Development of language processing abilities in children with Specific Language Impairment

Development of language processing abilities in children with Specific Language Impairment

Lucia Buil-Legaz, Daniel Adrover-Roig, Raúl López Penadés, Víctor Alejandro Sánchez Azanza, and Eva Aguilar-Mediavilla

Universitat de les Illes Balears

Language development in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is still poorly understood. This study describes the longitudinal trajectory of several measures of language processing abilities in children with SLI relative to control children matched by their age. A set of measures of language processing abilities (non-word repetition, sentence repetition, phonological awareness, rapid automatic naming, and verbal fluency) were collected at three time points, from 6–12 years of age using a prospective longitudinal design. Results revealed that, at all ages, children with SLI obtained lower values in measures involving a high load on phonological working memory (non-word repetition, sentence repetition and phonological awareness without visual cues) when compared to typically developing children. Other measures with a low load on phonological working memory (rapid automatic naming, phonological awareness with visual cues and semantic verbal fluency), improved over time, given that differences at 6 years of age did not persist at further moments of testing. Therefore, results show that children with SLI manifest persistent difficulties in tasks involved in manipulating segments of words and in maintaining verbal units active in phonological working memory, while other abilities, such as the access to underlying phonological representations are less affected.