HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal My Folders Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Evans, J. L. Articles by Robe-Torres, K. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Evans, J. L. Articles by Robe-Torres, K. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Statistical Learning in Children With Specific Language Impairment

Jenny R. Saffran
Kathryn Robe-Torres
University of Wisconsin–Madison

Contact author: Julia L. Evans, School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182-1518. E-mail: jevans{at}mail.sdsu.edu.

Purpose: In this study, the authors examined (a) whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) can implicitly compute the probabilities of adjacent sound sequences, (b) if this ability is related to degree of exposure, (c) if it is domain specific or domain general and, (d) if it is related to vocabulary.

Method: Children with SLI and normal language controls (ages 6;5–14;4 [years;months]) listened to 21 min of a language in which transitional probabilities within words were higher than those between words. In a second study, children with SLI and Age–Nonverbal IQ matched controls (8;0–10;11) listened to the same language for 42 min and to a second 42 min "tone" language containing the identical statistical structure as the "speech" language.

Results: After 21 min, the SLI group's performance was at chance, whereas performance for the control group was significantly greater than chance and significantly correlated with receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge. In the 42-minute speech condition, the SLI group's performance was significantly greater than chance and correlated with receptive vocabulary but was no different from chance in the analogous 42-minute tone condition. Performance for the control group was again significantly greater than chance in 42-minute speech and tone conditions.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that poor implicit learning may underlie aspects of the language impairments in SLI.

KEY WORDS: specific language impairment, implicit learning, statistical learning, child language development, child language disorders

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Facebook    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?