Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T05:35:34.941Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Children with specific language impairment and their contribution to the study of language development*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2014

LAURENCE B. LEONARD
LAURENCE B. LEONARD*
Affiliation:
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are distinguishable from typically developing children primarily in the pace and course of their language development. For this reason, they are appropriate candidates for inclusion in any theory of language acquisition. In this paper, the areas of overlap between children with SLI and those developing in typical fashion are discussed, along with how the joint study of these two populations can enhance our understanding of the language development process. In particular, evidence from children with SLI can provide important information concerning the role of language typology in language development, the optimal ages for acquiring particular linguistic details, the robustness of the bilingual advantage for children, the role of input in children's acquisition of grammatical details, the unintended influence of processing demands during language assessment, the contributions of treatment designs to the study of typically developing children, and the study of individual differences in language development.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 41 , Issue S1: Reflections: 40 years of JCL , July 2014 , pp. 38 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

Address for correspondence: Laurence B. Leonard, Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, 500 Oval Drive, Heavilon Hall, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA; e-mail: xdxl@purdue.edu

References

REFERENCES

Bishop, D. V. M., Adams, C. & Norbury, C. F. (2006). Distinct genetic influences on grammar and phonological short-term memory deficits: evidence from 6-year-old twins. Genes, Brain and Behavior 5, 158–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bortolini, U., Arfé, B., Caselli, M. C., Degasperi, L., Deevy, P. & Leonard, L. (2006). Clinical markers for specific language impairment in Italian: the contribution of clitics and nonword repetition. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 41, 695–712.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Catts, H., Fey, M., Tomblin, J. B. & Zhang, X. (2002). A longitudinal investigation of reading outcomes in children with language impairments. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 45, 1142–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Conti-Ramsden, G. & Botting, N. (2008). Emotional health in adolescents with and without a history of specific language impairment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 49, 516–25.Google Scholar
Conti-Ramsden, G., Botting, N. & Faragher, B. (2001). Psycholinguistic markers for specific language impairment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 42, 741–8.Google Scholar
Deevy, P., Wisman Weil, L., Leonard, L. & Goffman, L. (2010). Extending the use of the NRT to preschool-aged children with and without specific language impairment. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 41, 277–88.Google Scholar
Dispaldro, M., Deevy, P., Altoé, G., Benelli, B. & Leonard, L. (2011). A cross-linguistic study of real-word and non-word repetition as predictors of grammatical competence in children with typical language development. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 46, 564–78.Google Scholar
Dispaldro, M., Leonard, L. & Deevy, P. (2013). Real-word and nonword repetition in Italian-speaking children with specific language impairment: a study of diagnostic accuracy. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 56, 323–36.Google Scholar
Dollaghan, C. (2004). Taxometric analyses of specific language impairment in 3- and 4-year-old children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47, 464–75.Google Scholar
Freudenthal, D., Pine, J., Aguado-Orea, J. & Gobet, F. (2007). Modeling the developmental patterning of finiteness marking in English, Dutch, German, and Spanish using MOSAIC. Cognitive Science 31, 311–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fujiki, M., Brinton, B., Isaacson, T. & Summers, C. (2001). Social behaviors of children with language impairment on the playground. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 32, 101–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hadley, P., Rispoli, M., Fitzgerald, C. & Bahnsen, A. (2011). Predictors of morphosyntactic growth in typically developing toddlers: contributions of parent input and child sex. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 54, 549–66.Google Scholar
Hansson, K., Nettelbladt, U. & Leonard, L. (2000). Specific language impairment in Swedish: the status of verb morphology and word order. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 43, 848–64.Google Scholar
Hoover, J., Storkel, H. & Rice, M. (2012). The interface between neighborhood density and optional infinitives: normal development and specific language impairment. Journal of Child Language 39, 835–62.Google Scholar
Law, J., Garrett, Z. & Nye, C. (2004). The efficacy of treatment for children with developmental speech and language delay/disorder: a meta-analysis. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47, 924–43.Google Scholar
Law, J., Rush, R., Schoon, I. & Parsons, S. (2009). Modeling developmental language difficulties from school entry into adulthood: literacy, mental health, and employment outcomes. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 52, 1401–16.Google Scholar
Legate, J. & Yang, C. (2007). Morphosyntactic learning and the development of tense. Language Acquisition 14, 315–44.Google Scholar
Leonard, L. (2014). Children with specific language impairment, 2nd ed.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leonard, L. & Deevy, P. (2011). Input distribution influences degree of auxiliary use by children with specific language impairment. Cognitive Linguistics 22, 247–73.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leonard, L., Deevy, P., Fey, M. & Bredin-Oje, S. (2013). Sentence comprehension in specific language impairment: a task designed to distinguish between cognitive capacity and syntactic complexity. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 56, 577–89.Google Scholar
Mawhood, L., Howlin, P. & Rutter, M. (2000). Autism and developmental receptive language disorder – a comparative follow-up in early adult life. I: cognitive and language outcomes. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 41, 547–59.Google Scholar
Paradis, J., Crago, M., Genesee, F. & Rice, M. (2003). French−English bilingual children with SLI: How do they compare with their monolingual peers? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 46, 113–27.Google Scholar
Purdy, J. D., Leonard, L., Weber-Fox, C. & Kaganovich, N. (in press). Decreased sensitivity to long-distance dependencies in children with a history of specific language impairment: electrophysiological evidence. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.Google Scholar
Rice, M. (2003). A unified model of specific and general language delay: grammatical tense as a clinical marker of unexpected variation. In Levy, Y. & Schaeffer, J. (eds), Language competence across population: toward a definition of SLI, 63–94. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Rice, M., Smith, S. & Gayán, J. (2009). Convergent genetic linkage and associations to language, speech, and reading measures in families of probands with Specific Language Impairment. Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders 1, 264–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rice, M. & Wexler, K. (1996). Toward tense as a clinical marker of specific language impairment in English-speaking children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 39, 1239–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rice, M., Wexler, K. & Hershberger, S. (1998). Tense over time: the longitudinal course of tense acquisition in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 41, 1412–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Theakston, A., Lieven, E. & Tomasello, M. (2003). The role of input in the acquisition of third person singular verbs in English. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 46, 863–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: a usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar