JSLHR Papers in Press
Published online January 9, 2012
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 2012; doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2011/10-0215)

Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 2012;55:1097.

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Article

Syntactic Structural Assignment in Brazilian Portuguese-Speaking Children with Specific Language Impairment

Talita Fortunato-Tavares
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo

Claudia R. F. de Andrade
Debora M. Befi-Lopes
Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo

Arild Hestvik
University of Delaware

Baila Epstein
Brooklyn College, City University of New York

Lidiya Tornyova
Richard G. Schwartz
The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Purpose: This study examined the comprehension of sentences with predicates and reflexives that are linked to a non-adjacent noun as a test of the Hierarchical Ordering Deficit Hypothesis (HOD). That hypothesis and more modern versions posit that children with Specific Language Impairment have difficulty in establishing non-adjacent (hierarchical) relations among elements of a sentence. It also tested whether additional working memory (WM) demands in constructions containing reflexives affected the extent to which children with SLI incorrectly structure sentences as indicated by their picture-pointing comprehension responses.

Method: Sixteen Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children (8;4–10;6) with SLI and 16 children with typical language development (TLD) matched for age (±3 months), gender, and socioeconomic status participated in two experiments (Predicate and Reflexive interpretation). In the Reflexive Experiment, we also manipulated WM demands. Each experiment involved a four choice picture selection sentence comprehension task.

Results: Children with SLI were significantly less accurate on all conditions. Both groups made more hierarchical syntactic construction errors in the long as compared to the short WM condition.

Conclusion: The HOD hypothesis was not confirmed. For both groups, syntactic factors (structural assignment) were more vulnerable than lexical factors (prepositions) to WM effects in sentence miscomprehension.

KEY WORDS: specific language impairment, syntax, structural assignment, working memory, children


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