Non-adjacent dependency learning in Cantonese-speaking children with and without a history of specific language impairment

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Iao, L.-S. ORCID: 0000-0002-3509-9712, Ng, L.Y., Wong, A.M.Y. and Lee, O.T., 2017. Non-adjacent dependency learning in Cantonese-speaking children with and without a history of specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 60, pp. 694-700. ISSN 1092-4388

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1044/2016_JSLHR-L-15-0232

Abstract

Purpose: This study investigated non-adjacent dependency learning in Cantonese-speaking children with and without a history of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in an artificial linguistic context.
Method: Sixteen Cantonese-speaking children with SLI history and 16 Cantonese-speaking children with typical language development (TLD) were tested with a non-adjacent dependency learning task using artificial languages that mimic Cantonese.
Results: Children with TLD performed above chance and were able to discriminate between trained and untrained non-adjacent dependencies. However, children with SLI
history performed at chance and were not able to differentiate trained versus untrained non-adjacent dependencies.
Conclusions: These findings, together with previous findings with English-speaking adults and adolescents with language impairments, suggested that individuals with atypical language development, regardless of age, diagnostic status, language and culture, showed difficulties in learning non-adjacent dependencies. This study provides evidence for early impairments to statistical learning in individuals with atypical language development.

Item Type:

Journal article

Alternative Title:

Non-adjacent dependency learning in SLI [running head]

Publication Title:

Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research

Creators:

Iao, L.-S., Ng, L.Y., Wong, A.M.Y. and Lee, O.T.

Publisher:

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

Date:

2017