Heather K J van der Lely

• Harvard University

Τεστ Ανίχνευσης της Γραμματικής και της Φωνολογίας (GAPS), Heather K. J. van der Lely with Hilary Gardner, Alastair McClelland & Karen Froud, Centre for Developmental Language Disorders and Cognitive Neuroscience Φόρμα του Τεστ Περίληψη των πληροφοριών του συμμετέχοντα/της συμμετέχουσας Μετάφραση και προσαρμογή στην ελληνική γλώσσα: Maria Mengis...

Significance Although much research has been devoted to the acquisition of number words, relatively little is known about the acquisition of other expressions of quantity. We propose that the order of acquisition of quantifiers is related to features inherent to the meaning of each term. Four specific dimensions of the meaning and use of quantifier...

This study develops a single elicitation method to test the acquisition of third-person pronominal objects in 5-year-olds for 16 languages. This methodology allows us to compare the acquisition of pronominals in languages that lack object clitics (“pronoun languages”) with languages that employ clitics in the relevant context (“clitic languages”),...

This cross-linguistic study evaluates children’s understanding of passives in eleven typologically different languages: Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Lithuanian, and Polish. The study intends to determine whether the reported gaps between the comprehension of active and passive and between short...

A 19 bambini (5-9 anni) con una storia pregressa di Disturbo Specifico del Linguaggio (DSL) è stato somministrato un breve test di screening delle abilità morfo-sintattiche e fonologiche per l’età prescolare in corso di standardizzazione per l’italiano. Tale test rappresenta un adattamento di un analogo test inglese già standardizzato (GAPS; Gardne...

This study investigates whether number dissimilarities on subject and object DPs facilitate the comprehension of subject- and object-extracted centre-embedded relative clauses in children with Grammatical Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI). We compared the performance of a group of English-speaking children with G-SLI (mean age: 12;11) with that...

An on-going debate surrounds the relationship between specific language impairment and developmental dyslexia, in particular with respect to their phonological abilities. Are these distinct disorders? To what extent do they overlap? Which cognitive and linguistic profiles correspond to specific language impairment, dyslexia and comorbid cases? At l...

Correct use of verb argument structure relies on accurate verb semantic representations whose formation depends partly on use of reverse linking. We predicted that children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), who have difficulties with reverse linking, would have inaccurate semantic representations for verbs and hence difficulties with verb ar...

Non-word repetition (NWR) difficulties are common, but not universal, among children with specific language impairment (SLI). However, older children and adolescents with SLI have rarely been studied. Studies disagree on the relationship between NWR difficulties and difficulties with other areas of language and literacy. There is also no consensus...

Appendix S1 Individual Raw scores and age adjusted Z-scores for the children with SLI for the comprehension and expressive language tests. Key : TROG = Test of reception of grammar-2- a test of sentence understanding [60]; BPVS = British picture vocabulary scales- a test of single word understanding [59]; TAPS = Test of active and passive sentences...

Background: The extraordinarily high incidence of grammatical language impairments in developmental disorders suggests that this uniquely human cognitive function is "fragile". Yet our understanding of the neurobiology of grammatical impairments is limited. Furthermore, there is no "gold-standard" to identify grammatical impairments and routine sc...

English speakers have to recognize, for example, that te[m] in te[m] pens is a form of ten, despite place assimilation of the nasal consonant. Children with dyslexia and specific language impairment (SLI) are commonly proposed to have a phonological deficit, and we investigate whether that deficit extends to place assimilation, as a way of probing...

This paper tests claims that children with Grammatical(G)-SLI are impaired in hierarchical structural dependencies at the clause level and in whatever underlies such dependencies with respect to movement, chain formation and feature checking; that is, their impairment lies in the syntactic computational system itself (the Computational Grammatical...

The Relativized Minimality approach to A'-dependencies (Friedmann et al., 2009) predicts that headed object relative clauses (RCs) and which-questions are the most difficult, due to the presence of a lexical restriction on both the subject and the object DP which creates intervention. We investigated comprehension of center-embedded headed object R...

This article focuses on some of the linguistic components that underlie letter-sound decoding skills and reading comprehension: specifically phonology, morphology, and syntax. Many children who have reading difficulties had language deficits that were detectable before they began reading. Early identification of language difficulties will therefore...

In this research we investigate the relevance of phonological parameters in acquisition of Serbian language. Implementation of British Test of Phonological Screeing (TOPhS, van der Lely and Harris, 1999) has revealed that phonological complexity (syllabic and metrical structure) influences accuracy in non-word repetition task and could be used in a...

This study uses near-infrared spectroscopy in young infants in order to elucidate the nature of functional cerebral processing for speech. Previous imaging studies of infants' speech perception revealed left-lateralized responses to native language. However, it is unclear if these activations were due to language per se rather than to some low-leve...

This study contributes to the characterization of the deficit in specific language impairment (SLI) by investigating whether deficits in the production and comprehension of pronouns in Greek children with SLI are best accounted for by domain-general or domain-specific models of the language faculty. The Greek pronominal system distinguishes between...

English-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) variably produce inflected and bare stem forms in obligatory past tense contexts. Researchers have not reached consensus as to whether the underlying deficit is morphosyntactic or morphophonological in nature. The Computational Grammatical Complexity (CGC) Hypothesis takes a differen...

Purpose We investigated claims that specific language impairment (SLI) typically arises from nonspeech auditory deficits by measuring tone-in-noise thresholds in a relatively homogeneous SLI subgroup exhibiting a primary deficit restricted to grammar (Grammatical[G]-SLI). Method Fourteen children (mostly teenagers) with G-SLI were compared to age-...

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) and dyslexia are known to have impairments in various aspects of phonology, which have been claimed to cause their language and literacy impairments. However, 'phonology' encompasses a wide range of skills, and little is known about whether these phonological impairments extend to prosody. To investi...

A common feature of language disorders, particularly in English, is an impairment in inflectional morphology. One view claims that this deficit is caused by impaired speech processing and resulting impoverished phonological representations. We investigated the accuracy of spoken word recognition in Specific Language Impairment (SLI) using a success...

Unlabelled: By the age of three, typically developing children can draw conceptual distinctions between "kinds of individual" and "kinds of stuff" on the basis of syntactic structures. They differ from adults only in the extent to which syntactic knowledge can be over-ridden by semantic properties of the referent. However, the relative roles of sy...

Experiment 2 Semantic processing: Mean amplitude differences (violation minus control) for the semantic task within the different windows of interest (0–100 ms, 100–300 ms, 300–500 ms and 800–1000 ms) for each region of interest (ROI), the standard error is shown in italic. We performed a simple ANOVA for each region of interest separately: *** p<....

Superimposed plot of AEPs for the target and standard tones for the G-SLI and Age control groups. (0.19 MB JPG)

Mean average map for the periods of interest for the N100, P200 and P300 for the G-SLI and Age control groups. (0.39 MB JPG)

Syntactic processing: Effect sizes for individual subjects for the adult and language control (LC) groups in the 800–1000 ms temporal window (P600). Effect size: mean amplitude differences (violation minus control) in the Anterior Right ROI. Negativity is plotted upwards. (0.02 MB PDF)

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Mean latency and amplitude for the N100, P200, and P300 components for the G-SLI and age matched control groups. Lat = Latency; Amp = Amplitude in µV; Mean SD = Mean average Standard Deviation (0.03 MB DOC)

Syntactic processing: Effect sizes for individual subjects for the adult and language control (LC) groups in the 100–300 ms temporal window (ELAN). Effect size: mean amplitude differences (violation minus control) in the Anterior Left ROI. Negativity is plotted upwards. (0.02 MB PDF)

Electrical brain responses to auditory processing in language impaired children (0.05 MB DOC)

Experiment 1: Syntactic processing: Mean amplitude differences (violation minus control) for the syntactic task within the different windows of interest (0–100 ms, 100–300 ms, 300–500 ms and 800–1000 ms) for each region of interest (ROI), the standard error is shown in italic. We performed a simple ANOVA for each region of interest separately: ***...

9 Regions of Interest and the corresponding electrode sites. (0.38 MB JPG)

Syntactic processing: Effect sizes for individual subjects for the adult and language control (LC) groups in the 300–500 ms temporal window for the syntactic task. Effect size: mean amplitude differences (violation minus control) in the Posterior Central ROI. Negativity is plotted upwards. (0.02 MB PDF)

Semantic processing: Effect sizes for individual subjects for the adult and language control (LC) groups in the 300–500 ms temporal window (N400). Effect size: mean amplitude differences (violation minus control) in the 3 Posterior ROIs. Negativity is plotted upwards. (0.02 MB PDF)

Scientific and public fascination with human language have included intensive scrutiny of language disorders as a new window onto the biological foundations of language and its evolutionary origins. Specific language impairment (SLI), which affects over 7% of children, is one such disorder. SLI has received robust scientific attention, in part beca...

We report a study comparing the narrative abilities of 12 adults with high-functioning autism (HFA) or Asperger Syndrome (AS) versus 12 matched controls. The study focuses on the use of referential expressions (temporal expressions and anaphoric pronouns) during a story-telling task. The aim was to assess pragmatics skills in people with HFA/AS in...

Purpose The authors aimed to establish whether 2 theoretically motivated interventions could improve use of verb argument structure in pupils with persistent specific language impairment (SLI). Method Twenty-seven pupils with SLI (ages 11;0–16;1) participated in this randomized controlled trial with “blind” assessment. Participants were randomly a...

The computational grammatical complexity (CGC) hypothesis claims that children with G(rammatical)-specific language impairment (SLI) have a domain-specific deficit in the computational system affecting syntactic dependencies involving 'movement'. One type of such syntactic dependencies is filler-gap dependencies. In contrast, the Generalized Slowin...

Speech perception normally utilizes multiple acoustic cues in perception of specific speech sound contrast. This study investigates which acoustic cues are responsible for syllable final stop consonant voicing in English using speech and non-speech stimuli. Specifically we study vocalic duration and F1 offset frequency cues using three experimental...

In this study we explore the impact of a morphological deficit on syntactic comprehension. A self-paced listening task was designed to investigate passive sentence processing in typically developing (TD) children and children with Grammatical-Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI). Participants had to judge whether the sentence they heard matched a p...

We investigate whether children with Grammatical Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI) are also phonologically impaired and, if so, what the nature of that impairment is. We focus on the prosodic complexity of words, based on their syllabic and metrical (stress) structure, and investigate this using a novel non-word repetition procedure, the Test of...

Although it is well-established that children with Specific Language Impairment characteristically optionally inflect forms that require tense and agreement marking, their abilities with regards to derivational suffixation are less well understood. In this paper we provide evidence from children with Grammatical-Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI)...

Speech perception normally utilizes multiple acoustic cues in perception of specific speech sound contrast. This study investigates which acoustic cues are responsible for syllable final stop consonant voicing in English using speech and non-speech stimuli. Specifically we study vocalic duration and F1 offset frequency cues using three experimental...

Gathercole's (2006) comprehensive and interesting Keynote Article on the nature of the relations between nonword repetition and word learning highlights the complex number of interacting factors that affect this relation through development. In this Commentary we focus on the impact of higher level cognition, particularly linguistic representations...

Despite a large body of evidence regarding reliable indicators of language deficits in young children, there has not been a standardized, quick screen for language impairment. The Grammar and Phonology Screening (GAPS) test was therefore designed as a short, reliable assessment of young children's language abilities. GAPS was designed to provide a...

Is past tense production better modelled by a Single Mechanism or a Words and Rules model? We present data concerning a phenomenon that has not been considered by either model-regular past tense verbs with contrasting phonotactics. One set of verbs contains clusters at the inflected verb end that also occur in monomorphemic words ('monomorphemicall...

Specific language-impairment (SLI) is a disorder of language acquisition in children who otherwise appear to be normally developing. Controversy surrounds whether SLI results from impairment to a "domain-specific" system devoted to language itself or from some more "domain-general" system. I compare these two views of SLI, and focus on three compon...

Grammatical-specific language impairment (G-SLI) in children, arguably, provides evidence for the existence of a specialised grammatical sub-system in the brain, necessary for normal language development. Some researchers challenge this, claiming that domain-general, low-level auditory deficits, particular to rapid processing, cause phonological de...

This article presents a test of the proposal that a subgroup of children with GRAMMATICAL-SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT (G-SLI) have optional movement (the REPRESENTATIONAL DEFICIT FOR DEPENDENT RELATIONS (RDDR) account, van der Lely 1998) by investigating wh-movement in fifteen G-SLI subjects and twenty-four younger children matched on language abi...

In this paper we present a model of abstract phonological representations in children with Grammatical-Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI). We report results from a new non-word repetition test, the Test Of Phonological Structure (TOPhS, van der Lely & Harris, 1999), which systematically varies syllabic complexity. G-SLI children have difficulty r...

This study evaluates the input-processing deficit/single system and the grammar-specific deficit/dual system models to account for past tense formation in impaired and normal language development. We investigated regular and irregular past tense formation of 60 real and novel regular and irregular verbs in "Grammatical (G)-SLI" children (aged 9:3 t...

The results of a pilot study into meta-syntactic therapy using visual coding for four children (age 11-13 years) with severe receptive and expressive specific language impairment (SLI) are presented. The coding system uses shapes, colours and a system of arrows to teach grammatical rules. A time-series design established baseline pre-therapy measur...

Grammatical specific language impairment (G-SLI) has been proposed as a distinct subtype of language impairment. We assessed a large sample of twins between the ages of 7 and 13 years on language comprehension tests sensitive to G-SLI. The sample included 37 same-sex twin pairs selected for the presence of language impairment (LI) in one or both tw...

An ongoing controversy is whether an input-processing deficit or a grammar-specific deficit causes specific language impairment (SLI) in children. Previous studies have focussed on SLI childrens' omission of inflectional morphemes or impaired performance on language tasks, but such data can be accounted for by either theory. To distinguish between...

Specific language impairment (SLI) is a disorder in which language acquisition is impaired in an otherwise normally developing child. SLI affects around 7% of children. The existence of a purely grammatical form of SLI has become extremely controversial because it points to the existence and innateness of a putative grammatical subsystem in the bra...

The linguistic characteristics of a boy (AZ) with specific language impairment (SLI) are presented. AZ illustrates the linguistic characteristics of Grammatical SLI. Morphosyntactic investigations reveal that all inflectional forms are present but are not used consistently. The impairment extends to syntactically complex utterances involving embedd...

This study investigates the intrasentential assignment of reference to pronouns (him, her) and anaphors (himself, herself) as characterized by Binding Theory in a subgroup of "Grammatical specifically language-impaired" (SLI) children. The study aims to (1) provide further insight into the underlying nature of Grammatical SLI in children and (2) el...

This paper aims to provide insight into the contentious issue of the hypothesised innate basis to domain specific, modular aspects of language [Fodor, F.J., The Modularity of Mind. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1983; Chomsky, N., Lectures on government and binding. Foris, Dordrecht, 1981]. In order to do this a distinction is made between modular langu...

This paper provides a further investigation into the linguistic abilities of a subgroup of 12 Grammatical specific language impaired (SLI) children (aged 10;2 to 13;11). The study investigates the use of referential expressions (e.g. pronouns) in a narrative discourse, and provides insight into the underlying nature of Grammatical SLI, thereby cont...

The aim of this study is to provide further characterization of a subgroup of so-called "Grammatical specific language-impaired (SLI)" children. The Grammatical SLI children have a persistent and disproportionate impairment in grammatical comprehension and expression of language. Previous research has indicated that their language impairment may be...

The focus of this study is the acquisition and underlying syntactic representation of passive sentences in a subgroup of 15 'Grammatical specifically language impaired' (SLI) children (aged 9:3-12:10) and 36 younger normally developing, language ability (LA) control children (aged 5:5-8:9). In particular, the paper is concerned with the differences...

Department of Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK High-functioning children with autism show a severe deficit in the development of pragmatics whereas their knowledge of syntax and morphology is relatively intact. In this study we investigated further their selective communication impairment by comparing them with children with s...

Canonical linking rules for mapping thematic roles with syntactic functions were studied. Three experiments were undertaken to investigate the nature of productive forward linking (from semantics to syntax) and productive reverse linking (from syntax to semantics). I proposed that reverse linking, in contrast to forward linking, requires more detai...

This study is concerned with characteristics of short-term memory (STM) in children with specific language impairment (SLI). The linguistic requirements of the test procedure, the characteristics of the test materials, and the development of linguistic representations were considered. Two experimental tasks were used: a verbal-repetition and a pict...

Abstracts This paper reports the findings from a research project investigating a subgroup of specifically language‐impaired (SLI) children. The subgroup of SLI children consists of those characterised by persisting grammatical deficits in comprehension and expression of language. The paper summarises the findings in order to highlight the therapeu...

This study investigated comprehension of reversible sentences in specifically language-impaired (SLI) children. Two experiments, using different paradigms, were undertaken. In Experiment 1, 14 SLI children (aged 4:10-7:10) were compared with children matched on chronological age and language age (LA). Subjects acted out 36 semantically reversible s...

This study investigated sentence comprehension and the use of sentence comprehension strategies by specifically language impaired children. Eleven specifically language impaired (SLI) children (aged 4,0 to 6,0), chosen according to strict criteria, were compared with eleven children matched on chronological age and eleven language controls matched...

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have difficulty with, amongst other things, non-word repetition tasks. This paper presents preliminary research into the nature of the phonological deficit in SLI. We report results from four SLI children tested on a new set of non-words which, unlike previous sets, takes metrical and syllabic comple...