Laurice Tuller

Language in benign childhood epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes abbreviated form: Rolandic epilepsy and language

Although Benign Childhood Epilepsy with Centrotemporal Spikes (BECTS) has a good prognosis, a few studies have suggested the existence of language disorders relating to the interictal dysfunction of perisylvian language areas. In this study, we focused on language assessment in 16 children aged 6-15 currently affected by BECTS or in remission. An important proportion of children showed moderate or more severe language impairment. The most affected domains were expressive grammar and literacy skills. We found linguistic deficits during the course of epilepsy but also persistent deficits in children in remission, suggesting possible long-term effects. Our results support the hypothesis that BECTS may be associated with impairment to language and suggest the possibility of a direct link between epileptic activity and language development, and the existence of long-term consequences.

The syntax of postverbal focus constructions in Chadic

This study examines the syntax of “special position” focus constructions in a number of Chadic languages. Unlike such constructions in previously studied languages (e.g. Hungarian, Aghem, Basque, Italian), the designated focus position is not found exclusively next to V. In many Chadic postverbal focus languages, the direct object obligatory intervenes. It can, moreover, be shown that the focus position may appear inside the predicate, yet is not a sister to V. An analysis of these facts is developed based on the syntactic feature [+FOCUS] taken to be a feature of INFL in these languages. Expanding on Horvaths (1986) proposal that the properties of the feature FOCUS are parallel to those of the syntactic features Case and WH, the variation found with respect to the linear position of focus constituents is shown to follow from a parameter specifying the way in which FOCUS is assigned in combination with Koopmans (1987) parameter of Case transmission in chains. If FOCUS is assigned directly, a focus constituent appears in the domain of INFL. If it is assigned indirectly, via SPEC-head agreement, a focus constituent appears in SPEC, CP. If the trace of V cannot assign Case, heads of direct objects must raise to V, producing the observed ‘V DO FOC’ pattern. The facts of postverbal focus constructions in VSO languages are shown to pattern exactly as predicted by the analysis, developed on the basis of the (more frequently occurring) SVO Chadic languages.I am grateful also to colleagues at UQAM for comments and suggestions on this work at various stages (M. Guerssel, I. Haïk, J. Kaye, J. Lowenstamm, D. Massam) and to G. Dimmendaal, T. Hoekstra, J. Horvath, M. Kenstowicz, M. Rochemont, R. Schuh, as well as audiences in Leiden, Amsterdam, and Paris. For considerable help in the presentation of the final version, I would like to acknowledge an anonymous NLLT reviewer.

A cross-linguistic study of the acquisition of clitic and pronoun production

ABSTRACT This study develops a single elicitation method to test the acquisition of third-person pronominal objects in 5-year-olds for 16 languages. This methodology allows us to compare the acquisition of pronominals in languages that lack object clitics (“pronoun languages”) with languages that employ clitics in the relevant context (“clitic languages”), thus establishing a robust cross-linguistic baseline in the domain of clitic and pronoun production for 5-year-olds. High rates of pronominal production are found in our results, indicating that children have the relevant pragmatic knowledge required to select a pronominal in the discourse setting involved in the experiment as well as the relevant morphosyntactic knowledge involved in the production of pronominals. It is legitimate to conclude from our data that a child who at age 5 is not able to produce any or few pronominals is a child at risk for language impairment. In this way, pronominal production can be taken as a developmental marker, provided that one takes into account certain cross-linguistic differences discussed in the article.

Specific Language Impairment at Adolescence: Avoiding Complexity.

This study explores complex language in adolescents with specific language impairment (SLI) with the aim of finding out how aspects of language characteristic of typical syntactic development after childhood fare and, in particular, whether there is evidence that individuals with SLI avoid using structures whose syntactic derivation involves greater computational complexity. An analysis of spontaneous language samples of 18 French-speaking adolescents with SLI, compared to groups of typically developing speakers, showed that whereas complexity increases with age in the latter, behaviors of avoidance are clear in the former, in the form of low frequencies of complex structures, but also frequency of failed attempts and alternative strategies. Whereas increasing complexity is the hallmark of syntactic development after childhood, avoidance of complexity appears to characterize SLI after childhood.

How to identify SLI in bilingual children: A study on sentence repetition in French

ABSTRACT Identifying specific language impairment (SLI) in bilingual children represents a clinical challenge because of similarities in language behavior between child second language learners and monolinguals with SLI and because of the lack of standardized language tests on bilingual children. This study investigated the relevance of a LITMUS (Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings) sentence repetition (SR) task based on language properties difficult for French-speaking children with SLI for the diagnosis of language impairment in bilinguals. The task was administered to 47 bilingual children aged 5;02 to 8;09, 35 with typical development (TD) and 12 with SLI, and to 50 monolingual controls (37 with TD and 13 with SLI). Percentage of identical repetition significantly distinguished between children with SLI and children with TD in both bilinguals and monolinguals and on all structure types. Moreover, no correlations were found between factors of bilingual development, such as age of onset, length of exposure, and quantity and quality of input, and the low repetition rates of the bilingual children with SLI, suggesting that the LITMUS-SR-French task can be used as an efficient diagnosis tool in bilinguals.

Identifying language impairment in bilingual children in France and in Germany: Language impairment in bilingual children

BACKGROUND The detection of specific language impairment (SLI) in children growing up bilingually presents particular challenges for clinicians. Non-word repetition (NWR) and sentence repetition (SR) tasks have proven to be the most accurate diagnostic tools for monolingual populations, raising the question of the extent of their usefulness in different bilingual populations. AIMS To determine the diagnostic accuracy of NWR and SR tasks that incorporate phonological/syntactic complexity as discussed in recent linguistic theory. The tasks were developed as part of the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) toolkit, in two different national settings, France and Germany, and investigated children with three different home languages: Arabic, Portuguese and Turkish. METHODS & PROCEDURES NWR and SR tasks developed in parallel were administered to 151 bilingual children, aged 5;6-8;11, in France and in Germany, to 64 children in speech-language therapy (SLT) and to 87 children not in SLT, whose first language (L1) was Arabic, Portuguese or Turkish. Children were also administered standardized language tests in each of their languages to determine likely clinical status (typical development (TD) or SLI), and parents responded to a questionnaire including questions about early and current language use (bilingualism factors) and early language development (risk factors for SLI). Monolingual controls included 47 TD children and 29 children with SLI. Results were subjected to inter-group comparisons, to diagnostic accuracy calculation, and to correlation and multiple regression analyses. OUTCOMES & RESULTS In accordance with previous studies, NWR and SR identified SLI in the monolingual children, yielding good to excellent diagnostic accuracy. Diagnostic accuracy in bilingual children was fair to good, generally distinguishing children likely to have SLI from children likely to have TD. Accuracy was necessarily linked to the determination of clinical status, which was based on standardized assessment in each of the childs languages. Positive early development, a composite risk factor for SLI, and not variables related to language exposure and use, generally emerged as the strongest predictor of performance on the two tasks, constituting additional, independent support for the efficacy of NWR and SR in identifying impairment in bilingual children. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS NWR and SR tasks informed by linguistic theory are appropriate for use as part of the diagnostic process for identifying language impairment in bilingual children for whom the language of assessment is different from the home language, in diverse sociolinguistic contexts.

Assessing successive bilinguals in two languages: A longitudinal look at English-speaking children in France

This study examines longitudinal standardized test scores in both languages of a group of successive bilinguals with L1 English acquiring L2 French. Participants included 22 native English-speaking children living in France. French was evaluated using a standardized receptive vocabulary test, as well as tests of phonology and morphosyntax. English was evaluated using the Core Language Score subtests from the CELF-4-UK. The children varied in age (6;9-12;7) and length of exposure (0;11-3;9) to French and were tested twice at 12-month intervals. At T1, 7 children scored below norms in both languages, while only 3 did so at T2. Two out of these 3 were arguably not typically developing children. Length of exposure to French emerged as an important factor only at T1, when a number of children were in early stages of acquisition (≤18months of exposure). English scores varied by age and weekly use of English. In successive bilingual children, language performance on L2 standardized tests can be expected to be (well) below norms during the first 18 months of exposure. English scores revealed that weak L1 performance is part of typical development in this bilingual context, but that L1 retention is also a possibility. LEARNING OUTCOMES The reader will be able to: (1) describe challenges associated with language assessment of successive bilingual children, (2) describe the impact that age and length of exposure can have on language performance in bilinguals, and (3) understand how assessing successive bilinguals using monolingual norms can lead to underestimation of language abilities.

Production and comprehension of French wh-questions by children with autism spectrum disorder: A comparative study with specific language impairment: CORRIGENDUM

The nature of structural language difficulties in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was explored in a comparative study with specific language impairment (SLI) through investigation of the frequently reported ASD weakness in receptive skills relative to expressive skills. Twenty French-speaking children with ASD aged 6 to 12 were compared to age-matched children with SLI on production and comprehension of wh-questions. The two groups displayed similar effects of the complexity of the different wh-strategies. In the ASD group (as in the SLI group), these effects were not greater in comprehension compared to production; moreover, nonverbal ability (which varied from normal to impaired) was not related to language performance. Observed ASD-SLI differences are argued to largely be due to ASD pragmatic deficits, rather than to a qualitative difference in structural language skills.

Pragmatic versus structural difficulties in the production of pronominal clitics in French-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder

Background and aims Impaired production of third person accusative pronominal clitics is a signature of language impairment in French-speaking children. It has been found to be a prominent and persistent difficulty in children and adolescents with specific language impairment. Previous studies have reported that many children with autism spectrum disorder also have low performance on these clitics. However, it remains unclear whether these difficulties in children with autism spectrum disorder are due to structural language impairment or to pragmatic deficits. This is because pragmatics skills, notoriously weak in children with autism spectrum disorder, are also needed for appropriate use of pronouns. Use of pronouns without clear referents and difficulty with discourse pronouns (first and second person), which require taking into account the point of view of one’s interlocutor (perspective shifting), have frequently been reported for autism spectrum disorder. Methods We elicited production of nominative, reflexive and accusative third and first person pronominal clitics in 19 verbal children with autism spectrum disorder (aged 6–12, high and low functioning, with structural language impairment, or with normal language) and 19 age-matched children with specific language impairment. If pragmatics is behind difficulties on these elements, performance on first-person clitics would be expected to be worse than performance on third person clitics, since it requires perspective shifting. Furthermore, worse performance for first person clitics was expected in the children with autism spectrum disorder compared to the children with specific language impairment, since weak pragmatics is an integral part of impairment in the former, but not in the latter. More generally, different error patterns would be expected in the two groups, if the source of difficulty with clitics is different (a pragmatic deficit vs. a structural language deficit). Results Similar patterns of relative difficulties were found in the autism spectrum disorder language impairment and specific language impairment groups, with third person accusative clitics being produced at lower rates than first-person pronouns and error patterns being essentially identical. First-person pronouns did not pose particular difficulties in the children with autism spectrum disorder (language impairment or normal language) with respect to third-person pronouns or to the children with specific language impairment. Performance was not related to nonverbal intelligence in the autism spectrum disorder group. Conclusions The elicitation task used in this study included explicit instruction, and focus on perspective shifting (both visual and verbal), allowing for potential pragmatic effects to be controlled. Moreover, the task elicited a variety of types of clitics in morphosyntactic contexts of varying complexity, providing ample opportunities for employment of perspective shifting, which may have also curtailed perseveration of third person over first person. These properties of the task allowed for the grammatical nature of children’s difficulties with third-person accusative clitics to emerge unambiguously. Implications Assessment of structural language abilities in children with autism spectrum disorder requires careful consideration of task demands. The influence of pragmatic abilities on structural language performance can be circumvented by making the pragmatic demands of the task explicit and salient. Filtering out this potential influence on structural language performance is fundamental to understanding language profiles in children with autism spectrum disorder and thus which children could benefit from which kinds of language intervention.

A strategic plan to identify key neurophysiological mechanisms and brain circuits in autism

Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) cover a large variety of clinical profiles which share two main dimensions: social and communication impairment and repetitive behaviors or restricted interests, which are present during childhood. There is now no doubt that genetic factors are a major component in the etiology of autism but precise physiopathological pathways are still being investigated. Furthermore, developmental trajectories combined with compensatory mechanisms will lead to various clinical and neurophysiological profiles which together constitute this Autism Spectrum Disorder. To better understand the pathophysiology of autism, comprehension of key neurophysiological mechanisms and brain circuits underlying the different bioclinical profiles is thus crucial. To achieve this goal we propose a strategy which investigates different levels of information processing from sensory perception to complex cognitive processing, taking into account the complexity of the stimulus and whether it is social or non-social in nature. In order to identify different developmental trajectories and to take into account compensatory mechanisms, we further propose that such protocols should be carried out in individuals from childhood to adulthood representing a wide variety of clinical forms.