Structural priming in children with and without specific language impairment

Primary objective: To determine if structural priming can be demonstrated in young children with and without specific language impairment (SLI). Research design: A mixed-model design was used to compare children with SLI to two groups of typically developing (TD) children, and to compare priming conditions. Methods and procedures: Eighteen children with SLI and 36 TD children (18 matched on age and 18 matched on MLU) participated. Children were asked to describe drawings compatible with both a transitive or an intransitive sentence structure, after being primed with one of the structures. Results: All groups of children were more likely to produce transitive sentences when they had just heard and repeated a transitive prime. Children with SLI did not differ from the other groups. Conclusions: Children with SLI show similar priming effects to TD children. Priming has promise as a method for investigating production factors in typical and atypical language development.