Persistent Neurobehavioral Markers of Developmental Morphosyntax Errors in Adults.

Purpose Child language acquisition is marked by an optional infinitive period (ages 2-4 years) during which children use nonfinite (infinitival) verb forms and finite verb forms interchangeably in grammatical contexts that require finite forms. In English, children's errors include omissions of past tense /-/ and 3rd-person singular /-/. This language acquisition period typically ends by the age of 4 years, but it persists in children with language impairments.

Grammar Is Differentially Impaired in Subgroups of Autism Spectrum Disorders: Evidence from an Investigation of Tense Marking and Morphosyntax.

Deficits in the production of verbal inflection (tense marking, or finiteness) are part of the (OI) stage of typical grammatical development. They are also a hallmark of language impairment: they have been used as biomarkers in guiding genetic studies of Specific Language Impairment (SLI), and have also been observed in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). To determine the detailed nature of finiteness abilities in subgroups of ASD [autism with impaired language (ALI) vs.

Shared neuroanatomical substrates of impaired phonological working memory across reading disability and autism.

Background: Individuals with reading disability or individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are characterized, respectively, by their difficulties in reading or social communication, but both groups often have impaired phonological working memory (PWM). It is not known whether the impaired PWM reflects distinct or shared neuroanatomical abnormalities in these two diagnostic groups.

Methods: White-matter structural connectivity via diffusion weighted imaging was examined in sixty-four children, ages 5-17 years, with reading disability, ASD, or typical development (TD), who were matched in age, gender, intelligence, and diffusion data quality.

Comparison of Grammar in Neurodevelopmental Disorders: The Case of Binding in Williams Syndrome and Autism With and Without Language Impairment.

This study investigates whether distinct neurodevelopmental disorders show distinct patterns of impairments in particular grammatical abilities and the relation of those grammatical patterns to general language delays and intellectual disabilities. We studied two disorders (autism and Williams syndrome [WS]) and two distinct properties (Principle A that governs reflexives and Principle B that, together with its associated pragmatic rule, governs pronouns) of the binding module of grammar. These properties are known to have markedly different courses of acquisition in typical development.

Development of verbal passive in Williams syndrome.

Purpose: To experimentally investigate knowledge of passives of actional (hold) and psychological (love) verbs in children with Williams syndrome (WS). Passives are usually reported to be in line with mental age in WS. However, studies usually focus on passives of actional verbs only.

Judgments of omitted BE and DO in questions as extended finiteness clinical markers of specific language impairment (SLI) to 15 years: a study of growth and asymptote.

Purpose: Clinical grammar markers are needed for children with SLI older than 8 years. This study followed children who were previously studied on sentences with omitted finiteness to determine if affected children continue to perform at low levels and to examine possible predictors of low performance. This is the first longitudinal report of grammaticality judgments of questions.

Complex grammar in Williams syndrome.

This study investigated knowledge of binding and raising in two groups of children with Williams syndrome (WS), 6-12 and 12-16-years-old, compared to typically developing (TD) controls matched on non-verbal MA, verbal MA, and grammar. In typical development, difficulties interpreting pronouns, but not reflexives, persist until the age of around 6, while raising is not mastered until about the age of 8 or 9. If grammar in WS is delayed, but develops in a fashion parallel to TD population, similar patterns of difficulties may be expected, although it has not been established whether the grammatical development is ever complete in the individuals with this disorder.

An ERP investigation of binding and coreference.

This study examines the nature of violations in processing one class of binding construction, namely those involving reflexives and their antecedents. When arguments of verbs appear at the point where a syntactic violation is detected, a centroparietal positivity occurs, peaking at 600 ms after the presentation of the stimulus (P600), as is consistent with other types of syntactic anomalies. However, nonarguments in similar sentences fail to elicit the same response.

Acquisition of irregular past tense by children with specific language impairment.

In this paper we add to what is known about the tense-marking limitations of children with specific language impairment (SLI) by exploring the acquisition of regular and irregular past tense, encompassing the age range of 2;6 to 8;9 (years;months) and comparing the performance of 21 children with SLI to that of 23 control children of the same age and 20 younger control children of equivalent mean length of utterance (MLU) at the outset. The analysis differentiated between the morphophonological component of past tense marking and the morphosyntactic component (finiteness). In the morphosyntactic component, the performance of the SLI group trails that of the two control groups over 3.

Grammaticality judgements of an extended optional infinitive grammar: evidence from English-speaking children with specific language impairment.

This study reports on the outcomes of an investigation designed to evaluate competing accounts of the nature of the grammatical limitations of children with specific language impairment (SLI) with a new comprehension measure involving well-formedness judgments. It is a follow-up to the longitudinal study of Rice, Wexler, and Hershberger (1998), which reported on the production of grammatical morphemes by young children with SLI and 2 control groups of children, one at equivalent levels of mean length of utterance at the outset of the study, the other of equivalent age. In this investigation, we report on grammaticality judgment measures collected from the same 3 groups of children over a period of 2 years for 5 times of measurement.

Tense over time: the longitudinal course of tense acquisition in children with specific language impairment.

Tense marking in English is relatively late appearing and is especially late for children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Little is known about the full course of acquisition for this set of morphemes. Because tense marking is a fundamental property of clause construction, it is central to current theories of morphosyntax and language acquisition.

Family histories of children with SLI who show extended optional infinitives.

Previous family history studies have demonstrated that there are elevated rates of language and language-related impairments in families identified through probands with language impairments. This study examines family histories of children with specific language impairment (SLI) known to have particular grammatical limitations in a core feature of grammatical acquisition, a stage known as Extended Optional Infinitives (EOI). Family affectedness rates are reported for 31 families identified through preschool probands with this clearly defined language impairment and 67 control families, identified through nonaffected preschool children developmentally similar to the probands.

Toward tense as a clinical marker of specific language impairment in English-speaking children.

A critical clinical issue is the identification of a clinical marker, a linguistic form or principle that can be shown to be characteristic of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). In this paper we evaluate, as candidate clinical markers, a set of morphemes that mark Tense. In English, this includes -s third person singular, -ed regular past, BE, and DO.

Task-induced asymmetry of the auditory evoked M100 neuromagnetic field elicited by speech sounds.

The auditory evoked neuromagnetic fields elicited by synthesized speech sounds (consonant-vowel syllables) were recorded in six subjects over the left and right temporal cortices using a 37-channel SQUID-based magnetometer. The latencies and amplitudes of the peaks of the M100 evoked responses were bilaterally symmetric for passively presented stimuli. In contrast, when subjects were asked to discriminate among the same syllabic stimuli, the amplitude of the M100 increased in the left and decreased in the right temporal cortices.

Specific language impairment as a period of extended optional infinitive.

English-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) are known to have particular difficulty with the acquisition of grammatical morphemes that carry tense and agreement features, such as the past tense -ed and third-person singular present -s. In this study, an Extended Optional Infinitive (EOI) account of SLI is evaluated. In this account, -ed, -s, BE, and DO are regarded as finiteness markers.

Innateness and maturation in linguistic development.

Language is species-specific, species-wide, and highly structured. Its principles (Universal Grammar) are innate (genetically determined) in the child, although some linguistic capacity is subject to a maturational schedule, examples of which are given. Some particular aspects of language are learned, in a way driven by Universal Grammar.

Allele frequency distribution of two highly polymorphic DNA sequences in three ethnic groups and its application to the determination of paternity.

The allele frequency distribution of two highly polymorphic DNA sequences has been determined in three ethnic groups (American blacks, Caucasoids, and Hispanics) from the New York metropolitan area. The two loci examined were D14S1 and the flanking region of HRAS-1. The former was analyzed in EcoRI-digested DNA and the latter in TaqI-digested DNA.

Developmental disfluency in 2-, 4-, and 6-year-old boys in neutral and stress situations.

Disfluency characteristics of 36 nonstuttering boys aged 2, 4, and 6 were analyzed from tape-recorded speech samples made during free play within neutral and stress situations. Comparisons of frequency of disfluency were made among the different ages within each situation. In the neutral situation, 2-year-olds had significantly higher disfluency frequencies than either 4- or 6-year-olds for word repetitions and phrase repetitions; 2-year-olds also had a higher frequency of disrhythmic phonations than 6-year-olds but not than 4-year-olds.

Superior ultra-audiometric hearing: a new type of hearing loss which correlates highly with unusually good speech in the "profoundly deaf".

This paper reports 42 severely-to-profoundly deaf subjects, 6 of whom have better hearing in the range of 8 to 14 kHz than below 8 kHz. Data on speech capabilities in these six subjects suggest that this ultra-audiometric range may contribute to their speech comprehension and control.