is a developmental language disorder that can persist into adolescence and adulthood. Research over the last decade has shown that children with SLI experience a range of socioemotional difficulties in addition to their language problems. However, there is a lack of similar research involving adolescents with SLI. This thesis provides three studies that examine aspects of socioemotional functioning in adolescents with SLI. Self-report measures were used to assess a range of socioemotional constructs at one point in development. Adolescents with SLI were compared to typically developing adolescents of the same age. It is shown that young people with SLI are at risk ofexperiencing difficulties in some areas of their socioemotional functioning. Adolescents with SLI have a tendency to feel stress in social situations, and are inhibited in, and even avoid, such interactions. There is also some evidence that adolescents with SLI have lower self-esteem compared to peers, and may be less emotionally engaged in their close relationships. Nonetheless, young people with SLI also have social successes and strengths. They are motivated to interact socially with others, and a number ofthem appear to have the skills necessary for these social interactions. Furthermore, most adolescents with SLI have the benefit of a close or best friend. The findings from the three studies have both theoretical and practical implications. This profile of socioemotional strengths and difficulties associated with SLI in adolescence begins to address the dearth of research in this area. It is concluded that language impairment is a risk for socioemotional problems, however not all young people with SLI will have difficulties and not all aspects of socioemotional functioning are affected.
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Pavelko, Stacey Lynne. "Emergent writing skills in preschool children with language impairment." Doctoral diss., University of Central Florida, 2011. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETD/id/5006.
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Much research demonstrates that alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, and emergent writing are all significant predictors of later reading and writing outcomes, and that children with language impairments (LI) are particularly at risk for later literacy difficulties. Further, children with LI consistently demonstrate depressed emergent literacy skills in the areas of phonological awareness, print concepts, and alphabet knowledge; however, little is known about their emergent writing skills. Therefore, the purposes of this study were twofold: (1) to compare the emergent writing skills of preschool children with language impairment to their typically developing peers using a range of writing tasks and a detailed, consistent scoring rubric for each task; and, (2) to explore the relationships among emergent writing skills and alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, and oral language. The participants included four groups of preschool children: 11 4-year-old children with LI; 11 4-year-old language typical (LT) children, age-matched to children with LI; 20 4-year-old children with typical language; and, 21 5-year-old children with typical language. Children with language impairment scored between 70 and 84 on the Language Index of Assessment of Literacy and Language (ALL) (Lombardino, Lieberman, & Brown, 2005), and children with typical language scored between 85 and 115. All children passed a bilateral hearing screen, scored within the normal range on a non-verbal intelligence screen, demonstrated an unremarkable developmental history relative to sensory, neurological, and motor performance, spoke English as their primary language, and had mothers with at least a high school education or equivalent. During two sessions, children were administered the ALL and five emergent writing tasks: Write Letters, Write Name, Write CVC Words, Picture Description, and Sentence Retell.; The writing tasks and accompanying scoring rubrics were adopted from a previous study by Puranik and Lonigan (2009). Results indicated that children with LI demonstrated significantly less advanced letter and word writing skills than their language typical, age-matched peers. In addition, significant relationships between all emergent writing tasks and alphabet knowledge were observed for all children as well as significant relationships between oral language and phonological awareness for children with typical language. No significant relationships between any of the emergent writing tasks and phonological awareness or between oral language and alphabet knowledge were found. Further, results indicated the same developmental patterns exist in written as well as oral language for children with LI. This study has therapeutic implications for speech-language pathologists. In particular, emergent writing tasks need to be included in comprehensive assessment and intervention approaches for children with LI. Assessments need to yield accurate descriptions of emergent writing skills relevant to later literacy outcomes. Finally, integrated intervention approaches that combine initial sound awareness tasks with alphabet knowledge and emergent writing tasks may achieve the best learning outcomes.ID: 030422949; System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader.; Mode of access: World Wide Web.; Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Central Florida, 2011.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-180).
Ph.D.
Doctorate
Education
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Crosbie, Sharon Lee. "Single word comprehension in children with specific language impairment." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.391978.
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Stott, Carol Mary. "Specific language impairment in children : prevalence outcome and comorbidity." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.621923.
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Fancourt, Amy. "Exploring musical cognition in children with specific language impairment." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2013. http://research.gold.ac.uk/10151/.
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This aim of this thesis was to investigate musical cognition in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and typical development. The studies carried out utilised a combination of standardised assessments and experimental measures to investigate low-level perceptual to higher-order musical competencies. The theoretical framework motivating the studies comes from three broad theoretical accounts that differentially accentuate the auditory processing, cognitive and linguistic deficits in children with SLI, as well as from neuroimaging and behavioural studies showing that aspects of music and language processing rely on the same cognitive and neural mechanisms. Whilst a number of studies have investigated music perception in SLI, this thesis reports the first systematic and theoretically motivated study of this topic. The results from the studies revealed deficits in auditory short-term memory and procedural processing in SLI, supporting a domain general model of deficits in SLI. On the experiments that tested musical competencies, the children with SLI showed relatively preserved processing of melodic contour, implicit processing of musical harmony and appreciation of the emotional connotations of music. Whilst music perception was strongly associated with auditory short-term memory in typical controls, this was not the case for the children with SLI, and an alternative musical information processing strategy was proposed. The findings from this thesis indicate that although children with SLI demonstrate a range of impairments in language and cognitive functions, there are aspects of musical cognition that are relatively spared, and this has important implications for the development of therapeutic interventions.
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Mason, Laura L. "Extended Pedigree Analysis of Language Impairment and Reading Disability." The Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1525698390041457.
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Calderón, Janet. "Working memory in Spanish-English bilinguals with language impairment /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 2003. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p3099983.
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Spaulding, Tammie J. "Attentional Control in Preschool Children with Specific Language Impairment." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194819.
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This research was guided by a theoretical framework positing that children with typical language apply general cognitive resources, such as attention, to facilitate language acquisition, and limitations in these processes may contribute to poor language skills. From this perspective, studying the attentional functioning of children who exhibit difficulty with language would have value for both informing this theory and understanding the nature of the disorder. However, research on the attention of children with specific language impairment (SLI) is limited, as only a few subdomains have been addressed to date. In addition, although school-age children with SLI have been studied, the assessment of attentional functioning in preschool children with this disorder has been minimal. This is likely the result the limitations inherent to the methods used for evaluating attentional skills at younger ages. The purpose of this research was to extend a method previously used successfully with preschool children to study selected aspects of attentional control including susceptibility to distraction, inhibitory control, and updating skills. The research questions were: (a) Do children with SLI exhibit increased susceptibility to distraction relative to their typically-developing peers, and if so, does it vary according to the type of distracter (visual, nonverbal-auditory, linguistic) presented? (b) Do children with SLI exhibit poor inhibitory control relative to their typically-developing peers? (c) Do children with SLI and their typically-developing peers display evidence of updating? Thirty-one preschool children with SLI and 31 controls participated in two computer tasks designed to assess these mechanisms of attentional control. The susceptibility to distraction task involved resisting distracters presented in different stimulus modalities (visual and auditory-linguistic/nonlinguistic). Inhibition and updating skills were assessed using a stop signal paradigm. In comparison to typically-developing children, the children with SLI exhibited increased susceptibility to distraction and poor inhibitory control. Unlike the controls, they exhibited no evidence of updating. The results of this investigation will contribute to a long-term goal of addressing how attention may affect language acquisition in children with SLI. In addition, the successful methodology employed in this study may offer an improved procedure for diagnosing attentional difficulties at an early age, regardless of language status.
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Coombs, Emma Maille. "Measuring Subtypes of Withdrawal in Children with Language Impairment." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2017. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/6706.
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Children with language impairment (LI) often demonstrate increased levels of withdrawal, specifically the reticent and solitary-passive subtypes. Although it is recognized that there are several subtypes of withdrawal, the relationship between withdrawal and children with LI is complex and unclear. The aim of this study was to examine items on the Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (TBRS) to better understand the nature of withdrawal in children with LI. A factor analysis of TBRS scores of 355 participants was conducted to ensure that individual items on each subscale were measuring the same construct. An invariance analysis was also performed to ensure items were equally valid for both groups. Finally, a Pearson chi-square test was performed to see which items had the greatest power to separate typical and atypical children. Factor analysis confirmed that items on each subscale grouped together. All four reticence items were invariant, however only 3 of the 5 solitary-passive items were invariant across groups. Item analysis of the Reticence Subscale revealed that participants showed the greatest differences in items related to on-looking, unoccupied, and fearful behavior. Item analysis of the Solitary Passive Subscale revealed an increase in behavior related to a preference for solitary play. In accordance with previous work, children with LI displayed higher levels of both reticence and solitary-passive withdrawal than their typical peers. This study confirms the validity of using the TBRS as a tool to investigate the complex relationship between language and reticent behavior in future research.
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Chamberlain, Monica Leroy. "Story Generation Ability in Four Children with Language Impairment." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2014. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4202.
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This thesis project focused on the complexity of story generations produced by four children with language impairment across treatment sessions. Specifically, the participants' utterances were analyzed to determine if the children produced simple story elements and/or more complex cause/effect story elements. The children's utterances were also analyzed to identify emotion words in order to consider the children's awareness of the emotions experienced by characters in the stories. All participants approached the story generation task by describing characters and actions based on pictures from the book. Two participants did not express any causal relationships and two participants expressed some awareness of causal relationships, suggesting an emergence of this ability. Furthermore, participants' ability to recognize emotions varied. All of the children were able to label at least one emotion across sessions, and two participants increased production of emotion words across sessions. None of the participants linked character actions/reactions to the overall theme of the story. Further research is needed to determine effective ways to help children bridge the gaps between simple descriptions and more complex causal relationships.
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Claessen, Mary Elizabeth. "Phonological processing skills in children with specific language impairment." Thesis, Curtin University, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/123.
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There is much debate in the literature about the cause, presentation, diagnosis and treatment of specific language impairment (SLI). Research has been hampered by the heterogeneity evident within the diagnostic group as well as a paucity of tasks to measure specific skills and thus increase our understanding of the underlying deficit. One prominent theory is that children with SLI have an underlying deficit with phonological processing skills although the role of phonology in the establishment of accurate, well specified phonological representations is still unclear.This program of research aimed to add to the body of evidence by addressing these key methodological issues and exploring the phonological processing skills of children with SLI. In the initial phase of the research, two silent measures of phonological representations were designed and developed to fill a recognised gap. The Quality of Phonological Representations task aims to explore the accuracy of a child’s stored phonological representation of a multisyllabic word. The Silent Deletion of Phonemes task aims to explore how well specified a stored phonological representation is, and requires a child to perform a silent deletion task on a stored phonological representation.The Quality of Phonological Representations and Silent Deletion Of Phonemes were then used as part of a comprehensive battery of phonological processing measures to explore the phonological processing skills of a well-defined group of children with SLI (n=21), typically developing children matched for age (n=21) and typically developing children matched for receptive language skills (n=21). The task battery also included measures of phonological awareness, short-term and working memory and rapid automatised naming.Children with SLI had generally weaker phonological processing skills than typically developing children matched for age. The profile was more varied when compared to typically developing children matched for language. Despite employing tight selection criteria, there was a wider spread of scores for children with SLI than for typically developing peers. The children with SLI demonstrated weaker performance on both short-term and working memory tasks, as well as a measure of quality of phonological representations.Overall, the children with SLI demonstrated an interesting pattern of phonological processing skills, with particular difficulty observed in phonological and working memory. Children with SLI also evidenced lower quality stored phonological representations of multisyllabic words. Performance on measures of phonological awareness was strong indicating that such skills can be taught, but that improvement in this area does not necessarily improve the quality of the underlying phonological representation.The research provided some support for a specific processing account of SLI. It also highlighted the importance of phonological and working memory in the development of accurate phonological representations.
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Hind, Sarah E. "Language, perception and production in profoundly deaf children." Thesis, Loughborough University, 1993. https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/16104.
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Prelingually profoundly deaf children usually experience problems with language learning (Webster, 1986; Campbell, Burden & Wright, 1992). The acquisition of written language would be no problem for them if normal development of reading and writing was not dependent on spoken language (Pattison, 1986). However, such children cannot be viewed as a homogeneous group since some, the minority, do develop good linguistic skills. Group studies have identified several factors relating to language skills: hearing loss and level of loss, I.Q., intelligibility, lip-reading, use of phonology and memory capacity (Furth, 1966; Conrad, 1979; Trybus & Karchmer, 1977; Jensema, 1975; Baddeley, Papagno & Vallar, 1988; Baddeley & Wilson, 1988; Hanson, 1989; Lake, 1980; Daneman & Carpenter,1980). These various factors appear to be interrelated, with phonological awareness being implicated in most. So to understand behaviour, measures of all these factors must be obtained. The present study aimed to achieve this whilst investigating the prediction that performance success may be due to better use of phonological information. Because linguistic success for the deaf child is exceptional, a case study approach was taken to avoid obscuring subtle differences in performance. Subjects were screened to meet 6 research criteria: profound prelingual deafness, no other known handicap, English the first language in the home, at least average non-verbal IQ , reading age 7-9 years and inter-subject dissimilarities between chronological reading age discrepancies. Case histories were obtained from school records and home interviews. Six subjects with diverse linguistic skills were selected, four of which undertook all tests. Phonological awareness and development was assessed across several variables: immediate memory span, intelligibility, spelling, rhyme judgement, speech discrimination and production. There was considerable inter-subject performance difference. One boy's speech production was singled out for a more detailed analysis. Useful aided hearing and consistent contrastive speech appear to be implicated in other English language skills. It was concluded that for phonological awareness to develop, the deaf child must receive useful inputs from as many media as possible (e.g., vision, audition, articulation, sign and orthography). When input is biassed toward the more reliable modalities of audition and articulation, there is a greater possibility of a robust and useful phonology being derived and thus better access to the English language.
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Goldie, Lara Lynn. "The Relationship Among Emotion Understanding, Language, and Social Behavior in Children with Language Impairment." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2008. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd2709.pdf.
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Madon, Zinnia. "Investigation of maze production in children with specific language impairment." Thesis, McGill University, 2007. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=101867.
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Linguistic dysfluencies known as mazes have been interpreted clinically as reflecting breakdown in language formulation. Nevertheless, the relatively limited available research has suggested that maze frequency increases with linguistic complexity and that mazes are produced more frequently by children with specific language impairment (SLI) than normal language (NL) peers. This study examined the hypothesis that greater maze production by children with SLI results from their processing limitations. Language samples of school-age children with SLI (n = 9) and NL (n = 11) were collected in contexts varying in task demands: conversation, narration and expository discourse. Both groups produced significantly more mazes in the more demanding contexts than in conversation. However, no significant group effect was noted for age-matched or MLU-matched groups. These results suggest that mazes should not be viewed primarily as an indication of processing limitations or a clinical marker for SLI, but more appropriately as a byproduct of linguistic complexity across groups.
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Wilde, Heather Michelle. "The Variability in Children with Specific Language Impairment Compared to Children with Typical Language Development." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2009. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/2330.
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The purpose of this study was to determine whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) are more or less variable than children with typically developing language. In addition, the within child variability for children with SLI was analyzed to consider how heterogeneity influenced identification of areas of linguistic strengths and weaknesses in this population. Fifty seven children with SLI, 7:0–11:0, and fifty seven of their peers with typically developing language were assessed using five subtests and a composite language score from the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (CASL) (Carrow-Woolfolk, 1999). The children with typically developing language were significantly more variable as a group than the children with SLI. The heterogeneity of the children with SLI did not allow for the creation of subgroups based on language strengths and weaknesses.
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Yam, Kwan-wai Connie. "Lexical diversity in Cantonese speaking children with specific language impairment." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 1999. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B36210080.
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Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 1999."A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, 14 May 1999." Also available in print.
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Zens, Naomi Katharina. "Facilitating Word-Learning Abilities in Children with Specific Language Impairment." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Communication Disorders, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/2698.
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Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) often present with difficulties in learning new words compared to age-matched children with typical language development. These difficulties may affect the acquisition, storage, or retrieval of new words. Word-learning deficits impact on children’s vocabulary development and impede their language and literacy development. Findings from a wide range of studies investigating word-learning in children with SLI demonstrated that semantic and phonological knowledge are crucial to the word-learning process. However, intervention studies designed to improve the word-learning abilities in children with SLI are sparse. The experiments described in this thesis addressed this need to understand the effects of interventions on word-learning abilities. Further, the thesis describes the first investigation of word-learning abilities of New Zealand school-aged children with SLI. Specifically, the following three broad questions are asked: 1. What are the word-learning skills of New Zealand school-aged children with SLI compared to children with typical language development and which underlying language skills influence word-learning? 2. What are the immediate and longer term effects of phonological awareness and semantic intervention on word-learning and language skills in children with SLI? 3. What are the error patterns of children with SLI compared to children with typical language development when learning to produce new words and do these patterns change following phonological awareness and semantic intervention? The first experiment compared the word-learning abilities of 19 school-aged children with SLI (aged 6;2 to 8;3) to age-matched children with typical language development and revealed that children with SLI presented with significant difficulties to produce and to comprehend new words. After repeated exposure, children with SLI caught up to the performances of children with typical language development in learning to comprehend new words, but not on production of new words. Correlation analyses demonstrated that there were no correlations between the word-learning skills and other language measures for children with SLI, whereas the word-learning abilities of children with typical language development were correlated to their phonological awareness, semantic, and general language skills. In the second experiment, it was investigated whether there were also qualitative differences during word-learning between children with and without SLI additionally to the quantitative differences as revealed in the first experiment. Children’s erroneous responses during the word-learning tasks were categorised into phonological, semantic, substitution or random errors. A comparison of the children’s error patterns revealed that children with SLI presented with a different error pattern and made significantly more random errors than children with typical language development. However, after repeated exposure, children with SLI demonstrated a similar error pattern as children without SLI. Furthermore, it was examined whether a specific combination of phonological and semantic cues facilitated children’s learning of new words or whether there were word-specific features that facilitated children’s word-learning. No facilitative word-specific features could be identified. Analysis revealed that there were no significant effects of cueing on learning new words, but specific patterns could be derived for children with SLI. Children with SLI learned to comprehend more words that were presented with two semantic cues or one phonological and one semantic cue and learned to produce more words that were presented with two phonological cues. In the third experiment, the effectiveness of a combined phonological awareness and semantic intervention to advance children’s word-learning abilities was examined. Nineteen children with SLI (same participants as in experiment 1) participated in this intervention study that implemented an alternating treatment group design with random assignment of the participants. Children in group A received phonological awareness intervention followed by semantic intervention, whereas children in group B received the same interventions in the reverse order. Children’s word-learning abilities were assessed at pre-test, prior to the intervention, at mid-test after intervention phase 1, and at post-test, immediately following the completion of the second intervention phase. Each intervention itself was effective in significantly improving children’s fast mapping skills, however, gains in children’s word-learning abilities were only found for children in group A for production of new words. Extending the findings of the intervention effectiveness of phonological awareness and semantic intervention on word-learning as reported in experiment 3, it was investigated in experiment 4, whether the implemented intervention additionally influenced the error patterns of children with SLI. The erroneous responses of children with SLI on all word-learning probes at pre-, mid-, and post-test were categorised into the same error groups as described in the second experiment (semantic, phonological, substitution, and random errors). The error analyses revealed that children’s error profiles changed during the course of intervention and treatment specific effects on children’s erroneous responses were found. Post-intervention, children who received phonological awareness followed by semantic intervention displayed the same error patterns as children with typical language development, whereas children who received the same interventions in the reverse order maintained the same error pattern as displayed at pre-test. The final experiment examined the longer-term effects of the combined phonological awareness and semantic intervention reported in experiment 3 on the language and literacy development of children with SLI. Eighteen of the 19 children with SLI, who received the intervention reported in experiment 3, were available for re-assessment 6 months after the completion of the intervention. The children (aged 7;1 to 9;2 years) were re-assessed on a range of standardised and experimental measures. Data analysis revealed that 6 months post-intervention, all children were able to maintain their gains in phonological awareness, semantic, and decoding skills as displayed immediately after the intervention. Children’s general language and reading skills significantly improved following the intervention; however, children who received phonological awareness intervention followed by semantic intervention displayed significantly better reading outcomes than the children who received the same interventions in the reverse order. This thesis revealed that a combination of phonological awareness and semantic intervention can enhance the word-learning abilities of children with SLI. The combined intervention approach was also effective in additionally improving children’s general language skills and the reading of single non-words and real words, as well as connected text. The immediate and longer-term intervention effects provide evidence that advancing the semantic and phonological awareness skills is an effective intervention approach to support children with SLI in their word-learning and to furthermore promote their language and literacy development. However, the order of the implemented interventions played a significant role: Children in the current study profited most when they received phonological awareness intervention first, followed by semantic intervention.
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Abdalla, Fauzia Ahmed. "Specific language impairment in Arabic-speaking children : deficits in morphosyntax." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=82810.
Full textAbstract:
Four areas of morphosyntax in Arabic-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) were investigated: tense, subject-verb agreement, determiners, and prepositions. Spontaneous production data were analyzed for accuracy and error types in using these morphemes. Two groups of typically-developing Arabic-speaking children served as Mean Length Utterance (MLU)-matched and chronological age-matched controls. The results indicate that Arabic-speaking children with SLI were significantly different from the two control groups of children on percentage correct use of tense and subject-verb agreement. Furthermore, when an error in verbal inflection occurred, the substitute form was usually an underspecified/default form, namely the imperative.The findings of the study are discussed in light of existing theoretical accounts of SLI. Three positions are examined: (a) tense marking constitutes the locus of SLI grammatical difficulties (Extended Optional Infinitive hypothesis, Rice & Wexler, 1996); (b) morphosyntactic problems stem from deficits in agreement relations (Grammatical Agreement Deficit account, Clahsen, 1989; Clahsen, Bartke, & Gollner, 1997); and (c) trouble with inflectional morphology is less pronounced in children with SLI acquiring richly inflected languages (Sparse Morphology account, Leonard, Bortolini, Caselli, McGregor, & Sabbadim, 1992). Special characteristics of Arabic such as its intricate morphological system and null subject properties make it particularly valuable in determining universal versus language-specific aspects of SLI. Clinical implications for SLI in Arabic and directions for future research are also explored.
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Ebbels, Susan Helen. "Argument structure in Specific Language Impairment : from theory to therapy." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2005. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1444649/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis is in two parts: the first focuses on theories of SLI and the development of argument structure while the second focuses on intervention. Chapter 1 reviews experimental findings and theories of SLI and finds that while some areas of language are well-researched, others (including argument structure) have received relatively little attention. Chapter 2 reviews the literature regarding the development of argument structure and concludes that studies of typical development have not investigated use of alternations and omissions of obligatory arguments, whereas studies of SLI have little focus on alternations or overgeneralisations. Chapters 4 and 5 therefore consider the performance of typically developing children and children with SLI on all these areas. I find typically developing children differ from adults in their use of the causative alternation and overgeneralisation of the locative alternation. The children with SLI have difficulties with argument structure, avoiding the ditransitive form of the dative alternation and making more errors with change of state verbs and omission of arguments. A secondary focus (Chapter 6) is on the influence of phonological complexity and length (measured by a non-word repetition test) on the language abilities of children with SLI. The results show a bimodal split where half the children with SLI show normal abilities and half have significant difficulties. Chapter 7 discusses the implications of the experimental findings for theories of SLI. Part 2 reviews intervention studies for SLI (Chapter 8) and presents an intervention study focusing on argument structure (Chapter 9). 27 secondary-aged children with SLI are randomly assigned to three groups, one control and two target therapies focusing on semantics vs constructions. Both target groups show significant progress. Thus, this thesis shows that detailed investigations of the nature of the deficit in SLI can lead to successful interventions even for children with severe, persistent difficulties.
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Hasson, Natalie Karen. "Dynamic assessment and informed intervention for children with language impairment." Thesis, City University London, 2011. http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/1119/.
Full textAbstract:
Although speech and language therapy practitioners commonly place great weight on standardised, static assessment, the procedures may not be fully representative, and reveal little about the child’s learning potential or the direction that intervention should take. Vygotsky’s theories, particularly his notion of the Zone of Proximal Development, underpin a range of approaches within the complementary assessment paradigm known as Dynamic Assessment (DA) (Vygotsky 1986). The term is used for assessments consisting of ‘active intervention by the examiners and assessment of examinees’ response to intervention” (Haywood and Lidz 2007 P1) The current project investigated the application of Dynamic Assessment to a population of children with previously identified Language Impairments. As in parallel studies of intelligence, both manifest skills of language, and underlying processes used in manipulating and constructing language as a tool, were elucidated. The contribution that such an assessment can make to extending the understanding of language impairment, and in devising intervention programmes was investigated. This thesis describes the development of a Dynamic Assessment task requiring implicit knowledge of syntactic structure. The construction of the procedure was a novel adaptation and combination of established DA methodologies that are described and evaluated in Chapter 1. The task, which is essentially a sentence anagram, comprised 12 items specifically selected to assess particular grammatical structures reported in Chapter 2 to be problematic in children with Specific Language Impairments (SLI). The details of the task construction are reported in Chapter 3. The measure was employed on 24 children aged 8-10, with identified language impairment, and the results are reported in Chapter 4. Inter-rater reliability of the test measure was 88%, and the sensitivity of the test to change over time was demonstrated. Information about participants’ ability to transfer learning between items, their ability to use less directive prompts, their strategy use, and their metalinguistic and metacognitive awareness was extracted, and reported to the speech and language therapists working with the children. Evaluation of the test is discussed in Chapter 5. The thesis also reports on an investigation of the role of the information derived from the DA in informing intervention programmes (Chapter 6). The same cohort of 24 children with SLI was randomly allocated to two groups. Reports from the DA were used to inform the ongoing language intervention of one of the groups of children. In Chapter 7 the outcomes of therapy from that group were compared to the outcomes of the group receiving regular intervention. Differences between groups were nonsignificant although the gains achieved by subgroups of children were predicted, and in particular children making little progress in their ongoing therapy were shown to derive most benefit from the modified intervention. The information was rated as useful by participating SLTs who altered the nature of their intervention strategies. Discussion of the results and identification of factors such as emotional and behavioural issues that affect progress in intervention are discussed in Chapter 8. Implications for further development of the DA paradigm are discussed, and conclusions are summarized in Chapter 9.