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Procedural learning across modalities in French-speaking children with specific language impairment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2014

AUDREY GABRIEL ,
THIERRY MEULEMANS ,
CHRISTOPHE PARISSE  and
CHRISTELLE MAILLART
AUDREY GABRIEL
Affiliation:
University of Liège
THIERRY MEULEMANS
Affiliation:
University of Liège
CHRISTOPHE PARISSE
Affiliation:
University of Paris Ouest Nanterre
CHRISTELLE MAILLART*
Affiliation:
University of Liège
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Christelle Maillart, Department of Psychology: Cognition and Behavior, University of Liège, B38, Rue de l'Aunaie 30, Liège 4000, Belgium. E-mail: christelle.maillart@ulg.ac.be
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Abstract

It has been suggested that the language problems encountered in specific language impairment (SLI) arise from basal ganglia abnormalities that lead to impaired procedural memory. However, recent serial reaction time (SRT) studies did not reveal any differences between the SLI and typically developing (TD) groups on the measures of procedural memory linked to visual sequence learning. In this paper, 16 children with and without SLI were compared on two versions of SRT tasks: a visual task and an auditory one. The results showed that children with SLI were as fast as their TD peers in both modalities. All of the children obtained similar specific sequence learning indices, indicating that they were able to detect regularities in both modalities. Although children with SLI were as accurate as their TD peers for the visual SRT task, they made more errors than their TD peers in auditory SRT conditions. The results indicate that, in relation to procedural memory, the core of the impairment in SLI is not linked to difficulties in the detection of regularities. We argue that when children with SLI present some difficulties, the children's weaknesses might depend on the type of processing involved (e.g., tasks involving auditory sequences).

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Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , May 2015 , pp. 747 - 769
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

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