An Integrated Perspective on Spatio-Temporal Attention and Infant Language Acquisition.

Efficiency in the early ability to switch attention toward competing visual stimuli (spatial attention) may be linked to future ability to detect rapid acoustic changes in linguistic stimuli (temporal attention). To test this hypothesis, we compared individual performances in the same cohort of Italian-learning infants in two separate tasks: (i) an overlap task, measuring disengagement efficiency for visual stimuli at 4 months (Experiment 1), and (ii) an auditory discrimination task for trochaic syllabic sequences at 7 months (Experiment 2). Our results indicate that an infant's efficiency in processing competing information in the visual field (i.

Attentional engagement during syllable discrimination: The role of salient prosodic cues in 6- to 8-month-old infants.

Prosodic cues drive speech segmentation and guide syllable discrimination. However, less is known about the attentional mechanisms underlying an infant's ability to benefit from prosodic cues. This study investigated how 6- to 8-month-old Italian infants allocate their attention to strong vs.

The effect of spatio-temporal distance between visual stimuli on information processing in children with Specific Language Impairment.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) have a deficit in processing a sequence of two visual stimuli (S1 and S2) presented at different inter-stimulus intervals and in different spatial locations. In particular, the core of this study is to investigate whether S1 identification is disrupted due to a retroactive interference of S2. To this aim, two experiments were planned in which children with SLI and children with typical development (TD), matched by age and non-verbal IQ, were compared (Experiment 1: SLI n=19; TD n=19; Experiment 2: SLI n=16; TD n=16).

Real-time comprehension of gender and number in four- to seven-year-old children: a study of the relationship between Italian clitic pronouns and visual picture referents.

The gender and number of a direct object clitic pronoun are based on the gender and number of the noun to which it refers. Grammatical gender is an intrinsic property of the lexical item that is independent from the natural sex of referents, whereas number is a non-intrinsic feature of nouns based on the conceptual level of quantity. The aim of this paper is to investigate children's ability in matching Italian direct object clitic pronouns to an inanimate visual referent on the basis of number or gender information.

Non-word repetition: the relationship between weak syllables and the omission of grammatical morphemes in children with specific language impairment.

Non-word (NW) repetition in children with specific language impairment (SLI) is a skill related to, but genetically separate from, grammatical ability. Prosodic structure of the syllables may bridge the gap between these two abilities. A NW repetition task was compared in a group of 15 preschool Italian children with SLI (ranged in age from 3;11 to 5;8) and 15 younger typically developing children (aged from 2;11 to 3;7) matched for mean length of utterance (TD-MLU).

Clinical markers in Italian-speaking children with and without specific language impairment: a study of non-word and real word repetition as predictors of grammatical ability.

Background: In many languages a weakness in non-word repetition serves as a useful clinical marker of specific language impairment (SLI) in children. However, recent work in Italian has shown that the repetition of real words may also have clinical utility. For young typically developing Italian children, real word repetition is more predictive of particular grammatical abilities than is non-word repetition.

The effects of production demands on grammatical weaknesses in specific language impairment: the case of clitic pronouns in Italian.

Purpose: Extended optional use of direct object clitic pronouns (e.g., la in Paula la vede ["Paula sees her"]) appears to be a clinical marker for specific language impairment (SLI) in Italian.

Visual attentional engagement deficits in children with specific language impairment and their role in real-time language processing.

In order to become a proficient user of language, infants must detect temporal cues embedded within the noisy acoustic spectra of ongoing speech by efficient attentional engagement. According to the neuro-constructivist approach, a multi-sensory dysfunction of attentional engagement - hampering the temporal sampling of stimuli - might be responsible for language deficits typically shown in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). In the present study, the efficiency of visual attentional engagement was investigated in 22 children with SLI and 22 typically developing (TD) children by measuring attentional masking (AM).

Real-word and nonword repetition in Italian-speaking children with specific language impairment: a study of diagnostic accuracy.

Purpose: Using 2 different scoring methods, the authors examined the diagnostic accuracy of both real-word and nonword repetition in identifying Italian-speaking children with and without specific language impairment (SLI).

Method: A total of 34 children ages 3;11-5;8 (years;months) participated--17 children with SLI and 17 typically developing children matched for age (TD-A children). Children completed real-word and nonword repetition tasks.

Putting singular and plural morphology in context*.

This study explores the development of children's knowledge of linguistic and pragmatic aspects of singular and plural in Italian, for definite articles (Experiment 1) and verbs (Experiment 2). Participants aged three to adult were asked to pick objects from two dishes, each with a different number of items on them (one vs. two), following the morphological information.

A cross-linguistic study of real-word and non-word repetition as predictors of grammatical competence in children with typical language development.

Background: Although relationships among non-word repetition, real-word repetition and grammatical ability have been documented, it is important to study whether the specific nature of these relationships is tied to the characteristics of a given language.

Aims: The aim of this study is to explore the potential cross-linguistic differences (Italian and English) in the relationship among non-word repetition, real-word repetition, and grammatical ability in three-and four-year-old children with typical language development.

Methods & Procedures: To reach this goal, two repetition tasks (one real-word list and one non-word list for each language) were used.

Real-word repetition as a predictor of grammatical competence in Italian children with typical language development.

Background: Non-word repetition in children is a skill related to, but separable from grammatical ability. Lexical skill may bridge the gap between these two abilities.

Aims: The main aim was to determine whether real-word-repetition tasks could be better as predictors of grammatical ability than non-word-repetition tasks in children with typical language.