title: Sentence processing strategies in children with expressive and expressive-receptive specific language impairments.
abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate the sentence comprehension strategies used by children with expressive and expressive-receptive specific language impairments (SLI) within a language processing framework. Fourteen children with SLI (ages 6;10-7;11) meeting strict selection criteria were compared to seven age-matched and seven younger normal controls. Children were asked to determine the agent in sentences composed of two nouns and a verb (NVN, NNV, VNN) with animacy of the noun as a second factor. Results of group comparisons revealed that children with E-SLI and ER-SLI differed from each other in the comprehension strategies they employed as well as differing from both age-matched and younger normal language control groups. Children with E-SLI relied exclusively on a first noun as agent strategy across all conditions, whereas children with ER-SLI used animacy cues when available. Additionally, maximum likelihood estimates were calculated to investigate individual patterns of performance under different cue conditions. Results revealed a significant correlation between severity of receptive language abilities and the type of strategy used, with better receptive language skills being highly correlated with children's use of word order cues.
authors.affiliation: Waisman Research Center, Room 445, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53705, USA.
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Evans
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: MacWhinney
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D032882:Comprehension; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D007807:Language Tests; D012660:Semantics