Building words on actions: Verb enactment and verb recognition in children with specific language impairment

When words lead to solutions: Executive function deficits in preschool children with specific language impairment

“…As child development theories, embodied cognition theories, and several experimental studies suggest, the development of language and motor abilities are strongly interconnected (Levi, Colonnello, Giacchè , Piredda, & Sogos, 2013;Glenberg & Gallese, 2012;Iverson & Braddock, 2011;Fischer & Zwaan, 2008;Piaget & Inhelder, 1966/1969. For example, at 2 years, typically developing children are able to perform specific actions when asked, even if they are unable to verbally produce the words representing those actions (Levi et al, 2013); however, at 3 years, children with SLI enact-express through the body-fewer action-related words than do typically developing children (Levi et al, 2014). In addition, children with SLI are less able to perform several motor-related tasks than are their typically developing peers (Iverson & Braddock, 2011;Hill et al, 1998).…”

Are Action Concept Deficits Embodied in a Topographic Manner in Adults with Cerebral Palsy?

“…Therapy may have also been of benefit to our CP group since as previously discussed widespread semantic deficits are common in children with CP (Levi et al, 2014;Vos et al, 2014).…”

“…As the P2 component was localized to sources in the dorsal posterior cingulate cortex (dPCC), an area known to be involved in orienting body parts in one's environment, these findings suggest that anticipatory planning deficits in CP arise mainly due to an impaired process of action selection . Cognitive action impairments are also known to extend to the realm of linguistics where children have been shown to have smaller vocabularies and slower reading times for words describing actions than typically developing children (Lampe, Turova, Blumenstein, & Alves-Pinto, 2014;Levi, Colonnello, Giacchè, Piredda, & Sogos, 2014;Pueyo et al, 2008).…”

“…Due to deficient development of fine-motor movements, children with CP have difficulty organizing speech sounds, causing issues of speech intelligibility, slow speech rate, dysarthric speech, and/or stuttering (Pennington, 2008;Weber-Fox & Cuadrado, 2003;White et al, 1994). CP children also have delayed literacy skills because of these deficits (Kiessling, Denckla, & Carlton, 1983;Levi et al, 2014;Pennington, 2008;Sandberg & Hjelmquist, 1996).…”

“…Some researchers argue that concepts are mental representations which are built based on sensory and motor experiences that our bodies have with corresponding objects in the environment (Kiefer & Pulvermüller, 2012;Patterson, Nestor, & Rogers, 2007). This approach to conceptual representations is known in the field of semantics as the embodied cognition hypothesis (ECH) (Levi et al, 2014;Mahon & Caramazza, 2008;Miller, Brookie, Wales, Wallace, & Kaup, 2018;Ong, Lohse, Chua, Sinnett, & Hodges, 2014;Taylor, Lev-Ari, & Zwaan, 2008;Willems et al, 2017). The ECH is a spectrum.…”