Subject–verb agreement and verbal short-term memory: A perspective from Greek children with specific language impairment

Abstract

This study investigated the performance of school age Greek-speaking children with SLI on verbal short-term memory (VSTM) and Subject–Verb (S-V) agreement in comparison to chronological age controls and younger typically developing children. VSTM abilities were assessed by means of a non-word repetition task (NRT) and an elicited production task, an off-line grammaticality judgment (GJ) task, and an on-line self-paced listening task were employed to examine S-V agreement abilities. The study found significant between-group differences in the NRT and the off-line GJ task. No significant between-group differences were found for the S-V agreement production task and for reaction times of the on-line task. The authors argue that the children with SLI showed increased grammatical sensitivity in S-V agreement and relate their lower performance on the off-line GJ task to the task’s metalinguistic demands. The findings suggest that deficits in VSTM constitute a robust marker for SLI and claim that S-V agreement can be acquired by SLI individuals with apparent limitations in VSTM.

Short-term memory, working memory and linguistic abilities in bilingual children with Developmental Language Disorder

“…Total time in seconds and memory span length were also taken into account. This task has previously been used to test the vSTM abilities of monolingual Greek children with typical and atypical development (Lalioti et al, 2016; Talli, Sprenger-Charolles, & Stavrakaki, 2016).…”

“…There was no discontinuation criterion. This subtest has been used in many studies of Greek children with DLD (Lalioti et al, 2016; Stavrakaki, 2001; for a review of Greek DLD studies see Stavrakaki, 2005; Varlokosta, 2018 and references therein).…”

“…They related this between-group difference to the limited vSTM abilities of individuals with DLD compared to individuals with autism plus language impairment. Reporting findings from a language with rich inflection, specifically Greek, Lalioti et al (2016) showed vSTM deficits in a school-age sample with monolingual children with DLD in the absence of morphological deficits in the domain of subject–verb (S–V) agreement, despite the presence of selective S–V agreement deficits in a number of preschool children with DLD (Stavrakaki, 2005). Smith (2008) showed impairment in vSTM, but not in S–V agreement, for monolingual Greek-speaking preschoolers with DLD.…”

“…Numerous cross-linguistic studies have examined the syntactic abilities of these individuals and revealed that difficulties in complex syntax are characteristic (Adani, Forgiarini, Guasti, & van der Lely, 2014; Friedmann, Belletti, & Rizzi, 2009; Stavrakaki & van der Lely, 2010). In addition to deficits in complex syntax, verbal short-term memory (vSTM) is particularly vulnerable and is a clinical marker for monolingual children in this population (Archibald & Gathercole, 2006; Conti-Ramsden, 2003; Lalioti, Stavrakaki, Manouilidou, & Talli, 2016).…”

The effect of verbal short term memory on receptive language abilities in bilingual and monolingual children with Specific Language Impairment receptive

“…In addition, children with SLI show deficits in phonological short-term memory (STM) (Newbury, Bishop & Monaco 2005). Phonological STM is considered a marker for the diagnosis of children with SLI (Archibald & Gathercole 2006;Conti-Ramsden 2003;Lalioti, Stavrakaki, Manouilidou, & Talli, 2016) and an indicator of language skills and syntactic comprehension in typically developing children (Rodrigues & Befi-Lopes 2009).…”