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Spontaneous measures of morphosyntax in children with specific language impairment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2004

JOANNA BLAKE ,
DEBBIE MYSZCZYSZYN  and
ARIELA JOKEL
JOANNA BLAKE
Affiliation:
York University
DEBBIE MYSZCZYSZYN
Affiliation:
York University
ARIELA JOKEL
Affiliation:
York University
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Abstract

Fifteen children with specific language impairment (SLI) were matched in gender, age, and nonverbal mental age to one comparison group and in gender and standardized expressive language age to another comparison group. Their spontaneous speech was recorded while they narrated a cartoon and described their classroom. No group differences were found in mean length of utterance in morphemes or in syntactic complexity. SLI children had a lower percentage of correct irregular past tense forms but were equivalent to controls on regular past tense forms and noun plurals. Lexical diversity in terms of the number of different verbs expressed in the past tense and the number of different nouns pluralized did not differ. Some problems in generating complex sentences were found in the speech of SLI children. The importance of task constraints is stressed in explaining the discrepant performance of SLI children on spontaneous versus standardized measures of language, as well as the contribution of auditory memory limitations.Editor's Note: This article was reviewed and accepted by the previous Editor in Chief, Dr. John Locke.

Type
Research Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 2004 , pp. 29 - 41
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

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