title: The impact of attentional allocation capacities on nonword repetition in children with specific language impairment.
abstract: This study aimed at directly assessing the hypothesis that attentional allocation capacity influences poor nonword repetition (NWR) performances in children with specific language impairment (SLI), using an attention demanding visual search task given concurrently with the NWR task. Twenty-one children with SLI, 21 typically developing children matched on age and 21 typically developing children matched on nonword span performed an immediate serial recall task of nonwords. The nonword lists were presented either alone or concurrently with the visual search task. Overall, results revealed a resource-sharing trade-off between the two tasks. Children with SLI were affected to the same extent as their span-matched controls by the necessity to allocate their attentional resources between the two tasks. Interestingly, nonword processing strategies seemed to differ among groups: age-matched controls allocated a larger part of their attentional resources to the encoding stage, whereas nonword recall was more attention demanding in children with SLI and younger controls.
authors: a Department of Psychology: Cognition and Behaviour , University of Liege , Liège , Belgium and.
authors: Anne-Lise
authors: AL
authors: Leclercq
authors: Christelle
authors: C
authors: Maillart
authors: Manon
authors: M
authors: Lange
authors: Steve
authors: S
authors: Majerus
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007100:Imitative Behavior; D007802:Language; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000628:therapy; D007807:Language Tests; D007808:Language Therapy; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010700:Phonetics; D012016:Reference Values; D012660:Semantics; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary
keywords: Attention; dual tasking; nonword repetition; specific language impairment