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Specific Language Impairment (SLI) Introduction
37-924-01 Theoretical Approaches to Specific Language Impairment (SLI) Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem Bar Ilan University
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SLI - Definition
A developmental language disorder characterized by Gleason (2001, p. 504) as involving ‘delayed or deviant language development in a child who exhibits no cognitive, neurological or social impairment’. Children with SLI show impaired language development from birth (with problems which may either disappear during childhood or persist into adulthood) with no hearing loss (no history of otitis media), no emotional and behavioral problems, no below average non-verbal IQ(>=85), no neurological problems, and no oral or facial defects (Tallal & Stark 1981). That is, they are normal in other aspects of their physical, mental and social development (Radford 2006).
SLI impact on child ’s social world
Normative children (NC) prefer talking to other NC rather than SLI children even at preschool level SLI children prefer to talk with adults SLI children have difficulty performing basic social tasks (e.g., accessing ongoing interaction) 8-12 year old SLI were rated by teachers as being less cooperative and less assertive; have fewer peer contact in school environment; and were less satisfied with peer social relationships
Sample 1
Sample 2
Major Issues
Frequency of SLI
Genetic basis of SLI
Neurological basis of SLI
Overall characteristics of SLI
Frequency
In 5 year olds, SLI affects about 2 children in every classroom (about 7%). It is more common in boys than girls.
Genetic basis of SLI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnlGvc DIiHw
Neurological basis of SLI
Hugdahl et al. 2004. fMRI Brain Activation in a Finnish Family With Specific Language Impairment Compared With a Normal Control Group.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
Vol.47 162-172
From abstract Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to monitor changes in neuronal activation in temporal and frontal lobe areas 5 Finnish family members with specific language impairment (SLI) and 6 individuals in an intact control group. Magnetic resonance (MR) image acquisitions were made while the participants listened to series of isolated vowel sounds, pseudowords, and real words. The results showed significant differences between the family with SLI and the intact control group with regard to brain activation in areas in the temporal and frontal lobes. Temporal lobe activation differences were most pronounced in the middle temporal gyrus bordering the superior temporal sulcus. The control participants also activated an area in the inferior frontal lobe in BA 44.
Individuals with SLI showed reduced activation in brain areas that are critical for speech processing and phonological awareness. The present functional brain imaging data fit well with other recent imaging data that also showed structural abnormalities in the same and neighboring areas.
Sentences produced by children with SLI
(Radford 2006) Sentences produced by the SLI children in the Leonard files on the childes data-base .
No
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Child
B B C C C C D G H H J K D D D D D E F G
Child utterance
Maybe goes on this one What say? Can get us some them? Do this come out? Billy wanna has his blocks out The tree must broken off Superman have him hands up And they’re jump in water This is mine daddy’s I will be Chad brother Them is boys Me don’t know how do it How you knowed? It cames off I didn’t sawed you come in Think her too growed up What is this is? What next one is? Hope him gonna hit him butt Me no like him
Adult counterpart
Maybe it goes on this one What did you/d’you say? Can you get us some of them? Does this come out? Billy wants to have his blocks out The tree must have broken off Superman has his hands up And they’re jumping in the water This is my daddy’s I will be Chad’s brother They are boys I don’t know how to do it How did you know? It came off I didn’t see you come in I think she’s too grown up What is this? What’s the next one?| I hope he’s gonna hit his butt I don’t like him
Expressive vs. receptive deficit SLI children typically show some (or all) of the following types of impairment : Phonological (e.g. problems with consonant clusters and syllable-final consonants) Lexical (delayed acquisition of words also have word-finding problems) – e.g. first word appears around 23 months in SLI children, but around 11 months in TD children; SLI children Semantic (problems in determining the linguistic meaning of words, phrases and sentences, and understanding the meaning of metaphors) Grammatical (e.g. problems with affixes/inflections and articles/particles, complex syntax) Pragmatic (e.g. problems in the use of language in appropriate contexts) Reading problems
Delay versus Deviance
Delay: Protracted acquisition of language, following typical developmental pattern.
Deviance: Different developmental sequences and processes.
Delay Plateau Profile differences Abnormal frequency of errors Qualitative difference
SLI – Accounts: Competence vs. performance
37-924-01 Theoretical Approaches to Specific Language Impairment (SLI) Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem Bar Ilan University
Possible accounts
Competence or performance?
Impairment in the language mechanism vs. impairment in language processing aptitude?
Impairment in language processing vs. impairment in processing?
Domain General Accounts (Not ) language specific
Auditory (temporal processing) deficit hypothesis
Merzenich, M. Jenkins, W., Johnston, P., S., Schreiner, C., Miller, S. L. &
Tallal, P
., (1996) Temporal Processing Deficits of Language Learning Impaired Children Ameliorated by Training,
Science
, v. 271, p. 77-81. (=Fast ForWord) Task: discriminate between speech stimuli -six syllable contrasts ([ba] versus [da], [da] versus [ta], [ε] versus [ae], [dab] versus [daeb], [sa] versus [sta] and [sa] versus [sha]).
Findings: LI group made most errors discriminating syllables which were differentiated by consonants and fewest errors on those differentiated by vowels. The LI group was significantly poorer than the normal in discriminating all syllables that incorporated brief temporal cues followed rapidly in succession by other acoustic cues.
They also were impaired in discriminating [sa] versus [sha]. They were unimpaired discriminating stimuli differentiated by vowels.
Perceptual Deficit Model
Leonard, L. B.1989. Language learnability and specific language impairment in children.
Applied Psycholinguistics
10: 179-202 Following the sonority scale (Srlkirk 1984), Leonard proposes that SLI is an Auditory Perceptual Deficit: Vowels and diphthongs are easier to perceive than consonants (and consonants are particularly difficult to perceive when occurring in clusters of two or more successive consonants) Stressed vowels are easier to perceive than unstressed vowels, long vowels and diphthongs are easier than short vowels, and full vowels are easier than reduced vowels
Percentage correct probes and spontaneous speech (Rice & Wexler 1995)
-ed
probe
-ed
spontaneous
-s
probe
-s
spontaneous
BE
probe
BE
spontaneous
DO
probe plural Prepositions
SLI
27 23 22 37 50 46 30 88 96
N3
45 46 44 60 64 71 47 96 97
N5
92 90 91 89 95 96 90 97 98 What would be the predictions for Hebrew?
SLI in Hebrew monolinguals Dromi et al. (1993, 1999)
Predictions: With verbal morphology so central in Hebrew, a Semitic language, it was predicted that a very few inflections, if any, would pose a problem for children with SLI. inflections which carry more features would be more difficult than those which carry fewer features with errors that show a simpler feature complex. Method: Hebrew speaking children with SLI, ages 4-6, using a sentence completion task and enactments.
Findings
Sentence completion: while monolingual children with TLD scored at ceiling, children with SLI showed 80% success when one feature was involved, but hardly ever produce the target morpheme which represented two features (fem. pl.). Enactment: while monolingual children with TLD scored at ceiling, children with SLI showed 80% success when one feature was involved, but only 60% success when two features (person and gender) were involved.
While in English most errors are omissions, in Hebrew most errors are substitutions in which a morpheme which marks just one feature was used to replace a morpheme which marks two features
Verb inflection in Hebrew (Dromi 1999 et al) - present tense agreement items
100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% Fem sing Masc plur Fem plur SLI TLD - MLU
100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0%
Verb inflections in Hebrew - A comparison between the SR and Dromi et al's enactment task
1sg 2sg ms 2sg fm Enactment task (Dromi et al., 1999) SR
Figure 2 - Person errors in the past tenes
2sg fm 2sg ms 0 2 4 6 8 10 1sg 2sg ms 2sg fm 3rd sg 1 pl 2pl 12 14
Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH)
Ullman, M.T. & Pierpont, E.I. 2005. Specific Language Impairment is not Specific to Language: The Procedural Deficit Hypothesis.
Cortex 41
, 399-433. "SLI can be largely explained by the abnormal development of brain structures that constitute the procedural memory system.
” Procedural memory: “mental grammar”, syntax, some morphology Declarative memory: “mental lexicon”, vocabulary, idioms, irregular past-tense forms
PROCEDURAL MEMORY SYSTEM: DEFINITION
Brain system involved in “procedural memory” Learning new and controlling established motor and cognitive skills, habits, and other procedures E.g. typing, riding a bike, skilled game playing Aspects of rule-learning Learning and performing skills involving sequences Includes system involved in learning, representation, and use of procedural memory
PROCEDURAL SYSTEM: CHARACTERISTICS
Gradual acquisition of procedures Learning occurs with practice, over time Rapid, automatic application “Implicit Memory System”
a network of interconnected structures rooted in
frontal/basal-ganglia circuits
, subserves the learning and execution of motor and cognitive skills. recent evidence implicates that this system is important for specific aspects of grammar a significant proportion of individuals with SLI suffer from abnormalities of this brain network, leading to impairments of the linguistic and non-linguistic functions that depend on it grammatical and lexical retrieval deficits are strongly linked to dysfunctions of the basal ganglia (BG), and of the frontal cortex, esp. Broca ’s area
Domain (Language (Grammar)) Specific Accounts
Feature Deficit Model
Gopnik, M. 1990. Feature blindness: A case study. 164
Language Acquisition
1: 139 Due to a genetic deficit SLI children do not have grammatical (syntactic-semantic) features in their grammar. This is a global deficit.
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Bilingual SLI sample - English *EXP: what ’s Maugli doing?
*YON: walking in in near the trees.
*EXP: here is a … panther *YON: have a doll.
*EXP: the panther has a … you are right … but the panther has a… *YON: a doll *EXP: and what ’s the panther doing?
*YON: looking for the wolves.
*EXP: and then, what is Maugli doing now?
*YON: playing on stairs. *EXP: what ’s he playing with?
*YON: bears and coconuts.
*EXP: what ’s he doing with the coconuts? *YON: try to get it. *EXP: and who else do we have?
*YON: a a a tiger and a snake.
*EXP: oh oh. what ’s the panther doing?
*YON: ask where the kid is. *EXP: you think he is asking them where the kid is.
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*EXP: but then what happened to the panther?
*YON: asleep. *EXP: and when he was asleep?
*YON: he run away. *EXP: he ran away. *EXP: who found him?
*YON: the monkeys. *EXP: oh gosh, what are they doing to Maugli?
*YON: picking him up.
*YON: then they ’re almost holding. *EXP: what did he do with these?
*YON: throwed him. *EXP: he threw them?
*EXP: what are they these?
*YON: bananas. *EXP: who eats the bananas? *YON: monkeys.
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*YON: the tiger. *EXP: do you think they ’re friends?
*YON: no. *YON: he plans fire. *EXP: he put fire on him. *EXP: and is he scared?
*YON: yeah. *EXP: yeah so what ’s he doing?
*YON: running away. *EXP: oh gosh he ’s running away. *EXP: then he found a girl playing by the water. *YON: yeah. *EXP: and where ’s he?
*YON: in a tree. *EXP: yeah. *EXP: and now …?
*YON: going together. *EXP: they ’re going together to…?
*YON: the house.
Rule Deficit Model
Gopnik M & Crago MB. 1991. Familial aggregation of a developmental disorder.
Cognition
39: 1-50 Studying three generations of a family in London, Gopnik & Cargo concluded that they have the same syntactic abilities as MLU matched controls, but could not generate morphological rules (due to genetic failure of the dual mechanism of morphological acquisition).
Bishop (1994) - A study of 12 SLI children ranging in age from 8;2 to 12;11
Took
it off (in reply to ‘What did they do with the top part of the pram?
’) It
take
me a long time (in reply to ‘Did it take you a long time to get better?) And then Mummy
taked
to the garage to xxx He
falled
in (in reply to ‘What did Andrew do when the ice gave way?
’) He
sawed
mine brother (in reply to ‘Has the doctor ever been to see you?
’) The car has
broked
down
Agreement Deficit Model
Clahsen H, Bartke S and Göllner S. 1997. Formal features in impaired grammars: a comparison of English and German SLI children.
Journal of Neurolinguistics
10: 151-171 Findings: Past tense - 76% of main verbs and 89% of auxiliaries 3Sg present tense - 49% of main verbs and 35% of auxiliaries SLI children have problems with acquiring uninterpretable features, which make no contribution to the meaning of the sentence (semantically redundant), e.g., agreement features.
>> Tsimpli and Stavrakaki (1999) and Tsimpli (2001) -
Uninterpretable Feature Deficit Model
Contexts for 3rd person auxiliaries in the corpus of Clahsen, Bartke and Göllner (from Radford 2006) how do these examples support their claim?
Contexts where adults would use a third person singular present form of the progressive auxiliary
be
22. And boy picking ’em up (JW 11;03) 23. He jumping over a gate (WL 11;05). 24. Apples fallen out on the boy who pinching them (JW 11;03) 25. The man taking the cat down on the ground (AZ11 12;03) 26. The dog taking slipper off him (AZ11 12;03) 27. Her hugging it (CT 13;11)
Contexts where adults would use a third person singular present form of the perfect auxiliary
have
35. She sometimes buy stuff and then paint it what haven ’t got coat of paint on it (RJ 11;11) 36. He been tied on (AZ12 13;0)
Contexts where adults would use a third person singular present form of the tense auxiliary
do
37. He don ’t know (JW 10;3) 38. He don ’t get hungry (JW 10;03) 39. What, when he don ’t go to work? (JW 10;03) 40. And the bus don ’t take no notice (AZ11 10;3) 41. And he don ’t know how to (RJ 10;11) 42. He don ’t know how to put his brakes on (AZ12 11;0)
Agreement-and-Tense-Omission Model (Extended Optional Infinitives)
Wexler K, Schütze C & Rice M (1998) ‘Subject case in children with SLI and unaffected controls: Evidence for the Agr/Tns Omission Model ’,
Language Acquisition
7: 317-344 TD children omit either TNS or AGR or neither up to the age of 3. In SLI children this is extended until the age of 7-8.
Schutze & Wexler (1996): AGR/TNS omission model (ATOM)
Nominative Subject Non-Nom Subject Finite
+ (he goes) - (him goes)
Non-finite
+ (he go) + (him go) •Non-nominative case on subjects used at the optional infinitive-stage will be largely with non-finite verbs •Only 5% of finite verbs take a non-nominative subjects, whereas 46% of non-finite verbs take a non-nominative subject.
•Non-nominative is the default case. (Test: “ Who wants ice cream?
” )
a) AGR or TNS or both may be deleted b) AGR assigns NOM. If no AGR, subject gets default case c) Default case in English is ACC d) AGR checks 3rd person singular morphology
Him goes
is not attested because there is a contradiction between the verb morphology and the case on the subject.
+AGR -AGR +TNS
+ (he goes) + (him go)
-TNS
+ (he go) + (go)
Agreement-and-Tense-Omission Model (Extended Optional Infinitives)
6:3 תירוא ....
תחא םעפ : יתור םילכה תא הפטש אמאו הלכא הדליהו לכא דליה .
ןשי אוה לותחהו .1
.2
ךלה הארו םק הלותחה םילכה תא הפטש אמאש םואתפו .
הרובדה תא לוכאל הצר אוה ו הרובדה תא הרובדהו הרובדה תא לוכאל אב .
הלותחה הז ירחאו וירחא ץר הלותחה יכ .
היטבמאב םימב הלותחה תא ופטש םהו הלותחל ומש םה [" רחא " הלימה לע םעט ] ךכ רחאו .( טרס : יתור ) ....
הא .3
.4
.5
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6:7 ידוד ....
תחא םעפ : יתור םילכוא הדליו דלי היה הרובד היה הרובדל ךלה לותחה זאו ו .1
.2
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.4
היטבמאב לותחה תא קרמה לע ךלה לותחה םואתפו תוקנמ םה הדליהו דליהו אמאו .
טרס לותחל ומש םהו .5
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Is the sensitivity of the tense and agreement unique to SLI?
Agrammatism - Fridemann & Grodzinsky (1997)
"This paper discusses the description of agrammatic production focusing on the verbal inflectional morphology. Agrammatism in Hebrew is investigated through an experiment with a patient who displays a highly selective impairment:
agreement inflection is completely intact, but tense inflection, use of copula
, and embedded structures are severely impaired. A retrospective examination of the literature shows that our findings are corroborated by others. A selective account of the agrammatic production deficiency is proposed, according to which only a subclass of the functional syntactic categories is impaired in this syndrome. The consequence of this deficit is the pruning of the syntactic phrase marker of agrammatic patients, which impairs performance from the impaired node and higher. These findings also bear upon central issues in linguistic theories, particularly that of Pollock (1989), regarding split inflection."
(1) ha ’ish roce levashel, az hu lokeax sir ve
bishel.
the-man wants to-cook, so he takes(3sg-M-pr.) pot and cooked(3sg-Mpast) (2) axshav ata holex. etmol ata
telex.
Now you(2sg-M) go(2sg-M-pr.). Yesterday you will go(2sg-M-fut.) (3) Maxar dani
haya
ba-yam
Tomorrow Danny was in-the-sea
Is SLI only about tense and agreement?
Scheaffer at al 2003
In children with SLI (14 Subjects: 3;11-4;10), pragmatic principles develop normally as a function of age, rather than as a function of grammar developmental stage. Grammatically, 4-year old children with SLI make errors comparable to younger normally developing children.
Mabel L. Rice, Kenneth Wexler, & Jennifer Francois (2001)
Passive Comprehension: Identification of Agent
0.9
0.75
0.6
0.45
0.3
0.15
0 SLI Lexically Matched Age Matched At 5 years of age, children in the SLI group were below age peers in their comprehension of reversible full verbal passives, and similar to their younger lexically-equivalent peers
Van der Lely HKJ and Battell J (2003)
(a) Who Miss Scarlett saw somebody? (Response to ‘Miss Scarlet saw someone in the lounge. Ask me who ’ – the target response being
Who did Miss Scarlet see in the lounge?
) (b) Which Reverend Green open a door? (Response to ‘Reverend Green opened a door. Ask me which one’ – the target response being
Which door did Rev. Green open?
).
(c) What did Colonel Mustard had something in his pocket? (Response to ‘Something was in Colonel Mustard’s pocket. Ask me what ’ – the target response being
What was in Colonel Mustard ’s pocket?
).
Sample narrative (MoSLI)
ולכא
ו
ולכא
ו לכוא הלש םידליל הניכה אמא .
בובז ול אב כ " חא סעכ אוה כ " חא בנזב הלגייב הל םח והשמ תורעשב הל . והזו התוא
ומש ומש וקינ
כ כ כ " " " חא חא חא Mom prepared food for her children and pro ate.pl and pro ate.pl Then, came a fly. Then, he was angry Then, pro put.pl a pretzel on her tail.
Then, pro Then, put.pl something hot in her pro cleaned.pl her hair and that ’s it
Representational Deficit For Dependent Relations
(RDDR)
Van der Lely HKJ and Battell J (2003) ‘Wh-movement in children with grammatical SLI: A test of the RDDR hypothesis ’,
Language
79: 153-181 "SLI children have problems in handling
non-local dependencies
(between pairs of constituents which are not immediately adjacent) such as those involved in tense marking (which involves a T-V dependency both in the agreement-based analysis of Adger 2003 and in the Affix Hopping analysis of Radford 2004), agreement (which involves a subject-verb dependency), determining pronominal reference (which involves a pronoun-antecedent dependency), and movement (which involves a dependency between two constituents, one of which attracts the other)."
Deficit in Computational Grammatical Complexity (CGC)
Marinis, T. & van der Lely, H. K. J. (2007). On-line processing of wh-questions in children with G-SLI and typically developing children.
International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders
42(5), 557-582.
“The CGC Hypothesis claims that the core deficit in some but not all forms of SLI is in the representation and/or mechanisms underlying the construction of hierarchical grammatical structures. For G-SLI children their grammar is characterized by Grammatical Structural Economy in syntax, morphology and for most phonology too. Thus, the least complex structure will surface. Within the syntactic component, the core deficit is in computing syntactic dependencies between constituents. Within Chomsky ’s Minimalist Program (Chomsky 1995), this can be implemented as optionality of the operation Move, which is not ‘automatic’ and ‘compulsory’. Further, complexity is defined as the number of movement operations, thus subject questions are predicted to be less problematic than object questions because the former has one less movement operation (van der Lely and Battell 2003). van der Lely and colleagues demonstrated that the CGC hypothesis accounts for a wide range of phenomena in English G SLI children ”
Is it only about the functional system?
Deficits were found for: Lexical access NWR SR Narratives Executive functions