title: Children with a history of SLI show reduced sensitivity to audiovisual temporal asynchrony: an ERP study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The authors examined whether school-age children with a history of specific language impairment (H-SLI), their peers with typical development (TD), and adults differ in sensitivity to audiovisual temporal asynchrony and whether such difference stems from the sensory encoding of audiovisual information.
  
  
  METHODS
  Fifteen H-SLI children, 15 TD children, and 15 adults judged whether a flashed explosion-shaped figure and a 2-kHz pure tone occurred simultaneously. The stimuli were presented at 0-, 100-, 200-, 300-, 400-, and 500-ms temporal offsets. This task was combined with EEG recordings.
  
  
  RESULTS
  H-SLI children were profoundly less sensitive to temporal separations between auditory and visual modalities compared with their TD peers. Those H-SLI children who performed better at simultaneity judgment also had higher language aptitude. TD children were less accurate than adults, revealing a remarkably prolonged developmental course of the audiovisual temporal discrimination. Analysis of early event-related potential components suggested that poor sensory encoding was not a key factor in H-SLI children's reduced sensitivity to audiovisual asynchrony.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Audiovisual temporal discrimination is impaired in H-SLI children and is still immature during mid-childhood in TD children. The present findings highlight the need for further evaluation of the role of atypical audiovisual processing in the development of SLI.
authors.forename: Natalya
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kaganovich
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schumaker
authors.forename: Laurence B
authors.initials: LB
authors.lastname: Leonard
authors.forename: Dana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gustafson
authors.forename: Danielle
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Macias
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001307:Auditory Perception; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D013998:Time Perception; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult