GENERAL SLOWING IN LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT: DOES IT EXIST?

有一大批儿童有语言障碍 (Li)有学习和社交失败风险的人。而带着李的孩子们 他们在语法上表现出最大的困难，在其他方面也表现出局限性 并表现出微妙的认知和知觉-运动问题。至 解释这种广度的困难，目前的研究主要集中在这个想法上 患有李氏综合症的儿童的信息处理能力比 其他同龄儿童。因为他们有更多的限制 能力方面，LI儿童的任务表现更容易受到 相互竞争的资源需求。当资源紧张时，任务绩效 受伤了。这个想法直觉上很吸引人，因为它有可能 具有解释力，受到了广泛的关注。然而，它已经 几乎没有接受系统的检查。此外，探索所用的方法 有限的处理账户没有经过严格的评估。长期的 目的是为了弄清李氏儿童的加工技能。该计划的目的是 提议的项目是检验处理能力有限的中心假设 帐户，广义减速假说。以最强的形式， 假说表明，患有李氏综合症的儿童完成学业的速度相对较慢 语言、认知和知觉-运动任务与年龄匹配的比较 孩子们。无论特定的任务特征如何， 患有LI的儿童应该作为一个简单的 年龄匹配的同龄人的处理速度的乘法函数。这个 假说在三项研究中得到了验证，这三项研究提供了关于 相对加工速度的假设和指示预测因子 带着李家的孩子。100名有李和无李的儿童参加32项 系统地改变任务复杂性的实验任务。这是意料之中的 对于患有李氏综合症的孩子来说，这种普遍的减速将是显而易见的，但在那里 会有不同的语言减速、认知减速和 知觉-运动域。项目结果将为理论方法提供参考 从而促进更有效的评估和干预策略 给带着李的孩子们。

There is a large population of children with language impairments (LI) who are at risk for academic and social failure. While children with LI show most difficulty with grammar, they also show limitations in other aspects of language and show subtle cognitive and perceptual-motor problems. To explain this breadth of difficulties, current research has focused on the idea that children with LI have more limited information-processing capacities than other children of the same chronological age. Because they have more limited capacities, the task performance of children with LI is more vulnerable to competing resource demands. When resources are strained, task performance is impaired. This idea is intuitively appealing because of its possible explanatory power and has received widespread attention. However, it has received little systematic examination. Moreover, the methods used to explore limited processing accounts have not been evaluated critically. The long-term goal is to clarify the processing skills of children with LI. The aim of the proposed project is to test a central hypothesis of limited processing capacity accounts, the generalized slowing hypothesis. In its strongest form, the hypothesis states that children with LI are proportionally slower to complete language, cognitive, and perceptual-motor tasks compared to age-matched children. Regardless of specific task characteristics, the processing speed of children with LI should increase linearly across tasks as a simple multiplicative function of the processing speed of age-matched peers. The hypothesis is tested in three studies that provide converging evidence about the hypothesis and indicate predictors of relative processing speed for children with LI. One hundred children with and without LI participate in 32 experimental tasks that vary task complexity systematically. It is anticipated that generalized slowing will be apparent for children with LI, but that there will be different slowing rates in the language, cognitive, and perceptual-motor domains. Project results will inform theoretical approaches to LI and thus facilitate more effective assessment and intervention strategies for children with LI.