Theoretical Approaches to Specific Language Impairment (SLI)
Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem
Description: The course will focus on language acquisition by children diagnosed for
Specific Language Impairment (SLI), with special emphasis on monolingual verses, bilingual development in this population. The course will cover the acquisition of morphosyntax, word order, long distance syntactic relations, and narrative abilities. The
discussion, though based on empirical findings, will be limited to theoretical issues.
Prerequisites: 522/922, 287/987.
Requirements: Reading for each topic
Article Presentation (30%)
Seminar paper (70%)
Outline:
Topics
1. Specific Language Impairments (SLI) - Introduction
2. Possible accounts - Competence vs. performance
3. The syntactic abilities of children with SLI - Long
distance relations
4. Executive functions in SLI and Bilingual populations
5. SLI in bilingual populations- the reliability of
grammatical morphology
6. Non Word Repetition and sentence repetition
7. Presentation Topics
Readings
Leonard 1997
Bishop et al (2000)
Kohnert & Windsor (2004)
Paradis 2010
Conti-Ramsden et al. 2001
Lexicon – CDI & Naming
Processing
Office: BS Building (901), Room 415
Office hours: Monday and Tuesday by appointment (Sharon.armon-lotem@biu.ac.il)
Course webpage: in http://faculty.biu.ac.il/~armonls/
Articles for the course
Reading
Bishop, D. V. M., Bright, P., James, C. S., Bishop, J. and H. K. J. Van der lely. 2000.
Grammatical SLI: A distinct subtype of developmental language impairment?
Applied Psycholinguistics 21, 159–181
Conti-Ramsden, G., Botting, N., & Faragher, B. (2001). Psycholinguistic markers for
specific language impairment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 6,
741-748.
Kohnert, K., & Windsor, J. (2004). The search for common ground: Part II. Nonlinguistic
performance by linguistically diverse learners. Journal of Speech, Language, and
Hearing Research, 47, 891-903.
Leonard, L. B. (1997) Children with Specific Language Impairment. The MIT Press: 4387
Paradis, J. (2010). The interface between bilingual development and specific language
Impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics 31, 227–252
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Presentations
Lexicon
I. CDI
*Ring, E.D. & Fenson, L. (2000). Assessment of language comprehension and
production: Child performance versus parent judgment. First Language, 20, 141159.
*Fenson, L., Bates, E., Dale, P., Goodman, J., Reznick, J.S., & Thal, D. (2000).
Measuring variability in early child language: Don't shoot the messenger. Child
Development, 71, 323-328.
Maital, S. L., Dromi, E., Sagi, A. and Bornstein, M. H. (2000) The Hebrew
Communicative Development Inventory: language specific properties and crosslinguistic generalizations. Journal of Child Language, 27, 43-67.
Thal, D. J., O'Hanlon, L., Clemmons, M. and LS., Fralin (1999) Validity of a Parent
Report Measure of Vocabulary and Syntax for Preschool Children With Language
Impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 42 482-496
Hick, R. F., Joseph, K. L., Conti-Ramsden, G., Serratrice, L. & B. Faragher (2002)
Vocabulary profiles of children with specific language impairment. Child language
teaching and therapy 18 (2) 2002, 165 - 180
Heilmann, J., Ellis Weismer, S., Evans, J. and C. Hollar. (2005). Utility of the
MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory in Identifying Language
Abilities of Late-Talking and Typically Developing Toddlers. American Journal of
Speech-Language Pathology, 14, 40-51
II. Naming
*Lahey, M., and J. Edwards (1996). Why Do Children With Specific Language
Impairment Name Pictures More Slowly Than Their Peers? Journal of Speech and
Hearing Research 39 1081-1098
McGregor, K. K., Newman, R. M., Reilly, R.M., and N. C. Capone. (2002). Semantic
Representation and Naming in Children With Specific Language Impairment.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. 45 998-1014
Gray, S. (2004). Word Learning by Preschoolers With Specific Language Impairment
Predictors and Poor Learners. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
47 1117-1132
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Processing
*Clahsen, H. 2008. Behavioral Methods for Investigating Morphological and Syntactic
Processing in Children. In I. Sekerina, E. Fernández & H. Clahsen, (eds.),
Developmental psycholinguistics: On-line methods in children’s language
processing. Benjamins: Amsterdam, pp. 1-27.
Clackson, K. & H. Clahsen 2011. Online processing of cataphoric pronouns by children
and adults: Evidence from eye-movements during listening. In: Danis, N., Mesh, K.
& H. Sung (eds.), Proceedings of BUCLD 35. Vol.1, Cascadilla Press: Somerville,
MA, pp. 119-1
Veríssimo, J. & H. Clahsen 2009. Morphological priming by itself: A study of Portuguese
conjugations. Cognition 112: 187–194
Marinis, T. and van der Lely, H. (2007) On-line processing of wh-questions in children
with G-SLI and typically developing children. International Journal of Language &
Communication Disorders, 42 (5). pp. 557-582
Marinis, T. and Chondrogianni, V. (2011) Comprehension of reflexives and pronouns in
sequential bilingual children: do they pattern similarly to L1 children, L2 adults, or
children with specific language impairment? Journal of Neurolinguistics, 24 (2).
pp. 202-212
Montgomery, J. W., & Leonard, L. B. (1998). Real-Time Inflectional Processing by
Children with Specific Language Impairment: Effects of Phonetic Substance. J
Speech Lang HearRes, 41(6), 1432-1443.
Montgomery, J. W., & Leonard, L. B. (2006). Effects of Acoustic Manipulation on the
Real-Time Inflectional Processing of Children With Specific Language Impairment.
J Speech Lang Hear Res, 49(6), 1238-1256
Chondrogianni, V & Marinis, T. (in press). Production and processing asymmetries in the
acquisition of tense morphology by sequential bilingual children. Bilingualism:
Language & Cognition
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