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Longitudinal Grammaticality Judgments of Tense Marking in Complex Questions in Children With and Without Specific Language Impairment, Ages 5-18 Years
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Longitudinal Grammaticality Judgments of Tense Marking in Complex Questions in Children With and Without Specific Language Impairment, Ages 5-18 Years

Mabel L Rice, Kathleen Kelsey Earnest and Lesa Hoffman
Journal of speech, language, and hearing research, Vol.66(10), pp.3882-3906
10/2023
DOI: 10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00507
PMCID: PMC10713023
PMID: 37607389
url
https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00507View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

PURPOSE Identification of children with specific language impairment (SLI) can be difficult even though their language can lag that of age peers throughout childhood. A clinical grammar marker featuring tense marking in simple clauses is valid and reliable for young children but is limited by ceiling effects around the age of 8 years. This study evaluated a new, more grammatically challenging complex sentence task in children affected or unaffected with SLI in longitudinal data, ages 5-18 years. METHOD Four hundred eighty-three children (213 unaffected, 270 affected) between 5 and 18 years of age participated, following a rolling recruitment longitudinal design encompassing a total of 4,148 observations. The new experimental grammaticality judgment task followed linguistic concepts of syntactic sites for finiteness and movement within complex clauses. Growth modeling methods evaluated group differences over time for four different outcomes; three were hypothesized to evaluate optional omissions of overt finiteness forms in authorized sentence sites, and one evaluated an overt error of tense marking. RESULTS As in earlier studies of younger children, growth models for the SLI group were consistently lower than the unaffected group, although the growth trajectories across groups did not differ. The results replicated across four item types defined by omissions with minor differences for an item with an overt error of tense marking. Covariates of child nonverbal IQ, mother's education, and child sex did not significantly moderate these effects. CONCLUSION The outcomes support the task as having potential screening value for identification of children with SLI and are consistent with linguistic interpretations of task demands.

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