J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2014 Jun 1;57(3):1040-59. doi: 10.1044/2014_JSLHR-L-13-0176.
One possible source of tense and agreement limitations in children with specific language impairment (SLI) is a weakness in appreciating structural dependencies that occur in many sentences in the input. This possibility was tested in the present study.
Children with a history of SLI (H-SLI; n = 12; M = 9;7 [years;months]) and typically developing same-age peers (TD; n = 12; M = 9;7) listened to and made grammaticality judgments about grammatical and ungrammatical sentences involving either a local agreement error (e.g., "Every night they talks on the phone") or a long-distance finiteness error (e.g., "He makes the quiet boy talks a little louder"). Electrophysiological (ERP) and behavioral (accuracy) measures were obtained.
Local agreement errors elicited the expected anterior negativity and P600 components in both groups of children. However, relative to the TD group, the P600 effect for the long-distance finiteness errors was delayed, reduced in amplitude, and shorter in duration for the H-SLI group. The children's grammaticality judgments were consistent with the ERP findings.
Children with H-SLI seem to be relatively insensitive to the finiteness constraints that matrix verbs place on subject-verb clauses that appear later in the sentence.
特定语言障碍（SLI）儿童在时态和一致性方面的限制可能源于他们难以理解输入中许多句子中存在的结构依赖性。本研究对此进行了测试。
研究纳入了有 SLI 病史的儿童（H-SLI；n = 12；M = 9；7 [岁；月]）和同龄的正常发育儿童（TD；n = 12；M = 9；7），他们需要听句子并对包含局部一致性错误（例如，“每天晚上他们都在电话上聊天”）或远距离限定性错误（例如，“他让安静的男孩说话声音大一点”）的句子进行语法判断。同时记录了电生理（ERP）和行为（准确性）数据。
两组儿童对局部一致性错误均引出了预期的前负波（anterior negativity）和 P600 成分。然而，与 TD 组相比，H-SLI 组对远距离限定性错误的 P600 效应延迟、幅度减小且持续时间缩短。儿童的语法判断与 ERP 发现一致。
H-SLI 儿童似乎对主语-动词从句的限定性约束相对不敏感，这些从句出现在句子的较晚部分。
