Participants81 children in second grade were divided into four sub-groups:

Elicitation Task

Comparing morphological errors across tasks in elementary school age children with Specific Language Impairment

A m e r i c a n S p e e c h - L a n g u a g e - H e a r i n g A s s o c i a t i o n N o v e m b e r 2 0 - 2 2 , 2 0 1 4 O r l a n d o , F l o r i d a

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for the participation of all children in the study. We also thank the members of the SCROLL Lab who assisted with stimulus development, data collection, and data processing: Faith Baumann, Spencer Babb, Alex Cattano. This research is supported, in part a grant from the National Institutes of Health (1R03DC013399) to S. Adlof.

• Children with SLI have documented deficits in morphosyntax (e.g, Bedore & Leonard, 1998; Oetting & Horohov, 1997; Rice, Wexler, & Hershberger, 1998). To date, most studies have focused on preschool age children with SLI.

• SLI and dyslexia commonly occur together Catts, Adlof, Hogan, & Weismer, 2005). To date, studies have not considered the partial comorbidity of SLI and dyslexia when examining morphosyntax.

• The purpose of this study was to explore the type and frequency of morphological errors in school-age children with SLI with and without comorbid dyslexia.

• Morphological errors were compared across two types of tasks: an elicitation task, and a sentence production task.

Descriptive Statistics

Summary and Discussion

Sentence Production Task

Results

Method

Alison Eisel Hendrickshendriak@mailbox.sc.edu

Sheneka Whitewhitess2@email.sc.edu

Suzanne M. Adlof, Ph.D.sadlof@mailbox.sc.edu

References

Morphosyntactic Errors:

Sentence Production Task

Elicitation Task

Coding

Word Structure Sub-Test of the CELF-4

Experimenter: “This is a boy, and this ---” Child: “is a girl”

17 types of features were tested (See Figure 1).

Group TONI TOWRE CELFCLS

CELF WS

CELF FS

Num.Diff

Words

Total Words

Typical N = 34

108.09 (9.21)

102.76 (7.8)

105.53 (5.99)

9.47 (2.08)

12.35 (1.69)

123.9 (14.96)

203.9 (32.29)

SLI N = 21

100.1 (8.01)

100.1 (6.45)

79.29 (5.33)

4.95 (1.99)

7.38 (1.75)

109.3 (13.06)

173.7 (28.13)

Both N = 19

99.89 (8.08)

74.05 (9.09)

75.95 (7.99)

4.68 (1.95)

6.79 (2.25)

99.6 (18.88)

164.9 (36.60)

Dyslexia N = 7

100.71 (4.11)

76.43 (5.03)

99.43 (4.76)

8.43 (2.44)

9.86 (1.57)

130.1 (33.73)

225.4 (81.80)

Sub-Group Criteria• Test of Word Reading Efficiency-2 (TOWRE-2;

Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 2012) used to identify children with dyslexia using a -1 SD criterion

• Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-4 (CELF-4; Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 2003) used to identify children with language impairment, using a -1 SD criterion

• Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation (DELV; Seymour, Roeper, & deVilliers, 2003) used to rule out dialectical differences that might be confused as language impairment

Examples of Non-Morphosyntactic Errors:

Sentence Production Task

Feature Accurate ErrorIrregular Past Tense Mom gave me breakfast. Until I sawed the bike.Copula The middle dog is the

longest.They is third.

Auxiliary + -ing Because there is a traffic jam and no light, the police officer is directing traffic.

And I forgot to watering my plants

Errors in Agreement/Tense

Because the policeman give the us signal.

• Sentences were coded for accuracy and errors in using features targeted in the elicitation task.

• Only features that occurred at least an average of once per utterance for the typical children were used.

• Some features (e.g. Derivation of Noun) tested in the elicitation task could not be measured in production.

• Additional coding for general errors in tense and agreement that could not clearly be attributed as errors of Regular or Irregular Past Tense, Future Tense, or Third Person Singular.

1. Don’t Know.2. Otherwise I will pay my food.3. Neither you get a drink, then get a slushie.4. Unless I finish my homework

before I go to baseball game. 5. Because you don’t cross the road is

that the car might run you over.

• These results suggest that the morphosyntactic weaknesses of children with SLI and dyslexia are similar to those of children with SLI-only.

• These results suggest that children with dyslexia, in the absence of SLI, may show subtle morphosyntactic weaknesses.

•However, more data is needed to determine if this preliminary finding holds true for a larger group of participants.

• Different types of tasks (e.g., elicitation tasks vs sentence production tasks) may assess different skills in school-age children with SLI.

• For school-age children, difficulties with a sentence production task, such as the CELF-FS, are driven by non-morphosyntactic errors as well as errors in specific morphosyntatic features.

Formulated Sentences Sub-Test of the CELF-4.

The child is shown a picture and given a word, and must develop a sentence about the picture using the word.

RegPT 3SG PossN ObjP Furt RegPL AuxIng ComSup PossP DerN DerAdj ContrCop RefP Irrpl Uncontr IrrPT SubjP.00

.10

.20

.30

.40

.50

.60

.70

.80

.90

1.00

TypicalSLIBothDyslexia

Table 2: Example Coding

Table 1: Participant Demographics

Figure 1: Elicitation Task Accuracy

Bedore, L., & Leonard, L. (1998). Specific language impairment and grammatical morphology: A discriminant function. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 41, 1185-1192.

Catts, H. W., Adlof, S. M., Hogan, T. P., & Weismer, S. E. (2005). Are specific language impairment and dyslexia distinct disorders? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48(6), 1378-1396.

Oetting, J., & Horohov, J. (1997). Past-tense marking by children with and without specific language impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 40, 62-74.

Rice, M., Wexler, K., & Hershberger, S. (1998). Tense over time: The longitudinal course of tense acquisition in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 41, 1412-1431.

Semel, E., Wiig, E.H., & Secord, W.A. (2003). Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fourth Edition. San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment.

Seymour, H. N., Roeper, T. W., deVilliers, J. (2003). Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation. San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation.

Torgesen, J. K., Wagner, R. K., & Rashotte, C. A. (2012). Test of Word Reading Efficiency-Second Edition. Austin, TX: ProEd.

Introduction