Language DevelopmentLecture Notes: 12/4/14Grammatical Development with SLI● Morphosyntactic difficulties is the hallmark of SLI● Difficulty with grammatical morphemes (largely, omit them from utterances)○ E.g., plurals, tense markers, auxiliaries● Especially marked for verb inflections and agreement morphology○ E.g., am going vs. is going; “he jump on the boat”● Difficulty with different sentence structures ○ E.g., questions vs. statements; coordinate vs subordinate clauses Common Grammatical Errors in Children with SLI● Article omission ○ I don’t have best friend● Aux omission○ We playing hide-and-seek● Past-tense errors○ Adult: What did you do yesterday morning?○ Child: I open my eyes and take off my sleeping clothes○ Lots of people camedTheories of SLI● Temporal processing deficits● Surface Hypothesis● Extended Optional Infinitive Account● Generalized Slowing HypothesisTemporal processing deficits● Remember Rapid Auditory Processing?○ Ability to hear rapid changes in the stream of auditory information (e.g., high vs low tones)● Children with SLI have difficulty with RAP, which result in difficulties parsing out speech and learning language● Controversial, both theoretically and clinically● Theoretically, not all children with SLI have auditory processing difficulties● Clinically, the treatment program’s effectiveness (FastForWord) has not been replicatedSurface Hypothesis● Difficulty with morphosyntax is due to difficulty with processing phonetically-subtle speech cues● Morphosyntactic markings are usually word-final and phonetically less salient (they are short and unstressed; e.g., “walked”)● May not be the full story● E.g., same marking as part of word is heard (box vs. rocks)● Suggests that the complexity of the marking (part of root vs plural) contributes to the difficulty level● Also, making the markings more salient (e.g., by stressing, lengthening, and amplifying them) does not make it easier for SLI children to process themExtended Optional Infinitive Account● Hypothesis that children with SLI have immature grammatical knowledge● Specifically, that children with SLI “get stuck” in the stage of grammatical development when the use of grammatical markings is thought to be optional● May not be the full story:○ E.g., children with SLI differ from normally-developing children in the errors they makeGeneralized Slowing Hypothesis● Children with SLI have generally slowed or limited processing capacity● They are slower on a number of perceptual and motor tasks● They also have difficulty with completing two tasks at onceHow “Specific” is the Specific Language Impairment?● Children with SLI usually have impaired phonological memory● Children with SLI usually have lower non-verbal IQ than normally-developing children● Children with SLI also score lower than typically-developing children on tests of symbolicfunctioning, hierarchical planning, and reasoningWhat does SLI tell us about the relationship between language and other skills?● Language difficulties are frequently accompanied by IQ, memory, and other non-linguistic deficits● Language difficulties may be underlied by a number of very different deficits● Leonard suggested that the reason for such diffusion of “causes” and “effects” is that there is no such thing as “specific” language impairment● Instead, children with SLI represent the low end of the distribution for language acquisition ability (whatever that may be)What is Autism?● First described in 1943 as “fascinating peculiarities”● An umbrella term that subsumes a spectrum of disorders = ASD● Used to be known as PDD = Pervasive Developmental Disorders● Used to include:○ Autism ○ Asperger’s Syndrome○ Rett’s Syndrome○ Childhood Disintegrative Disorder○ PDD-NOSDiagnosing Autism● Behavioral observation and criteria acc to DSM-V○ Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction○ Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities● Symptoms must be present in the early developmental period● Symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning● These disturbances are not better explained by intellectual disability (intellectual developmental disorder) or global developmental