Procedural Visual Learning in Children With Specific Language Impairment

Abstract

Purpose According to the procedural deficit hypothesis (PDH), difficulties in the procedural learning (PL) system may contribute to the language difficulties observed in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Method Fifteen children with SLI and their typically developing (TD) peers were compared on visual PL tasks—specifically, deterministic serial reaction time (SRT) tasks. In the first experiment, children with SLI and their TD peers performed the classical SRT task using a keyboard as response mode. In the second experiment, they performed the same SRT task but gave their responses through a touchscreen (instead of a keyboard) to reduce the motor and cognitive demands of the task. Results Although in Experiment 1 , children with SLI demonstrated learning, they were slower and made more errors than did their TD peers. Nevertheless, these relative weaknesses disappeared when the nature of the response mode changed ( Experiment 2 ). Conclusions In this study, the authors report that children with SLI may exhibit sequential learning. Moreover, the generally slower reaction times observed in previous deterministic SRT studies may be explained by the response mode used. Thus, our findings are not consistent with the predictions of the PDH, and these findings suggest that language impairments in SLI are not sustained by poor procedural learning abilities.

Implicit learning seems to come naturally for children with autism, but not for children with specific language impairment: Evidence from behavioral and ERP data

“…However, some studies report a deficit only in retention of learning, not in initial sequence learning [e.g., Desmottes, Maillart, & Meulemans, 2017; Hedenius et al, 2011]. Furthermore, a substantial number of other studies have also reported comparable learning in SLI on the SRT task [Gabriel et al, 2011; Gabriel, Meulemans, Parisse, & Maillart, 2015; Gabriel, Stefaniak, Maillart, Schmitz, & Meulemans, 2012; Lum & Bleses, 2012]. The current findings also suggest that overall responses might be slower is SLI compared to ASD, and variance in the response times seems to be high.…”

Intact procedural motor sequence learning in developmental coordination disorder

“…This hypothesis has been suggested by several authors (Gheysen et al, 2011; and seemed to receive support from some studies which have shown that a dysfunction of brain structures (such as the cerebellum and basal ganglia) which are heavily involved in the acquisition of motor skills might be involved in the pathogenesis of DCD. More specifically, we compared the performance of children with and without DCD on a variant of the Serial Reaction Time task (Gabriel et al, 2012) that reduces the potential impact of perceptuomotor coordination difficulties on the SRT performance of children with DCD. The logic for this choice was that the deficits displayed by DCD children in the SRT task might be caused by motor and cognitive deficits associated with this disorder, and not by an inability to learn sequential information per se.…”

“…As described by Gabriel, Stefaniak, Maillart, Schmitz, and Meulemans (2012), performance on an SRT task can be affected by deficits in manual dexterity and/or by difficulties matching the location of the target on the screen to the corresponding key. These cognitive and perceptuomotor constraints may affect specific-sequence learning.…”

“…For this purpose, we used a modified version of the SRT task devised by Gabriel et al (2012), in which the standard keyboard is replaced by a touch screen. With the touch screen, the motor and cognitive constraints of the task are minimized, because subjects can simply use their dominant hand to touch the target directly on the screen.…”

“…Participants were presented with the modified version of the SRT task developed by Gabriel et al (2012) where the standard keyboard was replaced with a touch screen in order to reduce the impact of the DCD group's perceptuomotor coordination difficulties. The touch screen was placed on the laptop screen and was the same size as the monitor (15'').…”