title: Rule-based learning of regular past tense in children with specific language impairment.
abstract: The treatment of children with specific language impairment was used as a means to investigate whether a single- or dual-mechanism theory best conceptualizes the acquisition of English past tense. The dual-mechanism theory proposes that regular English past-tense forms are produced via a rule-based process whereas past-tense forms of irregular verbs are stored in the lexicon. Single-mechanism theories propose that both regular and irregular past-tense verbs are stored in the lexicon. Five 5-year-olds with specific language impairment received treatment for regular past tense. The children were tested on regular past-tense production and third-person singular "s" twice before treatment and once after treatment, at eight-week intervals. Treatment consisted of one-hour play-based sessions, once weekly, for eight weeks. Crucially, treatment focused on different lexical items from those in the test. Each child demonstrated significant improvement on the untreated past-tense test items after treatment, but no improvement on the untreated third-person singular "s". Generalization to untreated past-tense verbs could not be attributed to a frequency effect or to phonological similarity of trained and tested items. It is argued that the results are consistent with a dual-mechanism theory of past-tense inflection.
authors.affiliation: a ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders , Macquarie University , North Ryde , NSW , Australia.
authors.forename: Karen M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Smith-Lock
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D007858:Learning; D008037:Linguistics; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010988:Play and Playthings
keywords: connectionist; dual-mechanism theory; intervention; past tense; rule-based; single-mechanism theory; specific language impairment; treatment