TY - JOUR
T1 - Speech production factors and verbal working memory in children and adults with developmental language disorder
AU - Poll, Gerard H.
AU - Miller, Carol A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders Grant 5 R03 DC007312, funding from the Pennsylvania State University Social Science Research Institute (second author), and Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award 1F31DC010960 (first author). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect any official position of the National Institutes of Health. Preliminary versions of these analyses were presented at the Symposium for Research in Child Language Disorders, Madison, Wisconsin, in June 2019. Thanks to Michael Dickey for an inspiring conversation about the project, and to Maura Jaeger and Patrick Schoeppner for coding assistance.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/5
Y1 - 2021/5
N2 - Verbal working memory (VWM) deficits are common in individuals with developmental language disorder (DLD) but are not well understood. This study evaluated how both memory and language production factors influence VWM performance in children and adults with DLD, focusing on the influence of serial position, phonological activation (PA), and lexical frequency. Participants were 30 children with DLD and 26 with typical language, and 21 adults with DLD and 23 with typical language. The participants completed a listening span task in which they were asked to recall the final words of sentences in sets of increasing size. Responses (dependent variable) were coded as correct, incorrect, or no response. Final words were coded for frequency, serial position within the set, and PA (number of occurrences of the initial phoneme, vowel, and whole word in the task). These variables, along with age and language status, were entered as predictors in mixed-effects multinomial regression models. Extreme serial position, greater PA, and higher frequency reduced incorrect and no responses. These effects were attenuated for the DLD group, and the effect of greater PA varied with set size. The findings suggest that for individuals with DLD, VWM performance is affected by more limited effective language experience and by the dynamic task demands.
AB - Verbal working memory (VWM) deficits are common in individuals with developmental language disorder (DLD) but are not well understood. This study evaluated how both memory and language production factors influence VWM performance in children and adults with DLD, focusing on the influence of serial position, phonological activation (PA), and lexical frequency. Participants were 30 children with DLD and 26 with typical language, and 21 adults with DLD and 23 with typical language. The participants completed a listening span task in which they were asked to recall the final words of sentences in sets of increasing size. Responses (dependent variable) were coded as correct, incorrect, or no response. Final words were coded for frequency, serial position within the set, and PA (number of occurrences of the initial phoneme, vowel, and whole word in the task). These variables, along with age and language status, were entered as predictors in mixed-effects multinomial regression models. Extreme serial position, greater PA, and higher frequency reduced incorrect and no responses. These effects were attenuated for the DLD group, and the effect of greater PA varied with set size. The findings suggest that for individuals with DLD, VWM performance is affected by more limited effective language experience and by the dynamic task demands.
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U2 - 10.1017/S0142716421000011
DO - 10.1017/S0142716421000011
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85100915616
SN - 0142-7164
VL - 42
SP - 673
EP - 702
JO - Applied Psycholinguistics
JF - Applied Psycholinguistics
IS - 3
ER -