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34 - A New Perspective on the Connection between Memory and Sentence Comprehension in Children with Developmental Language Disorder

from Part VI - Language Disorders, Interventions, and Instruction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2022

John W. Schwieter
Affiliation:
Wilfrid Laurier University
Zhisheng (Edward) Wen
Affiliation:
Hong Kong Shue Yan University
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Summary

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) show significant difficulties mastering language yet exhibit normal-range nonverbal intelligence, normal hearing and speech, and no neurological impairment. Deficits in sentence comprehension represent a major feature of school-age children’s language profile. So do memory limitations, including deficits in verbal working memory, controlled attention, and long-term memory. Though there is general consensus that the memory and comprehension deficits of these children relate in some fashion, the relationship has historically been unclear. In this chapter, we present the first conceptually integrated and empirically validated model of the sentence comprehension abilities of school-age children with DLD that describes the structural relationship among all these abilities.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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