Role of auditory attention in the real-time processing of simple grammar by children with specific language impairment: a preliminary investigation.

Background: This study investigates the effects of two dimensions of attentional functioning, sustained focus of attention and resource capacity/allocation, on the real-time processing of simple sentences by children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing (TD) children matched for age.

Methods & Procedures: Thirty-six school-age children with SLI and 36 age-matched TD peers completed an auditory continuous performance task (ACPT) as a measure of sustained attention, a concurrent verbal processing-storage task as a measure of resource capacity/allocation, and a word-recognition reaction time (RT) task (index of sentence processing). Correlation and regression analyses were run to determine the association between the two measures of attention and word recognition RT.

Outcomes & Results: Children with SLI were outperformed by the TD children on each of the tasks. For each group, scores on both the ACPT and concurrent processing-storage tasks significantly correlated with word recognition RT. The partial correlations (with the effects of age removed) remained significant, but only for the SLI group. Results of a regression analysis for the SLI group showed that age predicted 12.3% of unique variance in word recognition RT, while ACPT score accounted for an additional significant 45.7% of unique variance and the processing-storage task score accounted for another significant 4.3% of unique variance.

Conclusions: The real-time processing of simple grammar by children with SLI appears to involve significant use of sustained focus of attention and attentional resource capacity. In the case of TD children, however, neither sustained attention nor attentional resources appears to be significantly involved in simple sentence processing.