Specific language impairment as systemic developmental disorders

in Journal of Neurolinguistics (2009), 22(2), 109-122

Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is a disorder characterised by slow, abnormal language development. Most children with this disorder do not present any other cognitive or neurological deficits. There ... [more ▼]

Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is a disorder characterised by slow, abnormal language development. Most children with this disorder do not present any other cognitive or neurological deficits. There are many different pathological developmental profiles and switches from one profile to another often occur. An alternative would be to consider SLI as a generic name covering three developmental language disorders: developmental verbal dyspraxia, linguistic dysphasia, and pragmatic language impairment. The underlying cause of SLI is unknown and the numerous studies on the subject suggest that there is no single cause. We suggest that SLI is the result of an abnormal development of the language system, occurring when more than one part of the system fails, thus blocking the system’s natural compensation mechanisms. Since compensation also hinders linguistic evaluation, one possibility for diagnosis and remediation control is to assess basic cognitive abilities by non-linguistic means whenever possible. Neurological plausible bases for language and language development should also be taken into account to offer new hypotheses and research issues for future work on SLI. [less ▲]

Fast mapping between grammatical constructions and meaning: An experiment in French children aged 3 to 4

Poster (2008, June)

The interplay between phonology and syntax in French-speaking children with SLI

in International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders (2008), 43

Background. This study investigated the relationship between phonological and syntactic disorders of French-speaking children with SLI in production. Aims. This article compares three theories (pure ... [more ▼]

Background. This study investigated the relationship between phonological and syntactic disorders of French-speaking children with SLI in production. Aims. This article compares three theories (pure phonological theory, surface theory and mapping theory) of language developmental disorders, all of which view phonological difficulties as the main reason for the children’s problems. Methods and procedures. The linguistic parameters (salience, phonological complexity, syntactic complexity, lexical/functional, semantic/syntactic) (that are fundamental) to these theories were identified. The validity of these parameters was then tested against the phonological and syntactic results obtained by children with SLI and control children. Nine syntactic categories were tested. Outcomes and results. Phonological complexity was the only parameter whose importance was confirmed, and this was only for phonological results. Syntactic complexity did not correlate significantly with children’s difficulties, and the importance of phonological salience was not confirmed for French-speaking children. Mixed results were obtained for the other parameters, including negative correlations, which may call for different explanations. Conclusions. No theory fully explained the observed outcomes. Pure phonological theory was the most parsimonious, but could not explain all the results. [less ▲]

Phonological deficits in French speaking children with SLI

in International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders (2006), 41(3), 253274

Background: This study investigated the phonological disorders of Frenchspeaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) in production. Aims: The main goal was to confirm whether children with ... [more ▼]

Background: This study investigated the phonological disorders of Frenchspeaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) in production. Aims: The main goal was to confirm whether children with SLI have limitations in phonological ability as compared with normally developing children matched by mean length of utterance (MLU) and phonemic inventory size. A number of researchers have obtained findings pointing in this direction, but the conclusions have never been tested on French-speaking children. The second goal was to find out whether characteristic features of the French language are reflected in the nature of the children’s phonological disorder. Methods & Procedures: The spontaneous language of 16 children with SLI and 16 control children matched on MLU and phonemic inventory size (normal language development group) were analysed using different measures bearing on utterances, words, syllables and phonemes. In both SLI and NLD groups, the children were distributed into two different subgroups based on their MLU, with controlled phonemic inventory size. Outcomes & Results: The results supported a specific limitation in the phonological abilities of French children with SLI, as has already been demonstrated for English, Hebrew, Italian and Spanish-Catalan. However, two unexpected results were also obtained. First, a significant difference between children with SLI and control children could only be found for older children (MLU.3), not for younger children with MLU,3. This was true for all measures. Conclusions: This finding highlights the importance of having a developmental perspective and needs to be confirmed through a longitudinal study. Second, deficits were much more significant at the phoneme level than at the syllable level. This may be explained by the fact that the pronunciation of syllables in French is very homogenous, making them easier to segment. [less ▲]

Les déficits phonologiques des enfants francophones ayant des troubles spécifiques de développement du langage

in Glossa (2004), 89

This study investigated the phonological expressive disorders of Frenchspeaking children with SLI. The main goal of this paper was to confirm whether children with SLI have limitations in phonological ... [more ▼]

This study investigated the phonological expressive disorders of Frenchspeaking children with SLI. The main goal of this paper was to confirm whether children with SLI have limitations in phonological ability even when they are compared with normally-developing children matched by MLU and phonemic inventory size. This was demonstrated by Bortoloni and Leonard (2000), Orsolini et coll. (2001), and Aguilar-Mediavilla et coll. (2002), which obtained the most detailed results in this direction, but it was never tested in French language. The second goal of the paper is to find out whether the characteristics of the French language are reflected in the nature of the children’s phonological disorder. In order to test this, the spontaneous language of 16 children with SLI and of 16 control children matched on MLU and phonemic inventory size (NLD group) was analysed using different measures bearing on utterances, words, syllables, or phonemes. In both SLI and NLD groups, the children were distributed in two different subgroups, on the basis of their MLU and phonemic inventory size. The results supported a specific limitation in the phonological abilities of French children with SLI, as was already demonstrated for English, Hebrew, Italian, and Spanish-Catalan. However, two unexpected results were also obtained. Firstly, a significant difference between children with SLI and control children could only be found for older children (MLU above 3), not for younger children with MLU below 3. This was true for all measures. This finding stresses out the importance of having a development perspective and has to be confirmed with longitudinal design. Secondly, deficits were much more important at the phoneme level than at the syllable level. This can be explained by the fact that the French language has a very homogenous pronunciation of syllables, which makes them easier to segment. [less ▲]