The Interface Between the Lexicon and Morphology in SLI

描述（由申请人提供）：申请人的职业目标是成为语言习得和特殊语言障碍（SLI）领域的主要研究人员。为此，计划在高级统计和方法技术（例如，纵向和临床设计），语言学高级主题（即衍生形态学）和资助/研究传播等领域开展额外的课程。此外，候选人将完成一份研究培训计划。候选人研究的长期目标是通过调查词汇和词法之间的接口来了解SLI的本质。患有特殊语言障碍的儿童特别容易受到词形语法缺陷的影响，在学习新单词，尤其是动词方面有困难。目前尚不清楚的是，词汇和形态语法在发育过程中是如何相互作用的。具体来说，词汇表征的质量是否会影响正常发育儿童和特殊语言障碍儿童的形态句法尚不清楚。另一个关键的问题是确定有效的方法来提高语素产生率的儿童有特殊语言障碍。很少有研究考虑如何操纵用于治疗特定语素的动词的词汇特征影响语素产生的临床收益。研究1的目的是确定正常发育儿童和特殊语言障碍儿童在句子模仿和自发启发任务中的语素产生（即第三人称单数）是否受到词汇特征，即邻里密度（即与给定单词在语音上相似的单词数量）的影响。研究2的目的是确定在正常发育儿童和特殊语言障碍儿童中，操纵处理过的动词的邻域密度是否可以提高处理过和未处理过的动词在语素产生（即第三人称单数）方面的增益。由此产生的发现将决定词典影响语素产生的程度以及临床治疗中语素产生的收益。这项研究对公共卫生的好处是，对特殊语言障碍儿童的语言缺陷有很好的记录，但对如何有效地计划干预以最大限度地提高收益知之甚少，很少关注被治疗的动词的词汇特征。确定临床方法，最大限度地提高治疗效果，可以预防或减少未来的学业失败。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The career goal of the applicant is to become a leading researcher in the area of language acquisition and specific language impairment (SLI). To that end, additional coursework is planned in the areas of advanced statistical and methodological techniques (e.g., longitudinal and clinical designs), advanced topics in linguistics (i.e., derivational morphology), and grantsmanship/research dissemination. In addition, the candidate will complete a research training plan. The long-term goal of the candidate's research is to understand the nature of SLI by investigating the interface between the lexicon and morphology. Children with SLI are particularly vulnerable to deficits in morphosyntax and have difficulty learning new words, especially verbs. What is unclear is how the lexicon and morphosyntax might interact during development. Specifically, it is unknown whether the quality of lexical representations impacts morphosyntax in typically developing children and children with SLI. An additional critical issue is to identify effective methods for increasing the rate of morpheme production in children with SLI. Few studies have considered how manipulating lexical characteristics of the verbs used to treat a specific morpheme impacts clinical gains in morpheme production. The goal of Study 1 is to determine whether a lexical characteristic, namely neighborhood density (i.e., the number of words that are phonologically similar to a given word) influences morpheme production (i.e., third person singular) by typically developing children and children with SLI in sentence imitation and spontaneous elicitation tasks. The goal of Study 2 is to determine whether manipulation of the neighborhood density of treated verbs is a viable method for increasing gains in morpheme production (i.e., third person singular) for treated and untreated verbs by typically developing children and children with SLI. The resulting findings will determine the extent to which the lexicon influences morpheme production as well as gains in morpheme production in clinical treatment. The public health benefit of this research is that language deficits in children with SLI are well documented but little is known about how to effectively plan intervention to maximize gains with little attention being paid to lexical characteristics of treated verbs. Identifying clinical methods that maximize gains in treatment may prevent or minimize future academic failure.