engleski

Behavioural and electrophysiological measures of morphological processing in children

The structure of Croatian noun morphology requires early acquisition of relatively big number of inflectional morphemes. The process of mastering noun morphology is long lasting and even school-age children show some characteristic errors. The early starting and long lasting process of acquisition can therefore serve as a good clinical marker for detecting SLI children. In this paper two experiments will be presented: a behavioral study in which various case forms were elicited (production) and an ERP experiments in which error detection was the primary goal (comprehension). Both experiments included a group of four SLI children (age 9). Behavioral studies on SLI children in Croatian showed characteristic patterns of errors that differentiate them from TLD children: (a) SLI children shift between inflectional paradigms ; (b) for a prolonged period of time they use forms typical for younger age ; (c) the errors persist and do not decrease with age. In addition, an ERP experiment was conducted on children with SLI and children with TLD. The experiment manipulated the case of the target word (Dative vs. Accusative) by manipulating the final morpheme of the target noun. While the results in the TLD group showed clear ERP effects (i.e. clear differences between the experimental conditions - violation vs. non-violation condition), the results in the SLI group were less clear, i.e. there was no consistent difference in the experimental conditions. This corresponds to the failure of error detection in this group of children on behavioral measures.

noun morphology; EEG; children with Specific Language Impairment

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