Grammatical language impairment and the specificity of cognitive domains: relations between auditory and language abilities.
Grammatical-specific language impairment (G-SLI) in children, arguably, provides evidence for the existence of a specialised grammatical sub-system in the brain, necessary for normal language development. Some researchers challenge this, claiming that domain-general, low-level auditory deficits, particular to rapid processing, cause phonological deficits and thereby SLI. We investigate this possibility by testing the auditory discrimination abilities of G-SLI children for speech and non-speech sounds, at varying presentation rates, and controlling for the effects of age and language on performance. For non-speech formant transitions, 69% of the G-SLI children showed normal auditory processing, whereas for the same acoustic information in speech, only 31% did so. For rapidly presented tones, 46% of the G-SLI children performed normally. Auditory performance with speech and non-speech sounds differentiated the G-SLI children from their age-matched controls, whereas speed of processing did not. The G-SLI children evinced no relationship between their auditory and phonological/grammatical abilities. We found no consistent evidence that a deficit in processing rapid acoustic information causes or maintains G-SLI. The findings, from at least those G-SLI children who do not exhibit any auditory deficits, provide further evidence supporting the existence of a primary domain-specific deficit underlying G-SLI.
van der Lely
Heather K J
HK
Centre for Developmental Language Disorders and Cognitive Neuroscience, Dept of Human Communication Science, University College London, 2 Wakefield Street, London, WC1N 1PF, UK. h.vanderlely@ucl.ac.uk
Rosen
Stuart
S
Adlard
Alan
A
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception; D014706:Verbal Learning