title: Implicit Spoken Words and Motor Sequences Learning Are Impaired in Children with Specific Language Impairment.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This study aims to compare verbal and motor implicit sequence learning abilities in children with and without specific language impairment (SLI).
  
  
  METHODS
  Forty-eight children (24 control and 24 SLI) were administered the Serial Search Task (SST), which enables the simultaneous assessment of implicit spoken words and visuomotor sequences learning.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Results showed that control children implicitly learned both the spoken words as well as the motor sequences. In contrast, children with SLI showed deficits in both types of learning. Moreover, correlational analyses revealed that SST performance was linked with grammatical abilities in control children but with lexical abilities in children with SLI.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Overall, this pattern of results supports the procedural deficit hypothesis and suggests that domain general implicit sequence learning is impaired in SLI.
authors.affiliation: 1Department of Speech and Language Therapy,University of Liege,B38,Liège,Belgium.
authors.forename: Lise
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Desmottes
authors.affiliation: 2Department of Psychology,University of Liege,B33,Liège,Belgium.
authors.forename: Thierry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Meulemans
authors.affiliation: 1Department of Speech and Language Therapy,University of Liege,B38,Liège,Belgium.
authors.forename: Christelle
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Maillart
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001364:Awareness; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000150:complications*; D007807:Language Tests; D007859:Learning Disabilities / Q000209:etiology*; D008297:Male; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000276:immunology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012691:Serial Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D014825:Vocabulary
keywords: Child language; Implicit sequence learning; Language development disorders; Procedural learning; Serial learning; Specific language impairment