Cognitive Processing and Sentence Comprehension in SLI

描述(申请人提供)：关于特殊语言障碍(SLI)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表达困难的理解，我们对他们的接受问题了解很少。这导致了对SLI的理论描述不够详细，治疗SLI的有效干预措施有限，语言干预结果也不太理想。元分析、系统评价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出的影响(Cirrin&Gillam，2008；Law等人，2004；Bishop等人，2006)。最近，Leonard(2009)认为，不能处理输入中的语言信息很可能是SLI儿童理解困难的主要原因。关于SLI儿童的句子理解问题是否反映了语言系统的缺陷(领域特定的观点)还是认知加工的总体缺陷(领域总体观点)，存在着争论。这个大型项目的主要目标是系统地确定哪个账户提供了更好的描述性和解释性模型来表征SLI儿童的句子理解。拟议的五年项目将涉及五项综合研究中的两个相关的具体目标。450名儿童将参与其中：150名SLI儿童(9岁；0-11岁；11岁)，150名年龄/非语言智商匹配(CA)儿童，以及150名与短期记忆和词汇(YMV)匹配的较小儿童。目的1采用心理测量学的方法考察几种认知加工机制(控制注意、词汇提取、提取干扰、短时记忆、工作记忆和加工速度)与非正则句(研究1-2)或正则句(研究3-4)的理解之间的关系。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，我们还将检验SLI和CA儿童的句子理解是否存在类似的认知机制(不同的认知机制可能从属于非规范和规范句子)。目的更具体地考察非典范句加工中工作记忆的提取，以确定SLI儿童在非典范句加工过程中是否不能或较慢地激活先前成分(NP1)。我们假设他们将比CA的孩子慢，这支持了领域普遍的观点。总体而言，这些结果可能会对SLI领域产生四个重大影响。首先，对认知加工和句子理解之间的关系可能会出现一种全新的理论理解。其次，正常成人和SLI句子理解的模型可以合并为一个连贯的发展框架。第三，将扩大SLI儿童的临床认知-语言图谱。第四，关键的见解可能会出现，即在旨在提高SLI儿童语言理解能力的替代语言治疗中，哪些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.