engleski

Syntactic processing in SLI children: strategies and speed

The research conducted within the frame of the Competition model (Bates, MacWhinney, 1987) showed that children with Specific Language Impairment rely on less complex strategies i.e. local cues in syntactic processing (Evans, MacWhinney, 1999) and that they are significantly late in ‘ cue strength transition’ compared to typical developing children (TDC) (Lindner, 2003). Comparative studies between groups of SLI children and other language impairment groups like aphasia or focal lesion indicate that the biggest rigidity in progress of language development is in the group of SLI. Conducted studies of syntactic processing of TDC from 6 to 11 years in Croatian showed that morphological cues like case and agreement become more reliable and the most valid cues for syntactic interpretation in children over 8 years. As children achieve a stable cue validity hierarchy, speed of processing does not decrease, especially in cue-neutralized sentences or in sentences in which cues are in competition (Kuvač Kraljević, 2008). In this study data about strategy and speed of syntactic processing in a group of SLI children will be presented. Ten 9-year old SLI children and ten language matched TDC were tested on 96 syntactically simple sentences (N-V-N) in which 4 cues (case, animacy, number and agreement) were varied. Results showed that SLI children had the same language knowledge as their language matched TDC. Regarding speed of processing, SLI children showed unusual patterns of responses due to the different syntactic situations (competition, neutralization and coalition). Additional analyses on speed variable showed that cue processing is based on “ one-by-one” cue principle and that there are difficulties in manipulation of language knowledge.

Competition mode; cues; Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

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