EVALUATING GRAMMATICAL ASYNCHRONY IN CHILDREN WITH SLI

该项目的总体目的是改善对有特殊语言障碍(SLI)风险的幼儿的早期识别。这一领域研究的主要挑战是准确区分将表现出语言正常化的晚说话儿童(即大器晚成儿童)与将继续表现出与SLI诊断一致的特征的儿童。尽管有几个变量已被确定为分析SLI“风险”的重要因素(参见。Olswang，Rodriguez和Timler，1998)，作为幼儿时期SLI的早期语法指标，尚未成为主要的研究重点。这相当令人惊讶，因为学龄前儿童SLI的一个主要临床标志是不掌握语法时态标记(莱斯和韦克斯勒，1996)。此前，Hadley和她的同事已经确定了一个值得进一步研究的早期语法指标(Hadley，1998；Hadley，Reed和Hernandez，1998)。具体地说，动词短语结构的语法发展停滞不前，同时出现典型的甚至加速的名词短语增长模式，似乎是这两类幼儿的不同之处。目前的项目有两个具体目标：(A)在新的SLI高危幼儿样本中复制语法发展的不同步模式，以及(B)确定句法增长的不同模式是否与语言结果状态系统相关。

The overall purpose of this project is to improve the early identification of toddlers at-risk for Specific Language Impairment (SLI). The primary challenge for research in this area is the accurate differentiation of late-talking children who will demonstrate language normalization (i.e., late bloomers) from those children who will continue to show profiles consistent with a diagnosis of SLI. Although several variables have been identified as important factors in profiling "risk" for SLI (cf. Olswang, Rodriguez, and Timler, 1998), an early grammatical indicator of SLI during the toddler years has yet to be a primary focus of investigation. This is rather surprising given that a primary clinical marker of SLI in the preschool years is the non- mastery of grammatical tense marking (Rice and Wexler, 1996). Previously, Hadley and her colleagues have identified an early grammatical indicator worthy of further exploration (Hadley, 1998; Hadley, Reed, and Hernandez, 1998). Specifically, a plateau in grammatical development for verb-phrase structures co- occuring with typical or even accelerated patterns of noun phrase growth appears to differentiate these two groups of toddlers. The current project has two specific aims: (a) to replicate the asynchronous pattern of grammatical development in a new sample of toddlers at-risk for SLI, and (b) to determine if differential patterns of syntactic growth are systematically related to language outcomes status.