Aspects of grammar sensitive to procedural memory deficits in children with specific language impairment

Processing Verb Meanings and the Declarative/Procedural Model: A Developmental Study

According to the Declarative/Procedural Model, the lexicon depends on declarative memory while grammar relies on procedural memory. Furthermore, procedural memory underlies the sequential processing of language. Thus, this system is important for predicting the next item in a sentence. Verb processing represents a good candidate to test this assumption. Semantic representations of verbs include information about the protagonists in the situations they refer to. This semantic knowledge is acquired implicitly and used during verb processing, such that the processing of a verb preactivates its typical patients (e.g., the window for break). Thus, determining how the patient typicality effect appears during children’s cognitive development could provide evidence about the memory system that is dedicated to this effect. Two studies are presented in which French children aged 6–10 and adults made grammaticality judgments on 80 auditorily presented sentences. In Experiment 1, the verb was followed by a typical patient or by a less typical patient. In Experiment 2, grammatical sentences were constructed such that the verb was followed either by a typical patient or by a noun that could not be a patient of that verb. The typicality effect occurs in younger children and is interpreted in terms of developmental invariance. We suggest that this effect may depend on procedural memory, in line with studies that showed that meaning is necessary to allow procedural memory to learn the sequence of words in a sentence.

Statistical Learning and Language Impairments: Toward More Precise Theoretical Accounts

Statistical-learning (SL) theory offers an experience-based account of typical and atypical spoken and written language acquisition. Recent work has provided initial support for this view, tying individual differences in SL abilities to linguistic skills, including language impairments. In the current article, we provide a critical review of studies testing SL abilities in participants with and without developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment and discuss the directions that this field of research has taken so far. We identify substantial vagueness in the demarcation lines between different theoretical constructs (e.g., “statistical learning,” “implicit learning,” and “procedural learning”) as well as in the mappings between experimental tasks and these theoretical constructs. Moreover, we argue that current studies are not designed to contrast different theoretical approaches but rather test singular confirmatory predictions without including control tasks showing normal performance. We end by providing concrete suggestions for how to advance research on SL deficits in language impairments.

Desempeño en tareas de memoria procedimental en niños con trastorno especifico del lenguaje: Una revisión de literatura

Introducción. La Frontal Assesment Battery (FAB) es una herramienta de screening de valoración rápida de las funciones ejecutivas. Estudios previos evidencian que variables sociodemográficas como la edad, el sexo y el nivel educativo podrían influir en el rendimiento de la FAB. El objetivo del estudio es analizar, en adultos mayores argentinos provenientes de la población general y sin deterioro cognitivo (evaluados según el Minimental, pruebas de fluidez verbal semántica y fonológica y el Test del Reloj) si existe diferencia en la FAB a partir de dichas variables. Metodología. Se analizó el rendimiento de 145 adultos mayores provenientes de la población general y sin deterioro cognitivo entre 60 y 90 años. Se realizaron estudios de diferencias de medias (t de Student y ANOVA), análisis univariante de la varianza, correlaciones (r de Pearson) y regresiones lineales simples para analizar la influencia de la edad, el sexo, el nivel educativo y el rendimiento cognitivo en la FAB. Resultados. Se observaron diferencias estadísticamente significativas en el puntaje total de la FAB en función del nivel educativo, pero no en función de la edad, ni el sexo.  Asimismo, se encontró que el puntaje de la FAB se correlacionó con otras pruebas de screening cognitivo, como el Minimental, el Test del Reloj y fluidez verbal (fonológica y semántica). Conclusiones. El presente estudio presenta resultados que señalan la importancia de considerar el nivel educativo en la valoración de la FAB.

Distributed Training Enhances Implicit Sequence Acquisition in Children With Specific Language Impairment

PURPOSE

This study explored the effects of 2 different training structures on the implicit acquisition of a sequence in a serial reaction time (SRT) task in children with and without specific language impairment (SLI).

METHOD

All of the children underwent 3 training sessions, followed by a retention session 2 weeks after the last session. In the massed-training condition, the 3 training sessions were in immediate succession on 1 day, whereas in the distributed-training condition, the 3 training sessions were spread over a 1-week period in an expanding schedule format.

RESULTS

Statistical analyses showed that the children with normal language were unaffected by the training conditions, performing the SRT task similarly in both training conditions. The children with SLI, however, were affected by the training structure, performing the SRT task better when the training sessions were spaced over time rather than clustered on 1 day.

CONCLUSION

This study demonstrated that although intensive training does not increase learning in children with SLI, distributing training sessions over time does increase learning. The implications of these results on the learning abilities of children with SLI are discussed, as are the mechanisms involved in massed versus distributed learning.

Later learning stages in procedural memory are impaired in children with Specific Language Impairment

BACKGROUND

According to the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis (PDH), difficulties in the procedural memory system may contribute to the language difficulties encountered by children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Most studies investigating the PDH have used the sequence learning paradigm; however these studies have principally focused on initial sequence learning in a single practice session.

AIMS

The present study sought to extend these investigations by assessing the consolidation stage and longer-term retention of implicit sequence-specific knowledge in 42 children with or without SLI.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

Both groups of children completed a serial reaction time task and were tested 24h and one week after practice.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

Results showed that children with SLI succeeded as well as children with typical development (TD) in the early acquisition stage of the sequence learning task. However, as training blocks progressed, only TD children improved their sequence knowledge while children with SLI did not appear to evolve any more. Moreover, children with SLI showed a lack of the consolidation gains in sequence knowledge displayed by the TD children.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Overall, these results were in line with the predictions of the PDH and suggest that later learning stages in procedural memory are impaired in SLI.

Inflectional versus derivational abilities of children with specific language impairment- A panorama from sequential cognition

BACKGROUND

Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting language acquisition in the absence of frank neurological damage, hearing deficits, severe environmental deprivation, or mental retardation. Children with SLI have significant difficulties in syntax domain of language compared to semantics, while their acquisition of pragmatics is relatively spared.

PURPOSE

The purpose of the present study is to examine the judgment and revision of inflectional and derivational morphemes of children with specific language impairment (SLI).

METHODS

31 children with SLI and 33 typically developing (TD) children participated in the study (age range 8-13 years). The stimuli consisted of 18 sentences with inflectional morphemes and 18 sentences with derivational morphemes for grammatical judgment and revision tasks. Inflectional and derivational performance of SLI group was compared with TD group on judgment and revision scores.

RESULTS

Children with SLI were significantly poorer compared to TD children on inflectional operations (invariably on judging & revising) but performed like TD children on derivational morphemes. Within SLI, inflectional performance was significantly poorer than derivational performance. In contrast, TD children performed better on inflections than derivations. Findings supported the predictions and discussed using possible sequencing problems in children with SLI.

CONCLUSION

The study describes the findings using sequential difficulties reported by procedural deficit hypothesis (PDH) in SLI.

Procedural Learning and Individual Differences in Language

The aim of the current study was to examine different aspects of procedural memory in young adults who varied with regard to their language abilities. We selected a sample of procedural memory tasks, each of which represented a unique type of procedural learning, and has been linked, at least partially, to the functionality of the corticostriatal system. The findings showed that variance in language abilities is associated with performance on different domains of procedural memory, including the motor domain (as shown in the pursuit rotor task), the cognitive domain (as shown in the weather prediction task), and the linguistic domain (as shown in the nonword repetition priming task). These results implicate the corticostriatal system in individual differences in language.