Input Sources of Grammatical Deficits in Specific Language Impairment

描述（由申请人提供）：许多患有特定语言障碍（SLI）的儿童表现出严重的语法能力限制。这些限制往往是长期存在的，它们是这种疾病最可靠的指标之一。这种语法弱点的一个特别常见的表现是标记时态和一致性的语法语素的不一致使用（例如，-s in jumps and is in The girl is eating.（女孩正在吃东西）尽管科学文献中详细描述了这种不一致的使用，但尚未出现对长期不一致的解释。该项目的目标是测试一项新提案，该提案涉及SLI儿童时态和一致词素使用不一致的可能原因。实验1-5被设计来检验假设，即SLI儿童难以解释包含缺乏时态和一致形态的主谓序列的句子（如在问题Did the girl go中的女孩去了吗？或者在句子I see the boy running中的the boy running）。因此，他们对待这些序列（例如，女孩去）作为语法和使用他们在他们自己的讲话。[此外，因为当儿童开始形成句子使用的抽象规则时，句子解释问题仍然存在，从这些不正确提取的序列中概括出来的东西成为产生新话语的来源，从而延长了时态和一致标记的不一致使用的时间。]前五个实验被设计为：（a）鉴定可能有问题的特定类型的序列（例如，问题和/或复合句）;以及（B）确定儿童是否概括误解的序列以形成相同类型的新的（不合语法的）话语（例如，对那个女孩的误解进去了吗那个女孩进去了吗？导致自发产生的产品，如猫去？）。[In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省略时态和一致形态的倾向的相对贡献。实验6是一项干预研究，旨在确定是否可以显着减少的时间不一致的紧张和协议形态通过操纵的语言输入的儿童收到。具体地，预测可以通过将儿童暴露于包含目标词素的许多句子（例如，女孩跳，男孩走），并尽量减少问题的暴露（例如，女孩走了吗？）和复杂句子（例如，I see the boy running），包含没有时态和一致形态的主谓序列。[沿着其临床价值，本实验作为一个关键的测试的因果关系的作用，输入分布对儿童的句子使用。]这个项目的研究结果应有助于更好地了解语法限制的来源，在儿童SLI和提供重要的信息，如何最好地治疗普遍的紧张和协议的弱点，在这种疾病。公共卫生相关性：有特殊语言障碍的儿童在语言能力方面有长期的缺陷，影响他们的社会适应和学业成绩。这个项目的目标是发现这些儿童最普遍的语言困难之一的根源，即长期的语法不一致。这些发现应该导致对这种疾病的更好理解，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.