The goal of this research is to examine the effects of prosodic manipulations of linguistic input on language learning by children with specific language impairment. Specifically, this project will investigate the impact of vocal stress and speech rate modifications in the linguistic input provided during lexical and morphological training. It is well documented that language impaired children demonstrate various types of information processing deficits, including auditory perceptual deficits. Yet, there is a paucity of research investigating how the manner in which the linguistic signal is presented affects language impaired children's ability to process linguistic information and learn the rules of the language. Prosodic characteristics of linguistic input are easily manipulated and have the potential to influence various levels of linguistic processing. It can be hypothesized that input manipulations of this type could offer a means of reducing the processing demands of the language learning task such that the child can allocate more attentional resources to the new target form being acquired. This investigation will consist of a series of experimental group design studies, as well as an extended training study employing single-subject methodology. The performance of language impaired subjects will be compared in the group studies to that of two different groups of normal language children (equated either in terms of nonverbal mental age or language level). Three lines of inquiry are proposed which will examine: a) the effect of stress and rate manipulations on the acquisition of novel lexemes and morphological markers with varying phonetic characteristics; b) the impact of these linguistic input modifications on various phases of language learning (from initial mapping to generalized knowledge); and c) the ability to predict which language impaired children benefit from rate/stress manipulations. This line of research will inform our models of language learning and have direct clinical relevance. This approach represents a new tact in language training in that it focuses on facilitating the processing of linguistic stimuli in order to affect changes in linguistic knowledge.
| Moyle, Maura Jones; Karasinski, Courtney; Ellis Weismer, Susan et al. (2011) Grammatical morphology in school-age children with and without language impairment: a discriminant function analysis. Lang Speech Hear Serv Sch 42:550-60 |
| Yang, Yun-Liang; Cheng, Hsiao-Hsu; Lo, Hsiu-Jung et al. (2006) Distribution and antifungal susceptibility of Candida species isolated from different age populations in Taiwan. Med Mycol 44:237-42 |
| Weismer, S E; Hesketh, L J (1996) Lexical learning by children with specific language impairment: effects of linguistic input presented at varying speaking rates. J Speech Hear Res 39:177-90 |
| Weismer, S E; Hesketh, L J (1993) The influence of prosodic and gestural cues on novel word acquisition by children with specific language impairment. J Speech Hear Res 36:1013-25 |
