Input Sources of Grammatical Deficits in Specific Language Impairment

描述(申请人提供)：许多患有特殊语言障碍(SLI)的儿童在语法能力方面表现出严重的局限性。这些局限性往往是长期存在的，它们代表了这种疾病最可靠的指标之一。这种语法缺陷的一个特别常见的表现是标记时态和一致的语法语素的使用不一致(例如，-S在Jumps中和is在女孩正在吃东西中)。尽管科学文献中已经很好地描述了这种不一致用法的细节，但对长期不一致的解释还没有出现。这个项目的目标是测试一项关于SLI儿童时态和协议语素使用不一致的可能来源的新建议。实验1-5旨在测试一种假设，即SLI儿童在解释含有缺乏时态和一致形态的主谓序列的句子时存在困难(就像在女孩去的问题中女孩去了吗？或者跑在句子里的男孩我看到那个男孩在跑)。因此，他们认为这些序列(例如，女孩下围棋)是合乎语法的，并在他们自己的演讲中使用它们。[此外，由于当儿童开始形成句子使用的抽象规则时，句子理解问题仍然存在，这些错误提取的序列的概括成为生成新话语的来源，从而延长了时态和同意标记不一致的使用时间。]前五个实验的设计是：(A)识别可能有问题的特定类型的序列(例如，问题和/或复句)；以及(B)确定儿童是否概括了误解的序列，以形成相同类型的新的(不符合语法的)话语(例如，对女孩的误解进入了吗？导致自然产生的产物，如猫GO？)。[此外，这些实验包括复杂的句子理解和工作记忆任务，作为预测因素，以确定句法理解困难和工作记忆限制对儿童忽略时态和一致词法的倾向的相对贡献。]实验6是一项干预性研究，旨在确定是否可以通过操纵儿童接受的语言输入来显著缩短与时态和一致形态的不一致时间。具体地说，据预测，可以通过让孩子接触到许多包含目标语素的句子(例如，女孩跳起来，男孩在走路)和尽量减少问题的暴露(例如，女孩去了吗？)来减少不一致。以及复句(例如，我看到那个男孩在跑)，这些句子包含没有时态和一致形态的主谓序列。[除了它的临床价值，这项实验也是对输入分布对儿童句子使用的因果作用的关键测试。]本项目的研究结果将有助于更好地了解SLI儿童语法缺陷的根源，并提供有关如何最好地治疗这种疾病中普遍存在的时态和一致性弱点的重要信息。公共卫生相关性：患有特殊语言障碍的儿童长期存在语言能力缺陷，这影响了他们的社会适应能力和学习成绩。这个项目的目标是找出这些孩子最普遍的语言困难之一的根源，即长期的语法不一致。这些发现应该有助于更好地了解这种疾病，并提供有关治疗方法的重要信息。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Many children with specific language impairment (SLI) show serious limitations in grammatical ability. These limitations are often longstanding, and they represent one of the most reliable indicators of this disorder. An especially common manifestation of this grammatical weakness is the inconsistent use of grammatical morphemes that mark tense and agreement (e.g., -s in jumps and is in The girl is eating). Although the details of this inconsistent use have been well described in the scientific literature, an explanation for the protracted period of inconsistency has not yet emerged. The goal of this project is to test a new proposal regarding the possible source of the inconsistent use of tense and agreement morphemes by children with SLI. Experiments 1-5 are designed to test the hypothesis that children with SLI have difficulty interpreting sentences that contain subject-verb sequences lacking tense and agreement morphology (as in the girl go in the question Did the girl go? or the boy running in the sentence I see the boy running). As a result, they treat these sequences (e.g., The girl go) as grammatical and use them in their own speech. [Furthermore, because the sentence interpretation problems are still present when the children begin to form abstract rules for sentence use, generalizations from these improperly extracted sequences become the source for generating new utterances, thus prolonging the period of inconsistent use of tense and agreement markers.] The first five experiments are designed: (a) to identify the specific types of sequences that might be problematic (e.g., questions and/or complex sentences); and (b) to determine whether the children generalize misinterpreted sequences to form new (ungrammatical) utterances of the same type (e.g., does misinterpretation of the girl go in Did the girl go? lead to spontaneous generation of productions such as The cat go?). [In addition, these experiments include complex sentence comprehension and working memory tasks as predictors to determine the relative contributions that syntactic comprehension difficulty and working memory limitations make to the children's tendency to omit tense and agreement morphology.] Experiment 6 is an intervention study designed to determine whether the period of inconsistency with tense and agreement morphology can be significantly reduced by manipulating the language input the children receive. Specifically, it is predicted that inconsistency can be reduced by exposing the children to many sentences containing the target morphemes (e.g., The girl jumps, The boy is walking) and minimizing exposures of questions (e.g., Did the girl go?) and complex sentences (e.g., I see the boy running) that contain subject-verb sequences with no tense and agreement morphology. [Along with its clinical value, this experiment serves as a critical test of the causal role of input distribution on the children's sentence use.] The findings of this project should contribute to a greater understanding of the sources of grammatical limitations in children with SLI and provide important information concerning how best to treat the pervasive tense and agreement weaknesses seen in this disorder. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Children with specific language impairment have a longstanding deficit in language ability that affects their social adjustment and academic achievement. The goal of this project is to discover the source of one of the most pervasive language difficulties of these children, a protracted period of grammatical inconsistency. The findings should lead to a greater understanding of this disorder and provide important information concerning methods of treatment.