University of Liège, Belgium.
Am J Speech Lang Pathol. 2012 Nov;21(4):329-41. doi: 10.1044/1058-0360(2012/11-0044). Epub 2012 Jul 30.
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).
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.
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).
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.
根据程序缺陷假说（PDH），程序性学习（PL）系统的困难可能导致特定语言障碍（SLI）儿童的语言困难。
15 名 SLI 儿童及其典型发育（TD）同龄人在视觉 PL 任务上进行了比较——具体来说，是确定性序列反应时（SRT）任务。在第一个实验中，使用键盘作为反应模式，SLI 儿童及其 TD 同龄人执行经典的 SRT 任务。在第二个实验中，他们通过触摸屏（而不是键盘）执行相同的 SRT 任务，以降低任务的运动和认知要求。
尽管在实验 1 中，SLI 儿童表现出了学习，但他们的速度较慢，错误较多。然而，当反应模式发生变化时（实验 2），这些相对的弱点就消失了。
在这项研究中，作者报告称，SLI 儿童可能表现出序列学习。此外，以前在确定性 SRT 研究中观察到的普遍较慢的反应时间可以用所使用的反应模式来解释。因此，我们的发现与 PDH 的预测不一致，这些发现表明 SLI 中的语言障碍不是由较差的程序性学习能力引起的。
