Cognitive Processing and Sentence Comprehension in SLI

描述（由申请人提供）：对特殊语言障碍儿童的研究主要集中在他们的表达缺陷上。相对于我们对这些孩子的表达困难的理解，我们对他们的接受问题理解得很少。这导致了对特殊语言障碍的理论解释不明确，有效的干预措施有限，语言干预的结果也不太理想。荟萃分析、系统回顾和临床试验的结果表明，语言干预对语言理解的影响小于对语言产生的影响（Cirrin & Gillam, 2008； Law等，2004；Bishop等，2006）。最近，Leonard（2009）认为无法处理输入中的语言信息可能在特殊语言障碍儿童的理解困难中起着重要作用。关于特殊语言障碍儿童的句子理解问题反映的是语言系统的缺陷（领域特定观点）还是认知加工的普遍缺陷（领域一般观点），存在争议。这个大型项目的主要目标是系统地确定哪种说法提供了更好的描述和解释模型来表征特殊语言障碍儿童的句子理解。拟议的五年项目将在五项综合研究中解决两个相关的具体目标。450名儿童将参与其中：150名患有特殊语言障碍的儿童（9岁；0-11岁；11岁），150名年龄/非语言智商匹配（CA）儿童，150名年龄更小的儿童进行短期记忆和词汇匹配（YMV）。目的1采用心理测量学方法研究了几种认知加工机制（控制注意、词汇检索、检索干扰、短期记忆、工作记忆和加工速度）与非规范句（研究1-2）或规范句（研究3-4）理解之间的关系。我们假设建模结果将支持域通用帐户。作为这一目标的一部分，我们还将研究是否相似的认知机制组构成了特殊语言障碍儿童和特殊语言障碍儿童的句子理解基础（不同的认知机制组可能包含非规范句和规范句）。目的2更具体地考察非规范句子加工中的工作记忆检索，以确定非规范句子加工中，特殊语言障碍儿童是否无法或较慢地重新激活先验成分（NP1）。我们假设他们相对于CA的孩子会更慢，支持域通用观点。总的来说，这些结果可能会导致四个高影响的SLI领域的启示。首先，对认知加工和句子理解之间的关系可能会产生一个全新的理论认识。第二，正常成人和特殊语言障碍的句子理解模式可以合并成一个连贯的发展框架。第三，扩展特殊语言障碍儿童的临床认知语言概况。第四，关键的见解可能会出现，在旨在提高特殊语言障碍儿童的语言理解的替代语言治疗中，认知机制可以成为目标。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Research on children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) has primarily focused on their expressive deficits. Relative to our understanding of these children's expressive difficulties, their receptive problems are poorly understood. This has led to underspecified theoretical accounts of SLI, a limited array of effective interventions to treat them, and less than favorable language intervention outcomes. The results of meta-analyses, systematic reviews, and clinical trials indicate that language intervention has a smaller effect on language comprehension than on language production (Cirrin & Gillam, 2008; Law et al., 2004; Bishop, et al., 2006). Recently, Leonard (2009) has argued that an inability to process linguistic information in the input is likely to play a prominent role in the comprehension difficulties of children with SLI. Debate exits as to whether the sentence comprehension problems in children with SLI reflect a deficit in the language system (the domain-specific view) or a general deficit in cognitive processing (the domain-general view). The primary goal of this large-scale project is to systematically determine which account provides the better descriptive and explanatory model to characterize sentence comprehension in children with SLI. The proposed 5-year project will address two related specific aims in five integrated studies. 450 children will participate: 150 children with SLI (ages 9;0-11;11), 150 age/nonverbal IQ matched (CA) children, and 150 younger children matched for short-term memory and vocabulary (YMV). Aim 1 employs a psychometric approach to investigate the relationship between several cognitive processing mechanisms (controlled attention, lexical retrieval, retrieval interference, short-term memory, working memory, and processing speed) and the comprehension of noncanonical sentences (Studies 1-2) or canonical sentences (Studies 3-4). We hypothesize that the modeling results will support the domain-general account. As part of this aim, we will also examine whether similar sets of cognitive mechanisms underlie sentence comprehension in children with SLI and CA children (with different a set likely subserving noncanonical and canonical sentences). Aim 2 more specifically examines working memory retrieval in noncanonical sentence processing to determine whether children with SLI fail or are slower to reactivate a prior constituent (NP1) during noncanonical sentence processing. We hypothesize they will be slower relative to CA children, supporting the domain-general view. Overall, the results may lead to four high impact implications for the field of SLI. First, a fundamentally new theoretical understanding of the relationship between cognitive processing and sentence comprehension may emerge. Second, models of normal adult and SLI sentence comprehension may be merged into a coherent developmental framework. Third, clinical cognitive-linguistic profiles of children with SLI will be expanded. And fourth, critical insights may emerge into which cognitive mechanisms could be targeted in alternative language treatments designed to improve the language comprehension of children with SLI.