2017 Book LanguageDevelopmentAndDisorder PDF

Literacy Studies: Perspectives from Cognitive Neurosciences,
Linguistics, Psychology and Education
Alejandra Auza Benavides
Richard G. Schwartz Editors
Language
Development
and Disorders in
Spanish-speaking
Children
Literacy Studies
Perspectives from Cognitive Neurosciences, Linguistics,

Psychology and Education
Volume 14
Series Editor:
R. Malatesha Joshi, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA
Editorial Board:
Rui Alves, University of Porto, Portugal
Linnea Ehri, CUNY Graduate School, New York, USA
Usha Goswami, University of Cambridge, UK
Catherine McBride Chang, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
Jane Oakhill, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
Richard Olson, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
Rebecca Treiman, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
While language defines humanity, literacy defines civilization. Understandably,
illiteracy or difficulties in acquiring literacy skills have become a major concern of
our technological society. A conservative estimate of the prevalence of literacy
problems would put the figure at more than a billion people in the world. Because
of the seriousness of the problem, research in literacy acquisition and its breakdown
is pursued with enormous vigor and persistence by experts from diverse back-
grounds such as cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics and education.
This, of course, has resulted in a plethora of data, and consequently it has become
difficult to integrate this abundance of information into a coherent body because of
the artificial barriers that exist among different professional specialties.
The purpose of this series is to bring together the available research studies into
a coherent body of knowledge. Publications in this series are of interest to educa-
tors, clinicians and research scientists in the above-mentioned specialties.
Some of the titles suitable for the Series are: fMRI, brain imaging techniques and
reading skills, orthography and literacy; and research based techniques for improv-
ing decoding, vocabulary, spelling, and comprehension skills.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/7206

Alejandra Auza Benavides • Richard G. Schwartz
Editors
Language Development
and Disorders in Spanish-
speaking Children
Editors
Alejandra Auza Benavides Richard G. Schwartz
Hospital General “Dr. Manuel Gea Program in Speech and Hearing
González” CUNY Graduate Center
Mexico City, Mexico New York, NY, USA
ISSN 2214-000X ISSN 2214-0018 (electronic)

Literacy Studies
ISBN 978-3-319-53645-3 ISBN 978-3-319-53646-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938112
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors
or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims
in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Printed on acid-free paper
This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
The modern period of research language development research focused first on

monolingual children acquiring English typically (e.g., Bloom 1973; Braine 1963;
Brown 1973) and on children acquiring English atypically (Eisenson 1968; Leonard
1998, 2014; Tallal and Piercy 1973; Menyuk 1964; Berry 1969; Bishop 1979).
Some time elapsed before this research was extended crosslinguistically to children
developing language typically (e.g., Slobin 1985) and to children with language
impairments (see reviews in Leonard 1998, 2014). This seminal work and more
recent extensions (e.g., Armon-Lotem et al. 2015; Guo et al. 2009; Leonard 2014b;
see reviews in Schwartz 2017a) have advanced our understanding of child language
impairments across languages. Despite these important advances, the in-depth study
of typical and atypical language development, as reported in English academic jour-
nals, remained largely focused on English. No other single language has received
this detailed attention.
Almost 400 million people worldwide are native speakers of Spanish, concen-
trated in Spain, Mexico, and Central and South America (Instituto Cervantes 2015).
It is the fourth most frequently occurring native language after only Chinese, Hindi,
and English. In the United States, there are 41 million individuals whose native
language is Spanish and an additional 11.6 million individuals, mostly children of
Spanish-speaking immigrants (heritage speakers), who are bilingual speakers of
Spanish and English (Instituto Cervantes 2015). This places the United States
behind only Mexico as the country with the most Spanish speakers. According to
the US Census, by 2050, there will be 138 million Spanish speakers. Although there
continues to be a paucity of published research on Spanish language development
and language disorders, there are many active developmental researchers working
in Spanish-speaking countries. Even though typical and atypical language develop-
ment research on Spanish has increased in recent years, only a small amount of this
work has been published in English journals or books. Given the number of Spanish-
speaking children with and without language disorders, our field needs better dis-
semination of this research. This was our primary goal for this volume. We also
hope that placing some of this research in a single volume will encourage further
research on the typical and atypical development of Spanish.
v
vi Preface
The relationship between language and cognitive abilities has long been a topic
of interest for linguists, psychologists, and psycholinguists. Thus, we felt it was
important that some of chapters address cognitive abilities along with the typical
and atypical development of language. Proposals regarding this relationship have
varied widely from viewing them as completely independent to viewing language as
one of a set of cognitive abilities and to being interactive (e.g., see the overview in
Rice 1983). Abilities and deficits in cognitive performance are also characterized as
domain general, affecting multiple modalities of cognitive task performance and
language, or domain specific, affecting only language or only a limited set of cogni-
tive abilities (see review in Schwartz 2017b). Among the cognitive abilities related
to language processing and acquisition are working memory (see reviews in
Schwartz 2017a, b), long-term memory (e.g., Marton and Eichorn 2014), and exec-
utive functions including shifting, updating, and inhibition among others (Miyake
et al. 2000). Cognitive abilities such as working memory and executive functions
(e.g., inhibiting proactive interference) are impaired in children with language dis-
orders compared to their typically developing peers (e.g., Leonard et al. 2007;
Marton et al. 2014, 2016). Children with different developmental language disor-
ders, such as specific (primary) language impairment, autistic spectrum disorders,
or intellectual disabilities, exhibit various profiles of cognitive deficits and different
profiles of language production and comprehension deficits. One of the many chal-
lenges that remain is establishing connections among these various profiles.
Another general issue addressed in some of the chapters is the diverse cultural
and socioeconomic circumstances in children’s home environments. In the United
States, 21% of all children live in poverty, and another 21% of all children live in
low-income families. Estimates indicate that 3 and 16% of all children have speech
and language disorders, with 26% of children with these disorders living in poor or
low-income homes (McNeilly 2016; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,
and Medicine 2016). Children from poor or low-income homes are more likely to
exhibit speech and language disorders, with approximately 40% of these children
exhibiting more severe disorders accompanied by attention deficit hyperactivity dis-
orders, autism, or intellectual deficits. This has implications for academic and life
achievement, employment, and quality of life. Although it seems unlikely that pov-
erty alone directly leads to atypical language acquisition, poverty may be associated
with many mediating factors such as nutrition, health, and environmental factors
(e.g., lead exposure) that in turn affect language development. In Mexico, 53 million
people live in poverty; the economic situations of these families reduce the oppor-
tunity to interact with children and may affect the quality and amount of language
input, because parents often work far away from their homes and have to work long
hours. People in other Central and South American countries live in similar situa-
tions. A more complete picture of typical and atypical language acquisition needs to
include studies of children living in poverty.
Another sociocultural context of language acquisition is multilingualism (see
review in Peña and Bedore 2017). We already know that language development in
bilingual speakers does not correspond directly to the development in monolingual
speakers of the home, first, or heritage language or to the development of monolingual
Preface vii
speakers of the second language. One outcome is the apparently slower develop-
ment in L1 and L2 compared to monolingual speakers of both languages, compli-
cating the identification of language impairment in these children. In general, it
seems inappropriate to compare children who are bilingual to monolingual speak-
ers, but it is the case with many standardized tests that have norms for monolingual
speakers only. Furthermore, the variety of the heritage or L1 may also differ from
that of monolingual speakers because of L2 contact in immigrant populations. The
minority status of the child’s heritage language may also have an impact. A great
deal of research is needed to fully develop an understanding of the nature and course
of bilingual or multilingual language development under a variety of
circumstances.
This book is a collection of previously unpublished, original research reports
carried out by researchers working with monolingual children in Chile and Mexico
and monolingual and bilingual children in the United States and Spain. The chapters
cover a wide range of dimensions in acquisition (comprehension and production)
and cognitive abilities (memory, attention, cognitive flexibility). Considering the
prevalence of bilingualism, we included research on children acquiring languages in
addition to Spanish (i.e., English, Catalan, or Basque). These studies are especially
important because of their potential to inform language acquisition theory and clini-
cal linguistics. The chapters examine how language comprehension, production,
and use relate to associated cognitive functions, from different perspectives and
methodologies in child language acquisition. The first part of the book focuses on
the monolingual and bilingual typically developing Spanish-speaking children.
These studies examine the question of how the cognitive system and language inter-
act when children are acquiring Spanish as their native first language (L1) or as a
second language (L2). It is crucial to understand how language is understood, pro-
duced, and used in these two populations for theoretical, clinical, and educational
purposes. The second part of the book is dedicated to children who are at risk of
language impairment or delay. These studies examine how domains of cognition
interact with language during development in children who live in socially or devel-
opmentally vulnerable conditions. This section is valuable because the research
reported reveals how environmental and social conditions affect the trajectory of
language development. The final part of the book addresses how Spanish-speaking
children with specific language impairment and other, more general developmental
disorders (e.g., genetic syndromes) use and understand language when cognitive
functions and processing information are affected.
Our goal for the book is to add to the understanding of typical and atypical lan-
guage acquisition, related cognitive development, and their sociocultural contexts.
We hope that the topics covered in this volume will be incorporated into courses on
language development and disorders, will provide some new insights into language
assessment and intervention, and will generate more research on typical and atypi-
cal Spanish acquisition.
We would also like to acknowledge two persons who contributed to the prepara-
tion of this volume. Katya Robledo helped us with professional language transla-
tions from Spanish to English in some of the chapters of the book. We want to thank
viii Preface
as well to Ofelia Benavides, for this silent work which sometimes is not seen. She
helped us in organizing the abstracts, tables, and manuscripts, ensured that all the
required content was there, and helped us with the formatting preparation. Katya
and Ofelia’s patience and help were invaluable. Thank you to all the students,
patients, and family (especially Mau, Coco, and Anne) who contributed or encour-
aged in some way to the outcome of this book. Richard Schwartz was supported by
NIH Grant R01DC011041. Alejandra Auza was supported by CONACyT, Ciencia
Básica 2013-220634.
New York, NY, USA Richard G. Schwartz

Mexico City, Mexico Alejandra Auza Benavides
References
Armon-Lotem, S., de Jong, J., & Meir, N. (2015). Assessing multilingual children disentangling
bilingualism from language impairment. Bristol: Channel View Publications/Multilingual
Matters.
Berry, M. (1969). Language disorders of children: The bases and diagnoses. East Norwalk:
Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Bloom, L. (1973). One word at a time: The use of single-word utterances before syntax. The
Hague: Mouton.
Braine, M. D. S. (1963). On learning the Grammatical order of words. Psychological Review, 70,
323–348.
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Eisenson, J. (1968). Developmental aphasia: A speculative view with therapeutic implications.
Journal of Speech & Hearing Disorders, 33, 3–13.
Guo, J., Lieven, E., Budwig, N., Ervin-Tripp, S., Nakamura, K., & Özçalışkan, Ş. (Eds.). (2009).
Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan
Isaac Slobin. New York/London: Psychology Press.
Instituto Cervantes. (2015). El español, una lengua viva. Informe 2015 [The Spanish: An alive
language. Report 2015]. Retrieved from http://eldiae.es/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/espanol_
lengua-viva_20151.pdf
Leonard, L. (1972). What is deviant language? Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 37,
427–446.
Leonard, L. (1998). Children with specific language impairment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Leonard, L. (2014a). Children with specific language impairment (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Leonard, L. (2014b). Specific language impairment across languages. Child Development
Perspectives, 8, 1–5.
Leonard, L., Ellis Weismer, S., Miller, C., Francis, D., Tomblin, J. B., & Kail, R. V. (2007). Speed
of processing, working memory, and language impairment in children. Journal of Speech,
Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 408–428.
Marton, K., & Eichorn, N. (2014). Interaction between working memory and long-term memory:
A study in children with and without language impairment. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, Special
Issue: Applied memory research, 222, 2, 90–99.
Marton, K., Eichorn, N., Campanelli, L., & Zakarias, L. (2016). Working memory and interference
control in children with specific language impairment. Language and Linguistics Compass, 10,
211–224.
Preface ix
Marton, K., Campanelli, L., Eichorn, N., Scheuer, J., & Yoon, J. (2014). Information processing
and proactive interference in children with and without specific language impairment (SLI).
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57, 106–119.
McNeilly, L. (2016). Rise in speech-language disorders in SSI-Supported children reflects national
trends. The ASHA Leader, 21, online only. doi:10.1044/leader.PA2.21032016.np.
Menyuk, P. (1964). Comparison of grammar of children with functional deviant and normal
speech. Journal of Speech & Hearing Research, 7, 109–121.
Miyake, A., Friedman, M. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000).
The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe”
tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 49–100.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2016). Speech and language disor-
ders in children: Implications for the social security administration’s supplemental security
insurance program. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Peña, L., & Bedore, L. (2017). Bilingualism. In R. G. Schwartz (Ed.). Handbook of child language
disorders (2nd ed.). New York: Psychology Press.
Rice, M. (1983). Contemporary accounts of the cognition/language relationship: Implications for
speech language clinicians. Journal of Speech & Hearing Disorders, 48, 347–359.
Schwartz, R. G. (2017a). Handbook of child language disorders (2nd ed.). New York: Psychology
Press.
Schwartz, R. G. (2017b). Specific language impairment. In R. G. Schwartz (Ed.). The handbook of
child language disorders (2nd ed.). New York: Psychology Press.
Slobin, D. I. (1985/1992/1997). The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Vol. 1: The Data
(1985); Vol. 2: Theoretical issues (1985); Vol. 3 (1992); Vol. 4 (1997); Vol. 5: Expanding the
contexts (1997). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Tallal, P., & Piercy, M. (1973). Developmental aphasia: Impaired rate of non-verbal processing as
a function of sensory modality. Neuropsychologia, 11, 389–398.
Contents
Part I Typical Language Development in Monolingual

and Bilingual Children
ypical Language Development of Monolingual
T
Spanish-Speaking Children............................................................................. 3
Sonia Mariscal and Alejandra Auza Benavides
anguage Development in Bilingual Spanish-Catalan
L
Children with and Without Specific Language Impairment:
A Longitudinal Perspective............................................................................. 37
Eva Aguilar-Mediavilla, Lucia Buil-Legaz, Raül López-Penadés,
and Daniel Adrover-Roig
ilingual and Monolingual Children’s Patterns of Syntactic
B
Variation: Variable Clitic Placement in Spanish........................................... 63
Naomi L. Shin, Pablo E. Requena, and Anita Kemp
Part II Children at Risk of Language Disorders

xecutive Functions and Language Development in Pre-Term
E
and Full-Term Children.................................................................................. 91
Miguel Pérez-Pereira, Manuel Peralbo, and Alberto Veleiro
rocessing Speed of Infants with High and Low
P
Communicative Skills...................................................................................... 113
Elda Alicia Alva Canto and Paloma Suárez Brito
elevance of Family Psychosocial Environment
R
in the Language Development of Mexican Children.................................... 129
Silvia Izazola-Ezquerro, Mario Mandujano-Valdés,
Rolando Rivera-González, Antonio Sierra-Cedillo,
Miriam Figueroa-Olea, Karla Soler-Limón,
and Yadira Villanueva-Romero
xi
xii Contents
anguage Delay and Amount of Exposure to the Language:

L
Two (Un)Related Phenomena in Early
Spanish-Basque Bilingualism.......................................................................... 147
Maria-Jose Ezeizabarrena and Iñaki García Fernández
Part III Children with Specific Language Impairment

eurocognitive and Psycholinguistic Profile of Specific
N
Language Impairment: A Research Study on Comorbidity
of SLI With/Without Reading Disabilities..................................................... 167
Dolors Girbau
onnections Among Language Knowledge,
C
Language Processing, and Nonlinguistic Cognitive Processing
in Bilingual Children with Language Impairment....................................... 189
Kerry Danahy Ebert and Giang Pham
entence Repetition in Typical and Atypical Spanish-Speaking
S
Preschoolers Who Are English Language Learners..................................... 205
Gabriela Simón-Cereijido
he Role of Verb Semantic Representation in Sentence
T
Processing in Children with SLI..................................................................... 217
Llorenç Andreu and Mònica Sanz-Torrent
elf-Repair Timing of Lexical Problem Sources: A Window
S
into Primary Language Impairment Online Processing.............................. 235
Wendy Fabiola Lara Galindo and Cecilia Rojas-Nieto
arrative Comprehension and Language Skills
N
in Chilean Children with Specific Language Impairment........................... 261
Carmen Julia Coloma and María Mercedes Pavez
orking Memory and Morphosyntax in Children
W
with Specific (Primary) Language Impairment............................................ 289
Andrea Chávez and Alejandra Auza Benavides
Part IV Children with Syndromes and other Language Disorders

orphological Profile of Williams Syndrome:
M
Typical or Atypical?......................................................................................... 311
Eliseo Diez-Itza, Verónica Martínez, Maite Fernández-Urquiza,
and Aránzazu Antón
anguage Skills in Down Syndrome.............................................................. 329
L
Natalia Arias-Trejo and Julia B. Barrón-Martínez
ocabulary and Cognitive Flexibility in People
V
with Down Syndrome....................................................................................... 343
Octavio García, Beatriz Castillo-Ignacio, and Natalia Arias-Trejo
Contributors
Daniel Adrover-Roig Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Eva Aguilar-Mediavilla Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, Spain
Elda Alicia Alva Canto Department of Psychology, National Autonomous
University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico
Llorenç Andreu Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
Aránzazu Antón Universidad de Oviedo, LOGIN Research Group, Oviedo, Spain
Natalia Arias-Trejo Laboratorio de Psicolingüística, Facultad de Psicología,
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico
Alejandra Auza Benavides Hospital General “Dr. Manuel Gea González”,
Mexico City, Mexico
Julia B. Barrón-Martínez Laboratorio de Psicolingüística, Facultad de Psicología,
Lucia Buil-Legaz Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, Spain
Beatriz Castillo-Ignacio Laboratorio de Neurobiología del Síndrome de Down,
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM),
México City, DF, Mexico
Laboratorio de Psicolingüística, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico
Andrea Chávez Posgrado en Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico
Carmen Julia Coloma Departamento de Fonoaudiología y Centro de Investigación
Avanzada en Educación (CIAE), Departamento de Fonoaudiología, Universidad de
Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile
Eliseo Diez-Itza Universidad de Oviedo, LOGIN Research Group, Oviedo, Spain
xiii
xiv Contributors
Kerry Danahy Ebert Rush University, Chicago, IL, USA

Maria-Jose Ezeizabarrena Letren Fakultatea, University of the Basque Country
(UPV/EHU), Vitoria/Gasteiz, Spain
Iñaki García Fernández University of the Basque Country, San Sebastián, Spain
Maite Fernández-Urquiza Universidad de Oviedo, LOGIN Research Group,
Oviedo, Spain
Miriam Figueroa-Olea National Institute of Pediatrics (INP), Mexico City,
Mexico
Octavio García Laboratorio de Neurobiología del Síndrome de Down, Facultad de
Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), México City, DF,
Mexico
Dolors Girbau Department of Basic, Clinical & Biological Psychology, Universitat
Jaume I, Castelló, Spain
Silvia Izazola-Ezquerro National Institute of Pediatrics (INP), Mexico City,
Mexico
Anita Kemp University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
Wendy Fabiola Lara Galindo Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
(UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico
Raül López-Penadés Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, Spain
Mario Mandujano-Valdés Metropolitan Autonomous University-Xochimilco
(UAMX), Mexico City, Mexico
Sonia Mariscal Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain
Verónica Martínez Universidad de Oviedo, LOGIN Research Group, Oviedo,
Spain
María Mercedes Pavez Departamento de Fonoaudiología, Universidad de Chile,
Santiago de Chile, Chile
Manuel Peralbo University of la Coruña, La Coruña, Spain
Miguel Pérez-Pereira University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de
Compostela, Galicia, Spain
Giang Pham San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA
Pablo E. Requena University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA
Rolando Rivera-González Neurodevelopmental Follow-Up Laboratory, National
Institute of Pediatrics (INP), Mexico City, Mexico
Contributors xv
Cecilia Rojas-Nieto Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM),

Mexico City, Mexico
Mònica Sanz-Torrent Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Naomi L. Shin University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
Antonio Sierra-Cedillo National Institute of Pediatrics (INP), Mexico City,
Mexico
Gabriela Simón-Cereijido Department of Communication Disorders, College of
Health and Human Services, California State University, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Karla Soler-Limón National Institute of Pediatrics (INP), Mexico City, Mexico
Paloma Suárez Brito Department of Psychology, National Autonomous University
of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico
Alberto Veleiro University of la Coruña, La Coruña, Spain
Yadira Villanueva-Romero Metropolitan Autonomous University-Xochimilco
(UAMX), Mexico City, Mexico
About the Editors
Alejandra Auza Benavides is a full-time researcher in medical sciences at Hospital

General “Dr. Manuel Gea González” in Mexico City. Her research interests include
the development of grammar and semantics in children with and without language
disorders. She is developing tools for screening and assessing Spanish-speaking
children and has studied the language development of children who live in economi-
cally vulnerable situations. Dr. Auza’s research has been supported by grants from
the National Education Secretary (PROMEP) since 2001 and the Consejo Nacional
de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT). She is member of the National System of
Researchers (SNI).
Richard G. Schwartz is a presidential professor in the Ph.D. Program in Speech-

Language-Hearing Sciences at the Graduate Center of the City University of

New York. His research interests include phonological acquisition, working mem-
ory, grammar, and language processing in children with specific language impair-
ment (SLI), children with cochlear implants, and children with autism. He has
published widely in these areas. Dr. Schwartz’s research has been supported by
grants from the National Institutes of Health since 1979. He has served as an editor
of the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Professor Schwartz is a
fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and has received the
Honors of the Association.
xvii
Part I
Typical Language Development in
Monolingual and Bilingual Children
Typical Language Development
of Monolingual Spanish-Speaking Children
Sonia Mariscal and Alejandra Auza Benavides
Abstract This chapter aims at reviewing the process of acquisition of Spanish as a

first language. Firstly, the main characteristics of Spanish as a Romance Language
are explained, so phonological, syntactic and morphological traits of this language
are considered and exemplified. Secondly, and taking a constructivist view, early
phonological development, lexical acquisition, vocabulary growth and early mor-
phological development are reviewed selecting and making reference to the main
empirical studies undertook by different Spanish and South American researchers.
Different methodological approaches are also quoted when making reference to
empirical data: from Preferential Looking Paradigm, used to study word and mor-
pheme comprehension in children under three years of age, to longitudinal corpora
(CHILDES). We also review some production studies, that using elicitation tasks,
aim at getting specific linguistic structures or morphemes, as nominal plurals, gen-
der agreement in adjectives, etc. Fast-mapping studies that manipulate linguistic
categories (nouns vs. verbs), morphological variants (singular vs. plurals), and imi-
tation tasks (word and pseudoword repetition; sentence repetition) developed (or
being developed) for the study of Spanish acquisition by monolingual children are
also considered. We aim to present a complete review of Spanish language acquisi-
tion that can be used as a reference to those researchers or clinicians that study,
evaluate and program intervention with monolingual (and also bilingual) children
learning to speak Spanish.
Keywords Monolinguals • Spanish-speaking children • Phonology • Morphology

• Morphosyntax
S. Mariscal (*)
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid, Spain
e-mail: smariscal@psi.uned.es
A. Auza Benavides
Hospital General “Dr. Manuel Gea González”, Mexico City, Mexico
e-mail: alejandra.auza@yahoo.com
© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 3

A. Auza Benavides, R.G. Schwartz (eds.), Language Development and
Disorders in Spanish-speaking Children, Literacy Studies 14,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_1
4 S. Mariscal and A. Auza Benavides
1 A
cquiring Spanish as a First Language:
The Problem-Space
In 1979 Karmiloff-Smith, a young Karmiloff-Smith, a former student of Piaget’s,

stated that language constituted a proper problem-space for children’s cognitive
development. We will take this metaphor as a frame work to organize this chapter
on the acquisition of Spanish as a first language, in the following sense: while chil-
dren acquire a language, any language, they apply a set of processing mechanisms
to the task of learning their particular language. Based on a constructivist view of
language acquisition (see for example, Tomasello 2000), during this process, which
begins in utero and extends beyond infancy, this set of mechanisms becomes tuned
to the language to be acquired. Moreover, specific linguistic representations gradu-
ally emerge out of this learning process.
Within this theoretical approach, the specific properties (or structure) of the lan-
guage to be acquired by the child constitute a kind of particular problem-space. In
this vein, the structure of Romance languages creates a different kind of problem-
space from the one created by the structure of any other languages, such as Slavic
or Germanic, for example. Given the commonalities between the properties of
human language and the human cognitive mechanisms themselves, there will be
processes that are common to the acquisition of different first languages (L1). But
given their typological differences, there will be particularities – both in the use of
mechanisms and representations – that need to be considered. Let us consider an
example from the phonological domain. From an early age, children become spe-
cialized in the perceptual properties of their first language. A learning mechanism
makes them more prone to attend to the phonetic characteristics and syllabic com-
binations in their native language (Kuhl 2004; Jusczyk and Aslin 1995). Since the
age of 6 months, children use prosodic information, such as rhythm organization, to
distinguish between their native and a foreign language. They develop important
perceptual abilities such as the recognition of specific phonemes that work as fron-
tiers of words. By the age of 9 months, they have learned the phonetic and phono-
tactic characteristics from their own language and before their first birthday, they
distinguish frequent from infrequent phonotactic sequences that will allow them to
segment a string of sounds into words (Jusczyk 2003; Saffran 2003).
As a Romance language, Spanish presents a set of properties that make its acqui-
sition different from the most investigated language, English. Before reviewing the
main developmental details of its acquisition as L1, we will briefly describe its
structural characteristics, those that define the problem-space of the task Spanish
monolingual children face as little language learners.
Typical Language Development of Monolingual Spanish-Speaking Children 5
2 P
honological, Syntactic and Morphological Properties
of the Spanish Language
Spanish has 5 vocalic sounds and 19 consonant phonemes (24 in English). Syllabic
structures include CV as the most frequent (56%), followed by CVC (20%), CCV
(10%) and VC (3%) (see Bosch 2004). Prosodically, rhythm in Spanish is syllable-
dependent in contrast to English, which is a stressed-time language. The fact that
English non-stressed syllables are reduced compared to stressed ones is a difficult
trait for Spanish learners of English as L2.
Spanish has a rich and complex verbal and nominal morphology. New words can
be constructed by derivation or by composition. Most derivation is through the addi-
tion of suffixes to the root word (zapato: zapatería [shoe: shoe-store]), and compo-
sition (sacapuntas [pencil sharpener]) is more infrequent than in Germanic
languages.
2.1 Word Order and Pronoun Dropping
As in many other Romance languages (see, for example, Clark 1985), the basic
word order in Spanish is SVO. The basic order changes from SVO to SOV when the
direct object is pronominalized. Pronominalized indirect objects also precede the
verb, except for the imperative verbal form:
(1) Pablo da la pelota a María vs. Pablo se la da

Subj Verb:sg DO:fem:sg IO:fem:sg vs Subj IO: PRO:masc:sg
DO:fem:sig Verb:sg
[Paul gives the ball to Mary] vs. [Paul gives it to her]
[IO: indirect object; DO: direct object; PRO: pronoun form;
masc: masculine; fem: feminine; sg: singular]
Noun and verb morphology in Spanish are much more abundant and varied than
in languages such as English. And it is the main difficulty L2 learners in Spanish.
Moreover, this morphological richness enables Spanish to be a pro-drop language.
Subjects are frequently omitted, as the information regarding the subject is included
in verb morphology. Thus, VsO is a common structure in oral Spanish (Vs being the
inflected verb) (López-Ornat 1992; Gallo 1994). The next example is extracted from
the Ornat corpus, (MacWhinney 2000). In the child’s sentence, produced when she
was 23 months of age, the use of first person present is underlined and the explicit
subject is omitted.
(2) María: Cálsotee. Cáso, papa. Pongo sapatitos.

[Child: Put (shoes) on you. (I) put on, daddy. (I) put shoes].
Padre: No, no me los pongas, hija.
[Father: No, don’t put them on me, daughter].
Another consequence of a verb-rich morphology is that word order is much freer

than in other Romance languages such as French. Both subject and object noun
phrases can be ordered to reflect the relative importance or thematic relevance or
topicalization. While English children are predominantly exposed to SVO sen-
tences: I read the book, Spanish children hear and use at least three frequent sen-
tence types: SVO: Yo leo el libro, VsO: Leo el libro, VSO: Leo yo el libro.
2.2 Noun Morphology and Agreement
In Spanish all nouns referring to beings, objects and events are marked as masculine
(masc) or feminine (fem). The gender and number of the noun must agree with other
elements in the definite article (in Spanish, el/los ‘the_masc, sg/pl’ and la/las ‘the_
fem, sg/pl’), which occurs more frequently in adult language than the indefinite
article un/unos (‘a_masc., sg/some_masc,pl.’ and una/unas ‘a_fem, sg/some_fem,
pl’). Other less frequently occurring form classes are adjectives (for example,
pequeño/a ‘small_masc/fem’), personal pronouns él/ellos ‘he/they’, ella/ellas ‘she/
they’ and other kinds of determiners and pronouns (for example, demonstratives
este/esta‘this_masc/fem’, indefinite otro/otra ‘another_masc/fem’ and possessives
mío/mía‘my_masc/fem.’). A second source of information is sublexical (phonetic),
and it derives from the fact that the endings of many nouns in Spanish are more
often associated with one gender than with the other: an –a ending is usually associ-
ated with feminine gender, and an – o ending usually indicates masculine gender.
There are exceptions. For example, number of masculine nouns end in –a, and a
very small number of feminine nouns ending in –o. Albeit some less frequent end-
ings such as –e or –l refer to an arbitrary gender: la fuente:fem [the fountain] – el
puente:masc [the bridge] or el árbol:masc [the tree] – la piel:fem [the skin]. There
are also nouns with no overt gender marking, such as botón [button].
Similarly, many adjectives show gender agreement by means of the same end-
ings found in nouns (−o and –a), but there is also an important group of adjectives
lacking these two endings; for example, grande [big] is invariant. According to
some linguistic proposals (see Harris 1991), −o and –a are word markers, rather
than gender markers, because they are not confined to lexical items that have gen-
der, being found also in adverbs. These sublexical cues seem to be treated as gender
markers both for L1 and L2 learners.
Besides gender, the number of Spanish nouns, determiners, pronouns and adjec-
tives is expressed in a bound morpheme. This is –s or –es at the end of the root. For
instance:
(3) la silla es blanca vs. las sillas son blancas

[the chair is white_sg’ vs. the chairs are
white_pl]
2.3 Sentence Type Constructions
In Spanish, interrogatives do not require special verb forms nor word movement
(e.g., Te doy leche versus ¿Te doy leche? [I give you milk]. The Wh-words (what/
qué, who/quién etc.) and rising intonation are the unique requirements.
For all kind of sentences subjects must agree in person and number with the verb.
For example, in ‘me gusta tu camisa versus me gustan tus camisas’, the subjects (tu
camisa and tus camisas/ ‘your shirt’ and ‘your shirts’), which appear after the
verb – the prototypical position of the direct object -, agree in number with it (gusta_
sg/‘likes’ vs.gustan_pl/‘like’). The formation of complex sentences is similar to
English, but it includes compulsory verb agreement and its varied forms, allowing
pronoun drop and varied word orders. For example:
(4) Si yo fuera una mujer rica, viajaría alrededor del mundo

[If I were a rich woman, I would travel around the world]
Or the relative sentences:
(5) Este libro que leí en el instituto es una de las mejores novelas que he leído
en mi vida
[This book that I read in high school is one of the best novels that
I have read in my life].
Many complex sentences (mainly object and subject clauses) in Spanish need
subjunctive verbal forms, although in English the indicative form is used. For
example:
(6) Quiero que vengas el martes

[I want you to come on Tuesday]
The subjunctive is also compulsory in negative imperative sentences. Thus, in

Spanish, the present imperative is used to give an order, as in Siéntate [Sit down],
but the present subjunctive is used in the negative imperative– No te sientes [Do not
sit down].
2.4 Verb System
Spanish verbs are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect and mood. There are
three conjugations (1st, 2nd and 3rd) and a typical verb can have around 100 differ-
ent forms (see Table 1). For regular verbs, this variability is found at the end of the
word, so attention final sounds and syllables is crucial to learning Spanish morphol-
ogy. On the contrary, for irregular verbs morphological changes frequently imply
changes in the verbal stem.
3 Spanish Language Acquisition
The next few sections include a selection of research on Spanish language acquisi-
tion. The number of studies conducted since the 1980s has increased rapidly, so this
is not an exhaustive review. Special attention will be paid to some characteristics of
its acquisition that make it particularly interesting, such as early phonology, verb
morphology, gender agreement and lexical development.
3.1 Early Phonological Development
The first year of life is crucial for learning the “sound substance” of a language.
From around nine months of age infants become tuned in with the phonological
properties of their L1; that is, its prosodic, phonetic and phonotactic characteristics.
(Werker and Tees 1984; Mehler et al. 1988; Nazzi et al. 1998). However, most of the
evidence comes from studies with English participants and research in Spanish is
very scarce. Bosch and Sebastián-Gallés (2001), working with babies in a labora-
tory in Barcelona, showed early sensibility to phonotactic clusters in 10-month old
monolingual and bilingual (Spanish-Catalan) children. In a more recent paper,
Bosch et al. (2013) found very early segmentation abilities in infants from six months
of age. Children that young were able to segment new words in fluent speech when
these items matched the rhythmic units of Spanish and Catalan, which are syllable-
timed languages. For this study, three different language groups (two monolingual
and one Catalan-Spanish bilingual) and two age groups (8-and 6-month-old infants)
were tested using natural language and a modified version of the Head Turn
Preference Procedure (HTPP). All groups at both ages exhibited word segmenta-
tion, but the preference pattern differed by age. A novelty preference was exhibited
by older children, while the expected familiarity preference was only found at the
younger age tested, suggesting a more advanced segmentation ability with an
increase in age. This is the first evidence of an early ability for monosyllabic word
Table 1 Conjugation and examples of the verb ‘to love’ (118 word forms)
Indicative Subjunctive
Present Present perfect Present Present perfect
amo he amado ame haya amado
amas has amado ames hayas amado
aman ha amado ame haya amado
amamos hemos amado amemos hayamos amado
amáis habéis amado améis hayáis amado
aman han amado amen hayan amado
Imperfective past Past perfect Imperfective Past perfect
past
amaba había amado amara hubiera amado
amabas habías amado amaras hubieras amado
amaba había amado amara hubiera amado
amabamos habíamos amado amáramos hubiéramos amado
amabáis habíais amado amárais hubiérais amado
amaban habían amado amaran hubieran amado
Perfective past Preterite perfect Future Future perfect
imperfect
amé hube amado amare hubiere amado
amaste habiste amado amares hubieres amado
amó hubo amado amare hubiere amado
amamos hubimos amado amáremos hubiéremos amado
amásteis hubísteis amado amáreis hubiereis amado
amaron hubieron amado amaran hubieren amado
Future imperfect Future perfect Imperative Impersonal forms
amaré habré amado ama (tú) Simple infinitive/
amarás habrás amado ame (él) compound
amará habrá amado amemos amar/haber amado
amaremos habremos amado (nosotros)
amaréis habréis amado améis Gerund
(vosotros)
amarán habrán amado amen (ellos) amando/habiendo
amado
Participle amado
Conditional/condicional Compound conditional/
simple condicional compuesto
amaría habría amado
amarías habrías amado
amaría habría amado
amaríamos habríamos amado
amaríais habríais amado
amarían habrían amado
Table 2 Miguel’s first words Form Meaning and situation

(12–15 months of age)
‘papá’ To point to or call to his father
‘mamá’ To point to or call to his mother
‘ala’ Equivalent to ‘hello’
‘ti-tá’ To refer to a clock or a watch
(onomatopoeic sound)
‘aba’ To ask for ‘agua’ [water]
segmentation in infants acquiring syllable-timed languages, such as Spanish or

Catalan. Interestingly, natural speech in the form of infant-directed speech was
used. This variable, together with the fact that target words were often aligned to
phrase boundaries demarcated by pauses, facilitated the task.
Early segmentation abilities constitute a basic ingredient for the task of learning
the phonological properties of the L1. But they are not sufficient by themselves to
explain the acquisition of words and other linguistic units for communicating. It is
necessary to associate these linguistic forms to relevant meanings in the language to
be acquired. This association or linking between linguistic forms and functions or
meanings begins gradually during the first year of life and becomes increasingly
rapid in the second year of life. The general developmental trend of vocabulary
acquisition is also seen for Spanish children. At the beginning, the process is very
slow. Learning the first ten words takes months. Frequent words (mama/‘mommy’,
papa/‘daddy’, agua/‘water’) and expressions (se ha ido/‘it’s gone’, se ha roto/‘it’s
broken’, a comer/‘let’s eat’) are segmented and understood in familiar contexts of
use; afterward they can be produced. Miguel’s – one of the author’s own Spanish
child - first words are shown in the next table. All of them have a simple syllabic
structure and refer to relevant persons, objects and situations that are of interest to
him (Table 2).
3.2 Early Lexical Development
Jackson-Maldonado et al. (2003) developed the first Spanish version (Mexican
Spanish) of the Mac Arthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories
(MCDI). In both languages, mama and papa, mommy and daddy were reported to
be produced by the greatest number of children (Jackson-Maldonado et al. 1993).
Animal sounds and names for objects also had a high frequency of occurrence in
both languages, as did names of things children usually manipulate (toys, body parts
and foods). Certain quantifiers had a high frequency, more, some, too, all in English,
and ya, más, no hay [done, more, there isn’t] in Spanish. Both yes and no, sí and no,
were reported for very young children. As has been very well established in many
studies (e.g., Serra et al. 2000), function words do not appear in early vocabularies.
These data have been supported by evidence stemming from the Spanish version of
400
300
Vocabulary
200
100
0
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
AGE mos. Understands

AGE mos.
Understands & Says
Fig. 1 Mean of words understood and produced from 8 to 15 months of age and development of
word production up to 30 months (compiled by the author from López-Ornat et al. 2005)
MCDI derived for a sample of children from Spain (López-Ornat et al. 2005).
Analysis showed the well-known imbalance between comprehension and produc-
tion of words and the quick developmental trend of acquiring new words after the
first 50 items are acquired (see Fig. 1).
An interesting research tool- CLEX (Cross-linguistic Lexical Norms) - devel-
oped by Rune et al. (2010) and accessible at http://www.cdi-clex.org, includes
vocabulary data from Mexican Spanish children, 8–30 months of age, for cross-
linguistic comparisons. The database (n = 1872 children) was contributed by
Jackson-Maldonado’s team, the authors of the Mexican Spanish version of the
MCDI. CLEX can be used to explore trajectories of individual words and word
categories, to depict vocabulary size curves and for many other analyses.
3.3 V
ocabulary Growth After First Words and Early
Morphological Development
After the first words are acquired (comprehended and produced), the pace at which
vocabulary is learned is accelerated. Many studies of different languages have
reported on vocabulary spurts and other lexical trajectories (for a review in Spanish,
see Mariscal and Gallo 2015a).
In the case of Spanish, the same database gathered by López-Ornat et al. (2005)
was analyzed by Gallego and Mariscal (2007) in an effort to learn about vocabulary
composition after first words. Their results showed that the early lexicon in Spanish
children under 30 months of age includes a higher percentage of nouns in all ages
(60%), followed by predicates (verbs and adjectives), which increase from 8% at 16
months to 18% at 30 months. Function words were produced at a rate of around
10% in all ages (starting from 16 months), although during the first months children
produce fillers or protomorphemes instead of proper function words. Organizing
these data as a function of vocabulary size (0–50 words, 51–100, 101–200 and so on
up to 600 words) yields a developmental sense of the emerging picture. Although
nouns are still dominant in every age range, their trajectory shows an increase from
the initial 0–50 word-stage to 101–200. It then stabilizes at around 60% in compari-
son with total vocabulary and decreases (40%) after 400 words are produced. Verbs
and function words represent only 10% of total vocabulary when it is under 50
words, and then its evolution differs: verbs begin to increase in frequency and reach
20% by the end of the study, while function words maintain their percentage of use
below verbs. However, given the methodology used to gather these data (parent
report), it is necessary to specify if these words change their representational status
as the acquisition process develops from the initial phases. At the beginning of the
developmental process, function words are attached to content words, as in auxil-
iary verbs - for example, a’oto (se ha roto) [it’s broken] -, or they are only produced
in a fuzzy form apota instead of la pelota [the ball] that make it difficult to assign
them a syntactic representational status (see, for example, Mariscal (2009) - for the
case of determiners).
The form that words take in children’s vocabularies before they have mastered
the phonological and articulatory properties of the language have been examined in
detail elsewhere (Bosch 2004). This work provides not only important developmen-
tal data (ages of acquisition, typical phonological processes in Spanish children,
etc.), but also serves as a tool to assess children’s phonological abilities from 3 to 7
years of age.
Going back to Fig. 1, the change in the pace at which new words are acquired
after the first 50 is remarkable.
In morphologically rich languages, children begin to use morphemes as a cue to
learn new words from early on. Although vocabulary studies only tend to consider
new roots, in Romance languages an important way for vocabulary to grow is
through the acquisition of inflectional and derivational morphology. Given that the
latter is a key for vocabulary expansion in Spanish, children start using derivational
morphemes productively since the age of three. This has been observed in different
languages (Clark 1993, 1997) includying Spanish, specifically using frequent mor-
phemes such as the agentives -ador, -ero [-er] or the adjectives -ón, -oso [-y] which
continue to be productive until the school years (Auza 2005, 2006, 2008; Auza and
Hernández 2005).
As Hoff (2009) summarized, morphemes that are frequent and have a stable and
recognizable form are easier and consequently, are acquired early. There are three
sources of empirical evidence that corroborate this acquisition pattern in Spanish:
(1) parent-report data; (2) longitudinal naturalistic studies; and (3) experimental
research on language comprehension and production. We will review the main
developmental trends of morphological development in Spanish by referring to rel-

evant research undertaken in (European) Spanish and in other varieties of the lan-
guage. Evidence related to comprehension and production will be considered,
although comprehension data are more limited.
3.4 Comprehending Words and Morphemes in Spanish
As mentioned in the first section of this chapter, gender agreement is one of the main
morpho-syntactic phenomena in Spanish. In spite of this fact, only a few recent stud-
ies regarding the use of this cue to identify words and help in vocabulary acquisition
have been published. As noted above, there are methodological reasons for this.
Fortunately in recent years researchers of Mexican-Spanish have conducted several
studies with young children on the importance of gender information in the segmen-
tation and acquisition of new nouns (Alva-Canto et al. 2014; Arias-Trejo & Barrón,
this volume; Arias-Trejo and Alva-Canto 2012; Arias-Trejo et al. 2013, 2014b).
In an initial experiment using the Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm
(IPLP), Arias-Trejo et al. (2013) showed that 30- and 36-month old infants, but not
24-month olds, can anticipate the referent of common objects when they listen to
definite articles paired with their regular and irregular object nouns. However, for
those 30 month-old children the identification of the objects with regular nouns
depended on the fact that they were paired with distractors that also had regular
nouns. In contrast, the 36-month old children were also able to identify objects
paired with irregular endings. In a second experiment, indefinite articles were used
in noun phrases. The results showed that children as young as 24 months of age
were able to anticipate the target nouns, but again if they were paired with regular
nouns for the distractors. Thus, Mexican-Spanish children were able to anticipate a
referent like globo [balloon_masc_regular]’ if it appeared with muñeca [doll_fem_
regular], but they failed if it was paired with flor [flower_fem_irregular]; or they
could identify manzana [apple_fem_regular] if shown together with caballo
[horse_masc_regular] as a distractor, but they could not if it appeared with pastel
[cake_masc_irregular].
As the authors stated: “(Spanish-speaking) infants, from 2 to 3 years of age, are
sensitive to the information included in article-noun pairs. At the beginning, around
24 months of age, infants rely on phonological regularities for anticipating which
referent will be named; however, at 3 years of age infants are flexible in their use of
strategies: depending on the information available, they are able to use phono-
morphological or syntactic cues” (Alva-Canto et al. 2014: pp.99; translated from
the original in Spanish).
In another experiment, Arias-Trejo et al. (2014b) showed that Spanish 30-month
old children were able to use gender phono-morphological cues (the endings –a and
–o) present in adjectives to learn new nouns. Using IPLP and testing two
pseudonames (feminine betusa and masculine pileco), they showed that children at
this age were able to associate the new names with the appropriate objects by r elying
on phono-morphological gender clues present in the adjectives used during the

training phase. Specifically, they learned to associate the new feminine noun
(betusa) with the object previously described by a feminine adjective: mira, es roja
[look it’s red_fem], and the new masculine noun (pileco) with the object described
by a masculine adjective: mira, es rojo [look it’s red_masc].
These studies are the first in Spanish to show the effect of the early acquisition of
grammatical gender on language receptive processing. Their authors interpreted the
experimental results by stating that gender agreement knowledge favors speech pro-
cessing in a language like Spanish. Together with gender, number morphemes
appear in determiners, nouns and adjectives in Spanish. In addition, plural noun
phrases must agree in number with verbs.
In contrast, first language acquisition of English follows a very different pattern
(Kouider et al. 2006). At 24 months of age, children do not use the information from
the plural morpheme –s in sentences like Look at the blickets to address their atten-
tion to the appropriate image of a set of objects. At this age, children need redundant
morphological information – like the one included in Look, there are some blickets.
In contrast to 36 month-old children, younger children needed multiple cues in
order to understand the referent of a plural noun phrase. English has three allo-
phones of the plural morpheme /s/, which could hamper its identification and acqui-
sition process. However, Spanish has two allomorphs (/s/ and /es/), with /s/ being
the primary one (Lleó 2006); /s/ is added to words ending in vowel and /es/ to items
with a final consonant or a stressed vowel. More than 80% of common nouns end in
a vowel.
Thus, in Spanish there is a dominant allomorph that frequently appears after a
vowel (casa-casas)/ [house/houses], which makes it more salient than in English
and other languages. Another critical characteristic of Spanish number agreement is
that it constitutes a structured and redundant system. In contrast to an English sen-
tence such as I like yellow apples, in which plural morphology is only marked on the
noun, the Spanish equivalent – Me gustan las manzanas amarillas –includes plural
morphemes in the article, noun and adjective that must agree. All these characteris-
tics could explain the early acquisition of number morphemes by Spanish children.
As is the case with gender agreement, few studies have examined the compre-
hension of plural in Spanish. Little is known about the sensitivity of children to
number morphemes before the age of 3 years. Arias-Trejo et al. (2014a) used a simi-
lar procedure to Kouider et al. (2006) with 24-month old Mexican children. In the
initial experiment, they presented sentences that included pseudonouns and redun-
dant number cues (e.g., Mira, es una teba vs. Mira, son unas tebas) / [look, this is a
teba vs. look, those are some tebas] while in the second one they only used number
morphemes in the noun phrase. When the sentences included plural morphemes, the
children looked more frequently to the screen with eight objects versus the screen
with only one object. The preference for the screen depicting the target plural image
increased after the presentation of the sentence; it was not a general perceptual pref-
erence. Similar results were obtained in the second experiment. Two-year old
Spanish children also showed a preference for the screen with more than one object
when they heard plural noun phrase. Curiously, this effect was found when the
p lural screen included eight, but not two objects. Mexican children of 24 and 30
months of age were able to understand that a plural noun phrase corresponded to a
set of two objects (versus one, in the other screen) only when the noun phrase
appeared in a sentence including other plural morphemes (in the verb as in Mira son
unas ponas [Look, those are some ponas].
To summarize, these studies reveal an early sensitivity by Spanish children to
plural morphemes. Developmental differences with English children might be
explained by the specific properties of the Spanish language: its redundancy,
saliency and ease of articulation.
The other defining characteristic of the Spanish language is its extensive verb
morphology, as we showed at the beginning of the chapter. Evidence on the use of
verb morphosyntactic properties for lexical acquisition is scarce. Falcón and Alva-
Canto (2007) is an interesting study on the use of morphosyntactic cues to learn
verbs versus nouns. They carried out an IPLP experiment with 24 month-old chil-
dren. Two pseudowords were used – pile and liba –appearing in two different syn-
tactic contexts: as a verb (e.g., la flor pile/ the flower piles) and as a noun (e.g., un
pile/ a pile). In contrast to studies carried out in English (Naigles 1990), which
supported the use of syntactic cues (transitive vs. intransitive structures) to learn
new verbs, in the Falcón et al. study the results did not support the hypothesis of
syntactic bootstrapping. They showed that children tend to map the new words with
new objects, independently of the linguistic context of presentation. In their discus-
sion of these results, the authors considered that the young age of the children could
explain why they did not seem to use the syntactic frames as a cue to map the pseu-
dowords (verb and noun) with their appropriate referents (action and object). But
there is another possible explanation; it could be that for Spanish-speaking children,
syntactic cues are less reliable by themselves for learning new words. The morpho-
logical cues used in the experiment were not perceptually prominent (the – e ending
of both pseudowords), and they could not be added to the syntactic information.
Thus, when morphological and syntactic cues act in unison, the ability to learn new
words in different categories increases.
This was precisely the hypothesis used to guide a second experiment (Jasso et al.
2014), which relied on the same method. Two pseudowords ending in -ando (equiv-
alent to ‘-ing’) were used within two syntactic contexts, as a pseudoverb (la flor
pilando)/[the flower piling] and as a noun (un pilando)/[a piling]. Results with two-
year old children were not clearcut; only some infants showed clear preference for
the verb-like scene when hearing la flor pilando versus un pilando. Again, the
authors considered the early age as a possible explanation for the absence of clear
effects and underlined the need to carry out further studies with 30- and 36-month
old children. There is another problem: the linguistic stimuli used, both for the verb-
like and noun-like context, sound quite strange in Spanish. On the one hand, the –
ndo morpheme appears in the present continuous, but without the copulative verb
(la flor pilando/ the flower piling instead of la flor está pilando/ the flower is piling),
the absence of the copula makes the sentence very unusual in our language. On the
other hand, the -ndo ending for a noun is quite infrequent, especially in children’s
vocabularies and the type of language used with them.
A different methodology that was used to study the early learning of new nouns
versus verbs in Spanish is Fast-Mapping. Pulido et al. (2007) (based on Lamela
2004) carried out a replica of the classic study by Golinkoff et al. (1992) using
Spanish pseudoverbs. The results showed that two- and three-year-old children
identified a significantly lower number of verbs than children of 4 years of age.
These authors hypothesized that Spanish morphological richness might produce a
delay in the fast-mapping of pseudoverbs in comparison with English. However,
they suggest that this morphological variability could exert an influence, not by
itself, but in interaction with other variables, such as vocabulary size.
Based on Rujas (2014), another fast-mapping study (Casla et al. 2015); exam-
ined children’s use of noun and verb morphology to learn pseudowords. The study
involved 38 Spanish children, 23 of them with typical language development (TD),
and 15 late-talking children. They took part in a longitudinal study, with data being
gathered at three different times (T1, T2, T3). At T1 the children were 24–28 months
of age (M = 28 months); 6 months later, at T2, when children were 30–38 months
of age (M = 34 months), they were tested again. T3 took place 8 months later (M =
42 months). We will only consider the TD participants’ performance.
The aim of the study was to examine the role played by syntactic and morpho-
logical variables in the identification and extension of new words. These variables
were word category (noun vs. verb) and morphological frequency (singular vs. plu-
ral morphemes). The design was similar to Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek (2006), but
four conditions were established (two grammatical categories and two morphemes).
The children’s task consisted of disambiguating new lexical items (pseudonouns
and pseudoverbs) by mapping them to unknown objects or actions. In the second
phase, the children were asked to extend the new words, just mapped, to objects
with different colors and to actions performed by different actors. The wordlikeness,
syllable length and conjugations (for pseudoverbs) were controlled. Pictures of
objects (one vs. two) and actions performed by one or more than one actor were
paired with the new words. So, for example, for the pseudoverb nupar, a girl (or two,
for plural) was shown in a picture with one of her arms raised and the other stretched
out to her side. Adults did not have a specific label for this kind of action, saying, for
example that the girl was playing to estirarse así [stretch like that]. There were four
trials for every fast-mapping task. First (identification phase), four pictures with
three known objects and one unknown were shown to the children. By asking chil-
dren for the known objects or actions, the researchers were able to establish that
they were familiar with their names. In the second phase of the task (disambiguation
of new labels), the researchers asked for the unknown ítems (dónde están los nupos?
[where are the nupos ?] or dónde nupan ? [where do they nupan ?]. The third phase
(extension of new labels) involved presenting a new member of the same category
(noun or verb), together with two known objects/actions and a new unknown object
(distractor). As these three phases were repeated in four different trials, the children
were asked to identify four new labels. The presentation order was varied between
participants, together with the position of the unknown objects and the distractors.
The results for the pseudowords (both nouns and verbs) revealed that the task
was easily solved by two-year old children, although the scores improved from 24
to 36 months (66% to 89% correct responses). In the extension phase, their perfor-
mance was better than in the identification phase after the children were exposed to
the new labels several times. However, a morpheme effect was only found for nouns;
singular new nouns were easier to map than plural ones in the experiment. This
effect was significant for T1, and for T2 and T3, the difference between singular and
plural was evident, although non-significant, due to a ceiling effect.
The results for pseudoverbs were more complex. The percentage of correct
responses was lower than for nouns in all ages, although the 2-year old children
were able to solve the task for more than 50% of the trials. The scores were better
in the extension than in the disambiguation phase. No advantage for singular versus
plural was found at any age, contrary to results with pseudonouns.
Rujas (2014) wondered why new singular pseudoverbs do not seem easier than
their plural counterparts when in the linguistic input, singular forms (both for nouns
and verbs) are more frequent. Even though more research is needed to clarify this
question, the complexity of verbal number agreement (compared with plurality in
nouns), both formally and functionally, might be proposed as a good cue.
Fast-mapping can be seen as an important ability when learning new words.
However, as several authors have noted recently, this process only constitutes the
very first step in building a complete word representation. In our view, more experi-
mental research is needed in Spanish to tease out the relative value of syntactic and
morphological cues, used separately and together, especially for learning verbs. The
next section reviews production studies on the acquisition of verb morphology.
Again, as is the case for noun morphology, this kind of research is more abundant in
comparison with comprehension studies.
3.5 Acquisition of Spanish Morphology: Production Studies
The acquisition of Spanish free-standing morphemes, specifically their production,

has been studied using spontaneous speech samples, parent-report data and experi-
mental (or quasi-experimental) tasks. Longitudinal studies of natural interactions
have been more abundant than experiments, but experimental tasks are being
increasingly used in recent years. The selection of studies relied more clearly on
theoretical models and explanations rather than mere descriptions.
In the transition form early vocabulary to grammar development, different stud-
ies have assumed that early lexical developmeant not only occurs prior to, but it is
actually a pre-requisite for, the emergence of morphosyntactic constructions (Bates
et al. 1994; Marchman and Bates 1994). The critical mass hypothesis posits that the
acquisition of a certain number of words – a critical mass – is needed to start the
process of creating abstract morphological patterns. This hypothesis favors a con-
tinuous view of language development.
Research aimed at exploring the interdependency of lexical and morphosyntactic
development has been conducted mainly for English. Only a few studies have been
published involving languages with rich morphological systems (e.g., Bassano
2000; Caselli et al. 1999); Devescovi et al. 2005; Serrat et al. (2004); Stolt et al.
2009). For bilingual children learning English and Spanish, Marchman et al. (2004)
found strong correlations between vocabulary and grammar within each language.
In Catalan and in Spanish, Serrat et al. (2004) specifically studied the interrelated-
ness of verb vocabulary and the morphosyntactic aspects related to the verb gram-
mar (i.e., morphological productivity and syntactic complexity). Six children took
part in this study of spontaneous language, two of whom where Catalan monolin-
gual, two Spanish monolingual and two bilingual. Contrary to Bassano’s (2000)
results from Italian data, the children learned verbs at a constant pace, and no period
of lexical acceleration was observed. Other studies with bilingual Spanish-English
children have shown that verb acquisition occurs in stages, being error rates gener-
ally low. Also, cross-linguistic influence seems to play a role in the acquisition of
some verb forms in children learning more than one language (Dubasik and Wilcox
2013; Silva-Corvalán and Montanari 2008). Studies measuring developmental
changes in children’s verb use have noted an increase in the number of verb types
used by children as they progress toward later stages of verb acquisition thus regard-
ing verb use as a lexical and grammatical developmental marker.
However, a significant increase in verb morphology was observed at a certain
point in the children’s development. There was evidence for a period of morphologi-
cal acceleration in verb acquisition within the context of a constant lexical increase.
The authors posit that their results were not incompatible with the critical mass
hypothesis because acquiring a certain number of verbs (i.e. a critical mass of verbs)
may be a pre-requisite to the morphological spurt observed. The aforementioned
quantity of verbs, along with the period of time needed before being able to generate
abstract regularities, would both be necessary for morphological development to
advance.
Based on correlation analyses of the MCDI samples, Pérez-Pereira and García-
Soto (2003) for Galician, Jackson-Maldonado et al. (2003) for Mexican Spanish,
and López-Ornat et al. (2005) for European Spanish found high correlations between
vocabulary scores and different measures of grammar development (MLU, mea-
sures of morphology and grammar complexity). Mariscal and Gallego (2012) fur-
ther analyzed data from the European Spanish MCDI (ES MCDI), including 593
children from 16 to 30 months of age. Their aims were: (1) to analyze the relation-
ship between total vocabulary and grammar, and the relationship between noun and
verb vocabularies, and their respective morphologies; (2) to analyze whether the
predictive value of vocabulary to grammar was the same for all children in the
sample, particularly for those whose vocabulary scores fell in the lowest percentiles;
and, (3) to determine the function (linear or non-linear) that best defined the rela-
tionship between vocabulary and grammar development.
Regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the relationship between age,
vocabulary (total vocabulary, nouns, and verbs) and grammatical scores on two sub-
sections of the Grammar Part, related to noun and verb morphology, respectively.
The total vocabulary explained a significantly greater proportion of variance in
grammatical outcomes than age did.
However, noun and verb vocabularies did not explain a greater proportion of
variance in their respective morphologies than total vocabulary did. Additionally,
the predictive relationship between vocabulary and grammar was found to be
weaker for children whose scores were below the tenth percentile, although this
could have been due to the small variability in this group and to extreme cases. The
authors stated that in crosslinguistic studies, the global vocabulary size of children
is the best approach for comparing grammar development between languages and
between children. They suggested that more homogeneous samples would be
selected if gathered as a function of linguistic (vocabulary) level, rather than chil-
dren’s age.
From a theoretical perspective, these results were compatible with an interactive
view of language development according to which, complex relationships operate at
many levels between different language components during the acquisition process.
Those components (lexicon and grammar, for example) are relatively independent
according to the ‘adult’ definition of the process, but that is not necessarily so from
the point of view of the language learner (López-Ornat 1999; Marchman and Bates
1994; Tomasello 2000), at least initially (Bates and Goodman 1997). Given the
nature of the data (cross-sectional, parent report and correlational), the directional-
ity of the relationship between vocabulary and grammar could not be established in
this study.
In spite of the effort made to go beyond mere global measures of lexical and
grammatical progress, the Mariscal and Gallego’s (2012) analyses of the relation-
ships between noun and verb vocabularies and their respective morphologies (gen-
der and number for nouns; person, tense, modality and aspect for verbs) revealed
that they were no more robustly associated than with total vocabulary. In the case of
nouns, this result could be attributed to the composition of the ES MCDI vocabulary
list, which contains a very high percentage of nouns (53%), compared to other syn-
tactic categories.
However, the same cannot be said of verbs, as they are less well represented in
the vocabulary list (15.48%). According to the authors, a more plausible explana-
tion for these results has to do with the very nature of the morphological measures
used in these kinds of inventories. If we analyze the items in the Word Endings sec-
tion in detail, the difficulty of accessing data related to morphological productivity
becomes very apparent. The format of the questions that comprise the MCDIs (orig-
inal and adaptations), along with the fact that parents are reporting, are not condu-
cive to gathering critical evidence of the presence or absence of productivity in
children’s utterances. If children produce any tokens at all, even if it is only one of
the morphemes they are asked about in the Word Endings section, parents will inev-
itably report it. However, this does not provide enough information to evaluate
whether children are producing morphemes in a productive way. For example, a
child might produce the third person plural of certain verbs, but their use could still
be linked to specific contexts of use, and not yet be generalized to other verb roots;
his/her parents would nonetheless report it on the inventory. That is the case with
mira [look] or oye [listen] which they are not “real verbs” with third person singu-
lar, but pragmatic attention callers.
In Romance languages, the criteria for establishing morphological productivity

are one of the most challenging issues on research in grammar acquisition. Both in
studies that analyze spontaneous language and in more controlled studies of linguis-
tic production, it is crucial to establish if children’s utterances can be considered
morphologically productive, and to what degree.
A tool such as the MCDI has numerous advantages for evaluating early linguistic
development, as many studies have shown (Bleses et al. 2008; Fenson et al. 2007;
Westerlund et al. 2006), but it is also important to bear in mind its limitations, espe-
cially for rich morphological languages. According to Dale et al. (1989) the CDI
was originally conceived as the language equivalent of a “height and weight chart”
for pediatricians as a useful tool for assessing early language skills, but which might
limit the evaluation of the complete linguistic development. Instead of tapping on
morphological productivity, this instrument could be credited with detecting
grammatical-relevant vocabulary (i.e., those morphological variations on the word
forms).
The following section reviews different production studies on the process
involved in acquiring the most salient morphosyntactic systems in Spanish. The aim
is not so much to draw a developmental profile with ages or order of acquisition, but
rather to provide crucial evidence to understand the underlying processes.
3.6 The Acquisition Process for Spanish Gender Agreement
In spite of its level of abstraction, gender agreement is a linguistic subsystem that

seems to be acquired early in development. There is longitudinal evidence
(Hernández-Pina 1984; Mariscal 1996, 2001; López-Ornat 1997; Lleó 1997) show-
ing that article–noun agreement in Spanish appears to be acquired by the age of
three or even earlier. And, similarly to acquisition by Italian- and French-speaking
children, the process seems to be relatively problem-free (Pizzuto and Caselli 1992).
For children acquiring Spanish as their first language, gender agreement errors are
few when compared to other kinds of morphological errors, such as tense and per-
son agreement in the verbal system (see below).
Data obtained from the Spanish corpus Ornat indicate that the percentage of
gender errors, including late errors which affect clitics, is only 8.8% (Mariscal
1998). Some of these errors are over-regularizations such as *la fantasma
[the_*feminine ghost (masculine)] (2;04). In contrast to these data, learners of
Spanish as a second language (L2) produce a high percentage of gender agreement
errors (Fernández-García 1999). It seems clear that the reasons for these differences
lie in the learning process followed by L1 and L2 learners.
Several longitudinal studies of spontaneous speech (Hernández-Pina 1984;
Aguirre 1995; Mariscal 1996; López-Ornat 1997; Lleó 1997) found a high fre-
quency of determiner omissions in obligatory contexts during the initial phases of
the noun phrase acquisition process. Children seemed to gradually fill in the
p ositions before nouns with phonological forms that increasingly approximated the
adult determiner forms.
However, from very early on, even from the so-called one-word stage (Lleó
1997), children already produce some syllables or vowel-like elements before
nouns. An example is a pé (‘a’ standing for schwa), an utterance produced by a
child, under 2 years old, pointing to a fish (in Spanish, el/un pez [the/a fish_mascu-
line]). This kind of evidence is parallel to that found first in English (Bloom 1970;
Peters and Menn 1993) and then in other languages: the so-called ‘fillers’. For noun
phase structures, fillers found before nouns occupy what would be a determiner slot.
Descriptively, in Romance languages these linguistic units are under-specified pho-
nologically and appear randomly in combinations with both masculine and femi-
nine nouns. Gradually, their phonological form and their distribution converge with
the adult-like model. The interesting question is what happens in between first uses
and more generalized and correct productions. Theoretically, the question is how to
interpret non-adult utterances: what is the representational status of early forms and
why do they disappear or evolve later on. Pre-noun fillers have been interpreted dif-
ferently. Certain Spanish authors, such as Lleó (1997, 2001), have adopted a genera-
tivist stance and stated the availability of the functional category of determiner from
the beginning of the acquisition process, but “it is undifferentiated because the pho-
nological component is still immature” (Lleó 1997: pp. 255). Along the same lines,
Aguirre (1995) explained the high percentage of determiner omissions solely
through performance factors. Mariscal (1996, 1998) and López-Ornat (1997) found
that feminine nouns tended to be combined more frequently with the article la
(‘the_feminine.’) or the vowel-form a, whereas masculine nouns were preceded
(less frequently) by variable vocal forms and reached Brown’s 90% criterion later
than feminine nouns (Brown 1973). In both studies the authors attributed this imbal-
ance to the frequency, phonological consistency and redundancy of the feminine
form of the articles [‘una_indefinite, la_definite’] in Spanish, given that the vowel
‘-a’ in a final position is more salient than the consonants ‘-n’ and ‘-l’ of the mascu-
line form of articles [‘un_definite, el_definite’]. These researchers provided a con-
structivist explanation of these data without relying on an innate knowledge of
grammar or preformed linguistic categorial schemes.
The studies in Spanish mentioned above highlight another empirical phenome-
non that characterizes the early phases of language acquisition: the co-occurrence of
non-grammatical determiner omissions and the production of forms with different
proximity to the noun phrase structure (filler + Nincluded). For example, María, the
child in these studies, produced the same noun, pies [‘feet_masc pl’], in three dif-
ferent forms (apes, pes, epes) in the same session, at 19 months of age. In Mariscal
(1998), quantitative analysis showed that these variable productions constituted the
most frequent nominal type during the early phases. It was suggested that this vari-
ability, even though found in only one subject, could not be accounted for by rules
at any linguistic level.
Variability is, of course, a phenomenon found by different researchers, such as
Peters and Menn (1993) and López-Ornat (2003), but in our opinion it has not been
sufficiently operationalized and quantified. This was precisely one of the aims of
Mariscal (2009), to design a new measure for variability that could be added to the
traditional analyses of error and non-error patterns. For this study, the intra-
individual variability in children’s noun phrase utterances was analyzed. Participants
in this study were four middle-class Spanish children: two boys and two girls rang-
ing in ages from 22 to 25 months of age. The children were visited at their homes
twice a week for one month by the lead researcher, who had become well acquainted
with each child through previous visits to their school. Seven to nine recordings
were made during this one-month period, defined as a cycle. The first recording
consisted of spontaneous language produced during child–mother interactions in
free play situations. From the second to the last session the lead researcher inter-
acted with each child, using the same set of toys. Some toys were duplicated and
had different colors/sizes in order to elicit the production of adjectives and the quan-
tifier otro/a [‘another_masc/feminine], which is one of the earliest non-article
determiners produced by Spanish children. An adjective elicitation task, The Shop,
was developed, selecting objects with masculine and feminine nouns that repre-
sented prototypical and non-prototypical Spanish gender endings. Depending on
individual acquisition rates, one or two more cycles of data taking were used for the
children at three-month intervals. Orthographical transcriptions of the recording
sessions were made, given that Spanish spelling system bears an almost one-to-one
correspondence between phonetic and graphemic units. However, in order to tran-
scribe hard-to-identify segments, especially pre-noun elements that were difficult to
transcribe, two categories were defined: Precise Vowel, when it was any Spanish
normative vowel, and, ‘non-precise vowel’, when it was fuzzy or not adjusted to the
norms. A coding system following the CHILDES rules (MacWhinney 2000) was
developed, including a dependent tier (% cod) after every (pre) noun phrase produc-
tion. Table 3 displays the coding system and examples for each code.
Different kinds of analyses were carried out on the distribution and form of noun
phrase utterances, including variability profiles of nominal productions, and on gen-
der morphemes in adjectives, both in spontaneous and elicited uses. The general
pattern of noun phrase acquisition found was consistent with the one found by
Table 3 Coding system of noun phrase productions, determiners and examples in contexts of
obligatory use
*0N ‘pe’ instead of ‘el/un pez’ [the/a _masc fish]
0N ‘quiero agua’ [(I) need water] asking for water
vN ‘epe, ope, (a/e)pe’ for ‘el pez’ [the_masc fish]
ART + N ‘el pe’/ ‘the fish’ or ‘un pe’ [a_masc fish]
ODET ‘ete pe’/‘this fish’, ‘oto pe [another_masc fish]
? ‘te_tete’ for ‘el chupete [the_masc dummy]
‘este chupete [this_masc dummy]
0N ungrammatical omission of determiner, 0N the utterance includes a grammatical omission of
the determiner; vN the utterance includes a pronoun vowel, which can take different forms; ART +
N the utterance includes the adult form of a definite or indefinite article; ODET the utterance
includes the adult form of any other non-article determiner;? the utterance is an amalgam (non-
classifiable) or includes an ambiguous form
Mariscal (1996), and with other studies in Spanish (Aguirre 1995; López-Ornat
1997, 2003; Lleó 1997). A gradual decrease in ungrammatical emissions and the
early presence of vN productions was attested. Interestingly, subtle individual dif-
ferences or preferences for certain preN vowel forms, and imbalances dependent on
the gender of the noun, were found. Mariscal (1998) argued that they did not seem
compatible with a categorial definition of these linguistic units. Moreover, she pro-
posed that these differences could be explained by probabilistic or partial-kind
knowledge about formal and distributional properties of the particular process,
which are dependent on the acquisition trajectories of every child. Another impor-
tant piece of evidence, in favor of the partial-knowledge proposal, involves the vari-
ety of determiners used by children throughout the study. Although the percentage
of determiners used grew from cycle to cycle for every subject, only articles were
used from the beginning. Some other subtypes of determiners were used in the last
cycles but very infrequently. The early use of articles in child language could be
explained by means of frequency factors. However, even accepting this restriction,
if children had a syntactic category, the use of other subtypes of determiners could
be expected from earlier on. That is, formal knowledge about an individual subtype
of determiners should generalize to at least some other members of the category.
Why young children do not use possessive or demonstrative determiners while at
the same time these lexical forms, used as pronouns, are found in their language (for
example pointing to something, ‘ete, este/ this_masc’, or asking for more [oto /
another_masc])? It is precisely the generalization expected by the syntactic-like
type of knowledge of this category that is not found in the data (Mariscal 2009).
Regarding vowel + Noun units, these took only some of the properties of the
future D category. Mariscal (2009) considers the term ‘proto-article’ (Lleó 1997,
2001) appropriate for descriptive purposes, as long as it does not imply any kind of
system-wide syntactic category. In agreement with other authors (Peters and Menn
1993; Gerken 1996; López-Ornat 2003), Mariscal (2009) states that these vN utter-
ances could be explained by alluding to phonological bootstrapping processes
(Peters and Menn 1993; Gerken 1996; López-Ornat 1997, 2003) in the following
sense: children would first detect or perceive that certain sound, specially vowels,
tend to occur consistently before nouns she already knows. However given the pho-
nological weakness of these ‘future’ articles they cannot be analyzed nor stored as
proper words, nor form part of any syntactic category yet. But the consistent posi-
tion (i.e. segmental information) and their frequency could bootstrap the definition
and later constitution of a syntactic (D) category. Some noun exemplars are pro-
duced in ‘more grammatical’ structures (as vN, ART + N or ODET + N; see Table 3
for examples of these categories) than in others (*0 N; see Table 3 for examples).
Taking this variability as an index of partial grammatical (morphosyntactic) knowl-
edge, a decrease in variability was the expected phenomenon, and that is what is
reflected by the data as the grammar acquisition process advances. It was concluded
that inter-type variability could possibly be accounted for by a combination of lexi-
cal specificity effects, a fuzzy or partial knowledge (distributional and/or prosodic)
on what will constitute the Determiner category, and (only in some cases) by articu-
lation effects due to the length of utterance. In order to dissent angle this set of
variables, experimental designs would be necessary, although difficult to carry out

with young children.
For gender markers on adjectives, the results indicated a three-phase pattern of
acquisition: from non-analyzed productions of a few items to limited generalization,
coexisting with gender errors. By the end of the study errors were absent, except for
some over generalizations showing that children had learned the rule.
3.7 The Nominal Plural and its Development
Some studies have reported that the morphological plural appears later than gender
in nominal categories (Hernández-Pina 1984; Pérez-Pereira 1991). A more recent
study by Marrero and Aguirre (2003) proposed a three-stage phase, similar to the
general three-phase model proposed by López-Ornat, (López-Ornat 1995; López-
Ornat 1999) for bound morphology in Spanish. According to this model, the first
stage was characterized by the absence of functional plural, although some plural
forms do appear. In stage two, the emergence of the first plural opposition is
observed; at the beginning, the plural morpheme is indicated with only one marker
in all the utterances (eitherin the article los/las, or in the noun -s). It is the single
marker stage. In contrast, in stage three, the extension stage, markers are general-
ized, and the first nominal agreement relationships are established between deter-
miners and nouns or nouns and adjectives). Gradually, the generalization of marking
continues and some overgeneralization occurs, together with the first nominal-
verbal agreement. These stages may overalp and thus, are not discrete.
Marrero and Aguirre (2003) conducted a quantitative analysis of the greater part
of the Spanish CHILDES data base. The corpus is heterogeneous, a methodological
drawback; however, the authors concluded that there was evidence to support the
three-stage model explained above and showed that plural marking appears and is
generalized first in nominal classes, and later in adjectives and verbs.
3.8 Acquisition of Verb Morphology
The acquisition of verb morphology in Spanish, especially in the indicative mode,

is relatively well known. Since the 1980s there have been many researchers inter-
ested in the study of this part of the linguistic system. What follows is a selection of
some works and their results, but interested readers can find more information and
references in Alva-Canto (2014), Mariscal and Gallo (2015b), Marrero and Aguirre
(2003) and Serra et al. (2000).
Hernández-Pina’s (1984) longitudinal study of her son provided evidence on the
acquisition of verbal morphology that has been confirmed by subsequent research
(Bel 1996; Ezeizabarrena 1997; Fernández 1994; Gallo 1994). The third personal
singular in the present tense (indicative mode) is the first and most frequent verb
form produced by Spanish children. There is an important temporal lapse between
the production of the first verbal forms and their extended use to other roots. Also,
some person morphemes are produced earlier and more productively than others;
this is the case of singular and plural morphemes. Gathercole et al. (1999, 2002)
provided data from spontaneous speech regarding the acquisition of verbal number
morphology. Casla et al. (2005), using a quasi-experimental design, with 12 chil-
dren from 2;10 to 4;10 confirmed Gathercole et al.’s (1999) evidence. A recent study
by Aguado-Orea and Pine (2015) presents elegant and much more precise evidence
on early productivity regarding number opposition (singular vs. plural). These
authors tested the predictions of some current constructivist (e.g., Tomasello 2000;
Wilson 2003) and generativist accounts of the development of verb inflection
(Radford and Ploennig-Pacheco 1995; Wexler (1998), for example). They con-
ducted a detailed longitudinal study with two Spanish-speaking children between
the ages of 2;0 and 2;06. The constructivist claim that children’s early knowledge of
verb inflection is only partially productive, tested by comparing the average number
of different inflections per verb in matched samples of child and adult speech. The
generativist claim that children’s early use of verb inflection is essentially error-free,
tested by investigating the rate at which the children made subject-verb agreement
errors in different parts of the present tense paradigm. Although even adults’ use of
verb inflection in Spanish tends to look somewhat lexically restricted, the two chil-
dren’s use of verb inflection was significantly less flexible than that of their caregiv-
ers. In addition, although the rate at which the two children produced subject-verb
agreement errors in their speech was very low, this overall error rate hid a consistent
error pattern (i.e. error rates were substantially higher in low-frequency than in
high-frequency contexts and substantially higher for low-frequency than for high-
frequency verbs). Aguado-Orea and Pine (2015) concluded that the results obtained
undermined the claim that children’s use of verb inflection is fully productive from
the earliest observable stages, and are consistent with the constructivist claim that
knowledge of verb inflection develops only gradually.
3.9 Other Linguistic Categories
It is interesting to note that the first prepositions to appear are a and e’(‘to/at’ and
‘on/in’). The former is used in locative and intransitive constructions, as adults do;
but early in development an open vowel (a) appears in contexts where it is difficult
to know if it stands for the prepositions to or in, or even for the articles. For example,
María said a casa [to home] meaning en la casa [in the house], so it was difficult to
find what the vowel stands for, as it could stand for the preposition, the article or a
blending combination of both.
Personal pronouns and their syntactic consequences have been examined (Gallo
1992, 1994). Cross-sectional (Gallo 1992) and longitudinal data (Gallo 1994) iden-
tified the difficulties associated with the use of personal pronouns in simple Spanish
sentences. As a pro-drop language, the use of personal pronouns in sentences is not
compulsory; pronouns are used to give emphasis or for other pragmatic reasons. In
the longitudinal study, María produced the first personal pronoun in *Yo no a camita
[I do not (missing verb) to bed] (1;10); two months later she said *Yo talta (tarta) [I
(missing verb) cake] (2;0). María correctly inserted the pronoun, but omitted the
verb in both utterances; on other occasions, she included the verb, but with errors
affecting person morphemes. In yo a sentá (=sentar [sit]) and yo abí (=abrir [open])
la pelta (=puerta [door]) (both produced at 2;0) she uses impersonal verbal forms,
while in *yo sabe [I knows] and *no tene agua yo [doesn’t have water I], she made
an erroneous use of third person verbal morpheme instead of first. In the cross-
sectional study, Gallo (1992) developed an experimental task for use with children
2;6, 3;0 and 3;6, who were asked to transmit a message – spoken by the researcher –
to another adult – a research assistant – while doing some interesting activities (e.g.,
painting, dressing up and playing with a ball). In doing so, the children would
ideally change person agreement of the sentences to be transmited and include,
although optionally, personal pronouns. So, for example, if the main research said:
(7) Dile que soy un payasito

soy:_1st person_sg
[Tell her I am a little clown]
Dile que yo tengo una pelota
yo:_personal pronoun _1st person / tengo: _1st person
[Tell her I have a ball]
She would have to say:
(8) Es un payasito
(ella):_3rd person _personal pronoun 3rdsg_optional
[She is a little clown]
Tiene una pelota
(ella): personal pronoun 3rdsg_optional / tiene:_3rd person
[She has a ball]
Table 4 Model proposed to explain the acquisition of person agreement in Spanish verbs
Phase 1 (2;06) Phase 2 (3;00) Phase 3 (3;06)
No pronoun use Pronoun use and morphological Correct productions and
errors (no person change) optional pronoun inclusion
Examples
A: ‘Dile que YO voy_1st A: ‘Dile que YO tengo_1st person A: ‘Dile que TÚ eres_2nd
person a pintar un osito’ una pelota’ person un payaso’
[Tell (her) that I will [Tell (her) that I have a ball] [Tell (her) that YOU are a
draw a bear] clown]
C: ‘Va_3rd person a C: ‘Yo_1st person tengo una C: ‘Yo soy_1st person un
pintar’ pelota’ payaso, soy un payaso’
[(She)will draw] [I have a ball] (instead of) [I am a clown, (I) am a clown]
SHE_3rd person has a ball’)
Gallo (1992, 1994)
A adult, C child
Gallo found that the structure VsO appeared earlier in the data than SVO, and
was more frequent in children’s productions. She proposed a three-phase model of
the acquisition of person agreement in the Spanish verbal system (see Table 4).
Longitudinal data (Gallo 1994) also seemed compatible with this model. More
recently, Mariscal and Gallo (2015b) suggested that the difficulties shown in the
acquisition could be taken as an indication of the underlying learning processes;
specifically, the use of procedural skills and their application to the problem of ver-
bal agreement in Spanish, a process that takes more time than gender agreement
acquisition, at least one more year.
Spanish morphology also includes derivation and many other interesting struc-
tures (tense morphology and agreement, verbal aspect, the use of subjunctive, etc.).
Due to space constraints we cannot review studies on them, although there are not
too many. However, we cannot but help to include this nice example of an interac-
tion between María (3;08) and her father, showing how proficient she became as a
‘little linguist’. This example is important because it demonstrates how salient deri-
vational morphology is since early years of language development.
(9) [P = padre (father); N = niña (girl)]

P: ¿Qué quiere decir granja? P: What is a farm?
N: Granja para. . par. . para el granjero. N: Farm for... fo…for
the farmer.
P: ¡Ah! Granja para el granjero, ¿no? P: Oh! Farm for the farmer,
right?
N: Sí. N: Yes.
P: ¿Cómo se llama el que tiene caballos? P: How do we call the man
with horses?
N: Caballero. N: Horse man.
P: ¿Y el que tiene pescados? P: And the man with fish?
N: Pescadero. N: Fisher man
P: ¿Y el que tiene libros? P: And the man with books?
N: Libradero. N: Book man.
P: ¿Y el que tiene monos? P: And the man with
monkeys?
N: Monero. N: Monkey man.
P: ¿Y el que tiene frutas? P: And the man with fruit?
N: Frutero. N: Fruit man.
P: ¿Y el que tiene carne? P: And the man with meat?
N: Carnero [se ríen]. N: Meat man [they laugh].
P: ¿Y el que tiene pesetas? P: And the one with pesetas?
N: Pesetero. N: Peseta man.
P: Ahí, ahí [se ríen]. P: There, there [they laugh].
Although neither of the words produced by the child are used in Spanish with an
agentive meaning, she has deduced that the agentive morpheme –ero [−er] is pro-
ductive and very useful for creating novel nouns. The use of overregularizations in
different languages has been shown to be correlated with lexical growth since chil-
dren are young (Auza 2008; Ravid et al. 2003). This example shows us how produc-
tive derivational morphology is and how overregularizations play an important role
for the expansion of vocabulary, not only at this early stage of lexical growth, but in
the school years, a period in which derivational morphology is still productive
in helping children deduce lexical information.
3.10 Syntactic Development
A big cognitive step is achieved when children start combining words. Although the
combination of two words may look simple, the emergence of syntax is born, usu-
ally between 18 and 24 months, given that the first relations between concepts take
place. Consider the next example:
(10) Papá casa

(produced by Anne, at 1;11)
[Father (arrived) home]
While it might look as a simple fusion of two nouns, what is really relevant is the
function that is established when two words are combined. Young children are able
to put functions together because a word like casa [home], is more than a label for
an object; it is used as a ‘locative’ word. These types of combinations will take place
based on the frequency of word combinations that children listen in everyday con-
versations, from where they obtain the most basic patterns of early syntactic struc-
tures (Rojas-Nieto 2009).
The preschool years constitute a period in which the basis for complex syntax is
settled down. In this section we will mainly focus on this period, as it is the most
studied.
3.10.1 Word Order
In Spanish, as we mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, the most common word
order is SVO. Children’s first sentences follow this structure but other orders also
appear. For example:
(11) María ta durmiendo e nene, ¿Qué vas a hacer tú?, Ahora te los lavo
(produced by María, at 2;00).
[Maria’s lulling ´e baby, What are you going to do? Now, I wash them you]
In relation to other simple sentences, early questions are marked by intonation

alone for yes/no forms and by reduced versions of qu-words (wh-words). The com-
monest qu-questions are qué (what) and quién (who), but their form is not always
equivalent to the adult’s. Early negative both in Spanish and Catalan (Bel 1996)
appear both post-verbally and pre-preverbally, although with the emergence of mor-
phology, children learn to place them before the verb. Bel (1996) argued that her
findings support the presence of functional categories in the grammar of Catalan
and Spanish children from the earliest syntactic manifestations. However, the data
might be easily interpreted in constructivist terms, considering frequency and posi-
tional variables which help children to build up the knowledge needed to master
word order related to negative sentences in Spanish.
3.10.2 Complex Syntax
Once that simple sentences containing only a verb are produced correctly by chil-
dren about the age of 2;6, first complex clauses appear (see Serra et al. 2000; Chap.
7). Coordinate clauses at an early stage are either juxtaposed with no conjunction or
joined by y [and], both frequent kinds of sentences produced in narrative contexts.
Spanish-speaking children use simple juxtaposition to express causes, conditions,
purposes and sequences, omitting any conjunction that might help specify the
intended grammatical relationship more precisely. The first complement clauses
produced, as in English, tend to be those that follow verbs like querer [want], with
a third or first person introduced by conjunctions like que‘that’. The first subordi-
nate conjunctions – porque, si, cuando [because, if, when] – appear later on, between
the ages of 3 and 5, but children make a variety of errors, such as when using tem-
poral conjunctions. For example:
(12) Addressing her toy, María (age 2;08) said:

‘A la calle. Cuando te ~ cuando te lo *tomas te doy un poco de café.
Porque si no te lo tomas no vas a la calle. Toma a ti poco te he echado
(possible, but uncommon word order) porque tú estás mailto.
Tú estás mailto y a ti te he echado poco (common word order). Tómatelo’.
[To the street.When you ~ when you drink it I (will) give you some coffee.
Because if you don’t drink it you won’t go to the street. Here, a little
I have poured for you (possible, but uncommon word order) because
you are a little sick. You are sick and I have poured some (milk)
(common word order). Drink it].
Within the preschool years, children develop language abilities, includying syn-
tax, for telling everyday life experiences, storytelling or maintaining a conversation.
These language experiences promote children to make changes in the production of
lexical and syntactic patterns (Botting 2002; Gillam and Johnston 1992). Syntactic
complexity, where coordination and subordination play an important role, has been
a useful index for evaluating language development (Justice et al. 2006). Coordinate
constructions appear early on preschool years (Serra et al. 2000) and are usually
more frequent and less complex than subordinate constructions. Many coordinate
conjunctions that are frequent do have different functions and sometimes, not con-
ventional. Consider the next example on story-telling:
(13) El ratón le pidió una escoba y no quería barrer (age 3;10)

[The mouse asked him for a broom and_Copulative conjunction didn’t
want to sweep]
(14) El ratón le pidió una escoba pero no quería barrer

[The mouse asked him for a broom but_
Adversative conjunction didn’t want to sweep]
As we can observe y [ and ] in (13) not necessarily represents a copulative con-

junction. It has been used in a non-conventional way to address an adversative func-
tion, as compared to a more conventional sentence found in (14). These and other
coordinate conjunctions, such as disyunctives, subordinate conjunctions like rela-
tives (que_Subject and Object) and adverbials (para_final, entonces_consecutive,
porque_causative, como_causative, si_conditional, donde_ locative, tanto_modal)
have been observed in spontaneous conversations and also when children are
encouraged to tell stories (Alarcón and Auza 2015).
(15) El ratón quería que (el niño) le leyera un cuento (age 4;03)
[The mouse wanted that _Relative conjunction (the boy) read him
a story-book]
The use of these and other conjunctions such as aunque [although] may result in
syntactic errors until relatively late in development (8 years!); for example, cases
where the verb is used in the indicative instead of the subjunctive mode (Serra et al.
2000), as in ‘aunque tú no quieres venir, yo me voy’ instead of ‘aunque tú no quieras
venir, yo me voy’ [although you do_subjunctive not want to come I go].
3.10.3 Latest Morphosyntactic Acquisition
During preschool and even the school-age, certain quantifiers and some functions of
determiners are still under acquisition. For example, the variety of semantic func-
tions that definite articles play in nominal phrases (e.g. part-of-a-whole: la cabeza
[the head]; social roles: la doctora [the doctor] uniqueness: la luna [the moon])
gives place to errors in how they are used. At these ages, children can still omit or
substitute articles showing us that the selection of these particles is dynamic,
content-dependent of the noun they accompany and constrained by the communica-
tive context (Auza 2011). Later acquisitions include some of the compound tenses
for talking about the recent me he comprado un lápiz [I have bought a pencil] ver-
sus the remote past me compré un lápiz [I bought a pencil]; the conditional and
subjunctive moods, complements and subordinate clauses requiring the subjunctive,
certain quantifiers and some functions of articles, and some types of relative clauses.
The development of subject and object relative clauses has been considered an
index of syntactic complexity. While relative clauses appear early on in Spanish
language acquisition, they still experience changes beyond 9 years of age. Different
structural types of relative clauses continue to be fully mastered until high-school
(Aparici et al. 2016). Full mastery of the different word orders required with direct
and indirect object clitic pronouns is attested fairly late (Shin & Requena, this vol-
ume; Torrens and Escobar 2006). Other linguistic sub-systems that appear to be
acquired later on are counterfactual. Children as old as 11 years of age make errors
using, for example, conditional verbs instead of the periphrastic imperfect subjunc-
tive in the ‘if’ clause. That is the case of si habría hecho… [If I had done…] instead
of [If I would’ve done…]. Future research about other grammatical forms will prob-
ably reveal other productions that are still in progress in later Spanish language
development and other Romance languages.
The overall Spanish language acquisition timeline depicted here show similari-
ties and differences as compared to English and other Romance languages.
Similarities might be attributed to the fact that cognitive development and its mech-
anisms constitute a major determinant of some complex aspects of language acqui-
sition. Other similarities might be the consequence of typological familiarity
between languages. For instance, the sequence of acquisition about temporal terms
using tense and aspect in verbs shows strong parallels across French, English and
German. The differences can often be attributed to the typological characteristics of
the language and its specific complexity. For example, Spanish, with number and
gender inflections, is simpler than Polish and other languages which also inflect
case, but it is more complex than English (see Slobin 1985). Some other differences
might be attributed to cultural and socioeconomic status. These differences exert an
influence on the process of acquisition.
In sum, a number of aspects of Spanish Language development has been revised.
Other aspects such as complex syntax remain unexamined, particularly in the area
of later language development. Few experimental studies have been done in the
field. However, new high-standard research is needed in order to gain more knowl-
edge about language acquisition in Spanish-speaking children. This knowledge will
help researchers to better understand the complexity of Spanish, but also to estab-
lish the bases for comparing the process of language acquisition in children with
language difficulties.
References
Aguado-Orea, J. & Pine, J. (2015, March). Comparing different models of development of verb
inflection in early child Spanish. PLOS one, 1–12. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0119613.
Aguirre, C. (1995). La Adquisición de las categorías gramaticales en español. Doctoral disserta-
tion: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
Alarcón, L. J., & Auza, A. (2015). Uso y función de nexos en la subordinación y coordinación.
Evidencia de dos tareas narrativas de niños mexicanos de primero de primaria. In E. P.
Velázquez & I. Rodríguez (Eds.), Estudios de Lingüística Funcional (pp. 223–251). Querétaro:

Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, Colección Academia, Serie Nodos.
Alva-Canto, E. A. (Ed.). (2014). Adquisición del lenguaje: Entre las regularidades y las particu-
laridades. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Alva-Canto, E. A., Arias-Trejo, N., & Falcón, A. (2014). El género gramatical: las soluciones para
su adquisición. In E. A. Alva Canto (Ed.), Adquisición del lenguaje: entre las regularidades y
particularidades (pp. 87–102). Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Arias-Trejo, N., & Alva-Canto, E. A. (2012). Early Spanish grammatical gender boot strapping:
Learning nouns through adjectives. Developmental Psychobiology. doi: 10.1037/a0029621.
Arias-Trejo, N., Falcón, A., & Alva-Canto, E. A. (2013). The gender puzzle: Toddlers’ use of
articles to access noun information. Psicológica, 34, 1–23.
Aparici, M., Rosado, E., & Perera, J. (2016). Later development of relative clauses across 46 dis-
course genres and modalities of production. In J. Perera, M. Aparici, E. Rosado, & N. Salas
(Eds.), Written and spoken language development across the lifespan (pp. 201–225).
Amsterdam: Springer.
Arias-Trejo, N., Cantrell, L., Guerrero Ortiz-Hernán, K., Pérez Paz, V., Smith, L., & Alva-Canto,
E. A. (2014a). Comprensión temprana del plural en español. In E. A. Alva-Canto (Ed.),
Adquisición del lenguaje: entre las regularidades y particularidades (pp. 13–28). México:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Arias-Trejo, N., Barrón Martínez, J. B., & Alva-Canto, E. A. (2014b). Aprendizaje temprano de
sustantivos a través de la extracción del género gramatical de adjetivos familiares. In E. A.
Alva-Canto (Ed.), Adquisición del lenguaje: entre las regularidades y particularidades
(pp. 103–118). Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Auza, A. (2005). Adquisición morfológica nominal en el niño de 3:7 a 4:0 años: ¿Cuál estrategia
se emplea en el aprendizaje de una clase léxica? Lingüística Mexicana, II(1), 105–114.
Auza, A. (2006). La transparencia morfológica y conceptual en la adquisición de términos cen-
trales y periféricos. Lenguaje, 34(1), 71–96.
Auza, A. (2008). Las sobregeneralizaciones morfológicas derivativas y su relación con el creci-
miento del vocabulario infantil. Lenguas en Contexto, 5, 32–41.
Auza, A. & Hernández, A. (2005). El procesamiento dinámico en la adquisición de la morfología
derivativa. In M. A. Mayor, B. Zubiauz, & E. Díez (Eds.), Estudios sobre la adquisición del
Lenguaje (pp. 189–203). Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca (Colección Aquilafuente, 90).
Auza, A. (2011). La función del rol social en frases nominales producidas por niños de edad
preescolar. In C. Rojas & D. Jackson-Maldonado (Eds.), Interacción y uso lingüístico en el
desarrollo de la lengua materna (pp. 259–284). México: UNAM.
Bassano, D. (2000). Early development of nouns and verbs in French: Exploring the interface
between lexicon and grammar. Journal of Child Language, 27, 521–559.
Bates, E., & Goodman, J. C. (1997). On the inseparability of grammar and the lexic on: Evidence
from acquisition, aphasia, and real-time processing. Language & Cognitive Processes, 12,
507–584.
Bates, E., Marchmann, V., Thal, D., Fenson, L., Dale, P., Reznick, S., & Hartung, J. (1994).
Developmental and stylistic variation in the composition of early vocabulary. Journal of Child
Language, 21, 85–124.
Bel, A. (1996). Early negation in Catalan and Spanish. CatWPL, 5(1), 5–28.
Bleses, D., Vach, W., Slott, M., Wehberg, S., Thomsen, P., Madsen, T. O., & Basbøll, H. (2008).
Early vocabulary development in Danish and other languages: A CDI-based comparison.
Journal of Child Language, 35, 619–650.
Bloom, L. (1970). Language development: Form and function in emerging grammars. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Bosch, L. (2004). Evaluación fonológica del habla infantil. Barcelona: Masson.
Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2001). Evidence of early discrimination abilities in infants
from bilingual environments. Infancy, 2, 29–49.
Bosch, L., Figueras, M., Teixidó, M., & Ramón-Casas, M. (2013). Rapid gains in segmenting flu-
ent speech when words match the rhythmic unit: Evidence from infants acquiring syllable-
timed languages. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 1–11. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00106.
Botting, N. (2002). Narrative as a tool for the assessment of linguistic and pragmatic impairments.
Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 18(1), 1–21.
Brown, R. (1973). Development of the first language in the human species. American Psychologist,
28(2), 97.
Caselli, C., Casadio, P., & Bates, E. (1999). A comparison of the transition from first words to
grammar in English and Italian. Journal of Child Language, 26, 69–111.
Casla, M., Aguado-Orea, J. & Pine, J. (2005, July). Eliciting frequent and infrequent verb forms in
Spanish: An experimental study of the acquisition of inflectional morphology in Spanish. X
International Congress for the Study of Child Language, Berlín.
Casla, M., Rujas, I., Murillo, E. & Mariscal, S. (2015, July). Simultaneous influence of linguistic
variables, vocabulary levels and experience on early word learning: Fast-mapping in Spanish
typically developing and late-talking children. Child Language Symposium, University of
Warwick.
Clark, E. (1985). The acquisition of Romance, with special reference to French. In D. Slobin (Ed.),
The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Vol. I. The data. Hillsdale: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
Clark, E. (1993). The lexicon in acquisition. New York: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge
studies in linguistics, 65).
Clark, E. (1997). Conceptual perspective and vocabulary choice in acquisition. Cognition, 64,
1–37.
Dale, P., Bates, E., Reznick, J., & Morisset, C. (1989). The validity of a parent report instrument of
child language at 20 months. Journal of Child Language, 16, 239–249.
Devescovi, A., Caselli, C., Marchione, D., Pasqualetti, P., Reilly, J., & Bates, E. (2005). A cross
linguistic study of the relationship between grammar and lexicon development. Journal of
Child Language, 32, 759–786.
Dubasik, V. L., & Wilcox, M. J. (2013). Spanish and early English development in young dual
language learners: A preliminary study. Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 16(3),
163–175.
Ezeizabarrena, M. J. (1997). Morfemas de concordancia con el sujeto y con los objetos en el cas-
tellano infantil. In A. T. Pérez-Leroux & W. Glass (Eds.), Contemporary perspectives in the
acquisition of Spanish. Sommerville: Cascadilla Press.
Falcón, A., & Alva-Canto, E. A. (2007). Un estudio sobre habilidades perceptuales tempranas para
la categorización de palabras. En E. A. Alva-Canto (Ed.). Del universo de los sonidos a la
palabra: investigaciones sobre el desarrollo del lenguaje en infantes. Mexico: Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México.
Fenson, L., Marchman, V. A., Thal, D., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., & Bates, E. (2007). The
MacArthur communicative development inventories: User’s guide and technical manual (2nd
ed.). Baltimore: Paul H. Brooks.
Fernández, A. (1994). El aprendizaje de los morfemas verbales: Datos de un estudio longitudinal.
In S. López-Ornat, P. Gallo, A. Fernández, & S. Mariscal (Eds.), Adquisición de la lengua
española. Madrid: Siglo XXI.
Fernández-García, M. (1999). Patterns of gender agreement in the speech of second language
learners. In J. Gutiérrez-Rexach & F. Martínez-Gill (Eds.), Advances in hispanic linguistics
(pp. 25–39). Somerville: Cascadilla Press.
Gallego, C., & Mariscal, S. (2007). Relaciones entre los desarrollos léxico y gramatical en español.
In A. Barreña & E. Serrat (Eds.), Relaciones entre los desarrollos léxico y gramatical en la fase
inicial de adquisición del lenguaje: una comparación translingüística. Simposium realizado
en el V Congreso de AEAL. Oviedo, Septiembre de 2007.
Gallo, P. (1992). Adquisición de las estructuras morfológicas de sujeto. (Doctoral Dissertation)
Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Gallo, P. (1994). ¿Se adquiere una lengua sin esfuerzo? Las dificultades que plantea una lengua
pro-drop. In S. López-Ornat et al. (Eds.), Adquisición de la lengua española. Madrid: Siglo
XXI.
Gathercole, V., Sebastián, E., & Soto, P. (1999). The early acquisition of Spanish verbal morphol-
ogy: Across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge? The International Journal of Bilinguialism, 3,
133–182.
Gathercole, V., Sebastián, E., & Soto, P. (2002). The emergence of linguistic person in Spanish-
speaking children. Language Learning, 52, 679–722.
Gerken, L. A. (1996). Phonological and distributional information in syntax acquisition. In J. L.
Morgan & K. Demuth (Eds.), Signal to syntax: Bootstrapping from speech to grammar in early
acquisition (pp. 42–61). Mahwak: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Gillam, R., & Johnston, J. (1992). Spoken and written language relationships in language-learning
impaired and normally achieving school-age children. Journal of Speech and Hearing
Research, 35, 1303–1315.
Golinkoff, R.M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Bailey, L., & Wenger, N. (1992). Young children and adults use
lexical principles to learn new nouns. Developmental Psychology, 28, 99–108.
Golinkoff, R. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2006). Action meets word: How children learn verbs. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Harris, J. (1991). The exponence of gender in Spanish. Linguistic Inquiry, 22(1), 27–62.
Hernández-Pina, F. (1984). Teorías psicosociolingüísticas y su aplicación a la adquisición del
español como lengua materna. Madrid: Siglo XXI.
Hoff, E. (2009). Language Development. Belmont: Wadsworth.
Jackson-Maldonado, D., Thal, D., Marchman, V. A., Bates, E., & Gutierrez-Clellen, V. (1993).
Early lexical development in Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers. Journal of Child Language,
20(3), 523–549.
Jackson-Maldonado, D., Thal, D., Marchman, V., Newton, T., Fenson, L., & Conboy, B. (2003).
MacArthur Inventarios del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas User’s Guide and
Technical Manual. Baltimore: Brookes.
Jasso, T., Falcón, A., & Alva-Canto, E. A. (2014). Morfología y sintaxis como claves para el apre-
ndizaje de nuevas palabras. In E. A. Alva-Canto (Ed.), Adquisición del lenguaje: entre las regu-
laridades y particularidades (pp. 65–86). Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Jusczyk, P. W. (2003). The role of speech perception capacities in early language acquisition. In
M. T. Banich & M. Mack (Eds.), Mind, brain and language. Multidisciplinary perspectives
(pp. 61–83). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Jusczyk, P. W., & Aslin, R. N. (1995). Infants’ detection of the sound patterns of words in fluent
speech. Cognitive Psychology, 29(1), 1–23.
Justice, L. M., Bowles, R. P., Kaderavek, J. N., Ukrainetz, T. A., Eisenberg, S. L., & Gillam, R. B.
(2006). The index of narrative microstructure: A clinical tool for analyzing school-age chil-
dren’s narrative performances. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 15,
177–191.
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1979). A functional approach to child language. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
University Press.
Kouider, S., Halberda, J., Wood, J. N., & Carey, S. (2006). Acquisition of English number marking:
The singular-plural distinction. Language Learning and Development, 2, 1–25.
Kuhl, P. K. (2004). Early language acquisition: Cracking the speech code. Nature Reviews
Neuroscience, 5(11), 831–843.
Lamela, E. (2004). Relaciones entre el desarrollo léxico temprano y las habilidades de categori-
zación. Doctoral dissertation, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
Lleó, C. (1997). Filler syllables, protoarticles and early prosodicconstraints in Spanish and
German. In A. Soarce, C. Heycock, & R. Schillcock (Eds.), Proceedings of GALA 97 Conference
on Language Acquisition (pp. 251–256). Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh.
Lleó, C. (2001). Early fillers: Undoubtedly more than phonological stuffing. Journal of Child
Language, 28, 262–265.
Lleó, C. (2006). Early acquisition of nominal plural in Spanish. Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 5,
191–219.
López-Ornat, S. (1992). Sobre la gramaticalización. Prototipos para la adquisición de la concor-
dancia verbo-sujeto: Datos de lengua española en niños de 1;06 a 3;06. Cognition, 4(1), 49–74.
López-Ornat, S. (1995). La adquisición gramatical: Un esquema. In S. López-Ornat, A. Fernández,

P. Gallo, & S. Mariscal (Eds.), Adquisición de la lengua española (pp. 121–126). Madrid: Siglo
XXI.
López-Ornat, S. (1997). What lies in-between a pre-grammatical and a grammatical representa-
tion? In W. R. Glass & A. T. Pérez-Leroux (Eds.), Contemporary perspectives on the acquisi-
tion of Spanish (pp. 3–20). Somerville: Cascadilla Press.
López-Ornat, S. (1999). La Adquisición del Lenguaje: Nuevas Perspectivas. In M. De Vega &
F. Cuetos (Coords.) (Eds.), Psicolingüística del Español. Madrid: Trotta.
López-Ornat, S. (2003). Learning earliest grammar: Evidence of grammar variation in speech
before 22 months. In S. Montrul & F. Ordoñez (Eds.), Linguistic theory and language develop-
ment in hispanic language (pp. 254–274). Sommerville: Cascadilla Press.
López-Ornat, S., Gallego, C., Gallo, P., Karousou, A., Mariscal, S., & Martínez, M. (2005).
Inventarios de Desarrollo Comunicativo MacArthur. Madrid: TEA Ediciones.
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk. Mahwah: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
Marchman, V., & Bates, E. (1994). Continuity in lexical and morphological development: A test of
the critical mass hypothesis. Journal of Child Language, 21, 339–336.
Marchman, V., Martinez-Sussmann, C., & Dale, P. (2004). The language-specific nature of gram-
mar development: Evidence from bilingual language learners. Developmental Science, 7(2),
212–224.
Mariscal, S. (1996). Adquisiciones morfo fonosintácticas en torno al Sintagma Nominal: El género
gramatical en español. In M. Pérez-Pereira (Ed.), Estudios sobre la adquisición del castellano,
catalán, euskera y gallego (pp. 263–272). Servicio de Publicaciones: Universidad de Santiago
de Compostela.
Mariscal, S. (1998). El proceso de gramaticalización de las categorías nominales en español.
(Doctoral dissertation) Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
Mariscal, S. (2001). Es ‘apé’ equivalente a DET + N? Sobre el conocimiento temprano de las
categorías nominales. Cognitiva, 13(1), 35–59.
Mariscal, S. (2009). Early acquisition of gender agreement in the Spanish noun phrase: Starting
small. Journal of Child Language, 36, 143–171.
Mariscal, S., & Gallego, C. (2012). The relationships between early lexical and grammatical devel-
opment in Spanish: Evidence in children with different linguistic levels. The Spanish Journal
of Psychology, 15(1), 1–12.
Mariscal, S., & Gallo, P. (2015a). El acceso a los significados compartidos: Las Palabras. In
S. Mariscal & P. Gallo (Eds.), Adquisición del Lenguaje (pp. 77–116). Madrid: Síntesis.
Mariscal, S., & Gallo, P. (Eds.). (2015b). Adquisición del Lenguaje. Madrid: Síntesis.
Marrero, V., & Aguirre. (2003). Plural acquisition and development in Spanish. In F. Montrul &
S. Ordoñez (Eds.), Linguistic theory and language development in hispanic languages
(pp. 275–296). Sommerville: Cascadilla Press.
Mehler, J., Jusczyk, P., Lambertz, G., Halsted, N., Bertoncini, J., & Amiel-Tison, C. (1988). A
precursor of language acquisition in young infants. Cognition, 29(2), 143–178.
Naigles, L. (1990). Children use syntax to learn verb meanings. Journal of Child Language, 17,
357–374.
Nazzi, T., Bertoncini, J., & Mehler, J. (1998). Language discrimination by newborns: toward an
understanding of the role of rhythm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception
and Performance, 24(3), 756.
Pérez-Pereira, M. (1991). The acquisition of gender: What Spanish children tell us. Journal of
Child Language, 18, 571–590.
Pérez-Pereira, M., & García-Soto, X. (2003). El diagnóstico del desarrollo comunicativo en la
primera infancia: Adaptación de las Escalas MacArthur al gallego. Psicothema, 15, 352–361.
Peters, A., & Menn, L. (1993). False starts and filler syllables: Ways to learn grammatical mor-
phemes. Language, 69(4), 742–747.
Pizzuto, E., & Caselli, C. (1992). The acquisition of Italian morphology: Implications for models
of language development. Journal of Child Language, 19, 491–557.
Pulido, L., Lamela, E., Casla, M., & Rujas, I. (2007). Learning action labels in Spanish:
Generalizing to new agents. Poster presented at the Child Language Seminar, Reading, UK.
Radford, A., & Ploennig-Pacheco, I. (1995). The morpho-syntax of subjects and verbs in child
Spanish: A case study. Essex Reports in Linguistics, 5, 23–67.
Ravid, D., Levie, R., & Avivi-Ben Zvi, G. (2003). Morphological disorders. In L. Verhoeven & H.
van Balkom (Eds.), Classification of developmental language disorders. Theoretical issues and
clinical implications (pp. 235–260). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Rojas-Nieto, C. (2009). Before grammar. Cut and paste in early complex structures. In Hispanic
child languages: Typical and impaired development (pp. 143–174). Philadelfia: John
Benjamins.
Rujas, I. (2014). Medidas de Procesamiento Fonológico y Léxico en Niños y Niñas con Distintos
Niveles Lingüísticos. Doctoral dissertation, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Autónoma de
Madrid.
Rune, N., Dale, P., Bleses, D., & Fenson, L. (2010). CLEX: A cross-linguistic lexical norms data-
base. Journal of Child Language, 37(2), 419–428.
Saffran, J. R. (2003). Statistical language learning: Mechanisms and constraints. Current Directions
in Psychology Science, 12(4), 110–114.
Serra, M., Serrat, E., Solé, R., Bel, A., & Aparici, M. (2000). La adquisición del lenguaje.
Barcelona: Ariel.
Serrat, E., Sanz-Torrent, M., & Bel, A. (2004). Aprendizaje léxico y desarrollo de la gramática:
vocabulario verbal, aceleración morfológica y complejidad sintáctica. Anuario de Psicología,
35, 221–234.
Silva-Corvalán, C. & Montanari, S. (2008). The acquisition of ser, estar (and be) by a Spanish-
English bilingual child: The early age. In P. Guijarro-Fuentes & K. Geeslin (Eds.), Bilingualism:
Language and Cognition. Language acquisition, bilingualism and copula choice in Spanish,
Special issue 11, 341–360.
Slobin, D. (Ed.). (1985). The cross linguistic study of language acquisition. Vol. I. The data.
Hillsdale: LEA.
Stolt, S., Haataja, L., Lapineimu, H., & Lehtonen, L. (2009). Associations between lexicon and
grammar at the end of the second year in Finnish children. Journal of Child Language, 36,
779–806.
Tomasello, M. (2000). The item-based nature of children’s early syntactic development. Trends in
Cognitive Sciences, 4, 156–163.
Torrens, V., & Escobar, L. (2006). The acquisition of syntax in Romance languages. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984). Cross-language speech perception: Evidence for perceptual
reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior & Development, 7(1), 49–63.
Westerlund, M., Berglund, E., & Eriksson, M. (2006). Can severely language delayed 3-year-olds
be identified at 18 months? Evaluation of a screening version of the MacArthur-Bates com-
municative development inventories. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49,
237–247.
Wexler, K. (1998). Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint: A new expla-
nation of the optional infinitive stage. Lingua, 106, 23–79.
Wilson, S. (2003). Lexically specific constructions in the acquisition of inflection in English.
Journal of Child Language, 30, 71–115.
Language Development in Bilingual
Spanish-Catalan Children with and Without
Specific Language Impairment:
A Longitudinal Perspective
Eva Aguilar-Mediavilla, Lucia Buil-Legaz, Raül López-Penadés,

and Daniel Adrover-Roig
Abstract The present chapter explores both the cognitive and linguistic develop-
ment of bilingual children with and without Specific Language Impairment (SLI),
and focuses on Spanish and Catalan languages. We first describe some similarities
between Monolingual and Bilingual language acquisition and how Bilingual chil-
dren reach most of the milestones at the same age as monolinguals, despite having
less exposure to each language separately. We refer to different characteristics of
simultaneous bilingual language acquisition and discuss some variables that influ-
ence this process, such as the linguistic and non-linguistic characteristics that influ-
ence bilingual language acquisition and proficiency. One such variable is the status
of each language in the social context. We highlight the advantages and disadvan-
tages of being bilingual when compared with monolinguals in cognitive tasks
related to information access and storage in long-term memory. We present several
studies describing the development of monolingual children with SLI to establish a
basis for comparing bilingual children with SLI. We mention some studies which
have explored cognitive abilities in bilingual children with SLI; some studies find-
ing compensating abilities and some others finding a “bilingual disadvantage”. We
show several studies with different outcomes depending on the type of bilingualism,
such as the differences between sequential bilinguals as compared to simultaneous
bilingual children. Finally, we present a series of studies that have investigated pho-
nological, morphosyntactic, lexical-semantic and pragmatic characteristics of bilin-
gual Spanish-Catalan development in children with and without SLI. Executive
functions related to both cognitive and language processing in bilingual Spanish-
Catalan acquisition are also shown. The chapter ends with some research which
have analyzed reading abilities and social interaction in this population.
E. Aguilar-Mediavilla (*) • L. Buil-Legaz • R. López-Penadés • D. Adrover-Roig

Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, Spain
e-mail: eva.aguilar@uib.es; lbuill@uoc.edu; raul.lopez@uib.es; daniel.adrover@uib.es

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_2
38 E. Aguilar-Mediavilla et al.
Keywords Spanish language acquisition • Morphology • Syntax • Gender agree-

ment • Complex grammar
1 S
pecific Characteristics of Typical Language Development
in Bilingual Children
1.1 Bilingual Language Acquisition
Bilingualism is both a linguistic and cognitive situation that has been widely studied
over the last several decades. The simultaneous or early sequential acquisition of
two or more languages (before 4 years of age, following Genesee and Nicoladis
2006) is both similar to and different from the acquisition of only one language. In
the present section, we discuss the main similarities and differences in the language
acquisition process comparing monolingual and bilingual children.
1.1.1 S
imilarities Between Monolingual and Bilingual Language
Acquisition
Bilingual children reach most of the milestones at the same age as monolinguals,
despite having less exposure to each language separately (Genesee and Nicoladis
2006). Some of these milestones are the pre-linguistic discrimination of similar
languages (Sebastián-Gallés 2010), the onset of canonical babbling (Oller et al.
1997), word recognition (Sebastián-Gallés 2010), the onset of first words (Vihman
et al. 2007), and the overall rate (production and comprehension of both languages)
of vocabulary growth (Águila Martínez et al. 2005; De Houwer et al. 2013).
Furthermore, the acquisition of morphosyntax and its timing are also very similar to
monolinguals (Paradis and Genesee 1996) when task difficulty, language domi-
nance and input are controlled (Paradis et al. 2008; Paradis 2010). Therefore, in
general, bilingual language acquisition is broadly similar to monolingual language
acquisition regarding both its timing and stages. Nevertheless, some specific aspects
differentiate monolingual from bilingual language acquisition, which will be
exposed in the next sections.
1.1.2 D
ifferences Between Monolingual and Bilingual Language
Acquisition
The recognition of phonological units is an early ability—in terms of age of acquisi-

tion—that shows differences between bilingual and monolingual children. Bilingual
learners, as compared to monolingual ones, have a greater sensitivity in recognizing
their native languages, even at pre-linguistic stages (Bosch-Galcerán and
Language Development in Bilingual Spanish-Catalan Children with and Without… 39
Sebastián-Gallés 1997). Despite this advantage, bilingual toddlers perceive and cat-
egorize phonetically overlapping vowels (e.g. /e/and/ɛ/in Catalan; /e/in Spanish)
between their both languages less accurately than monolinguals (Ramon-Casas
et al. 2009).
With respect to phonological production, the extant literature points to advances
and delays in bilingual children compared with monolingual learners (Gildersleeve-
Neumann et al. 2008; Lleó 2002). More concretely, these differences are related to
the prosodic characteristics of the languages being learned and the rate of exposure
to each language. For instance, Lleó (2002) found that bilingual German-Spanish
children acquire three-syllable words (trochaic words) earlier than German mono-
linguals, but later than Spanish monolinguals. This effect is related to the fact that
Spanish language has a high frequency of long words (trochaic words) as compared
to German (Lleó and Demuth 1999).
With respect to lexical acquisition, vocabulary growth in each language (as mea-
sured by the total number of words) has been found to be delayed in bilingual chil-
dren when compared with their monolingual age peers (Ezeizabarrena & Garcia, this
volume; Poulin-Dubois et al. 2013; Roberts et al. 2002). However, when vocabular-
ies of both (or more) languages are taken together, bilingual children show the same
or even larger vocabularies than monolinguals (Bedore et al. 2005; Bilson et al.
2015). Moreover, Bilson et al. (2015) have recently found that vocabulary learning in
one language facilitates the acquisition of words in the other language because of
greater semantic associations between words and concepts in bilinguals.
Bilingual and monolingual learners are also different in using known words to
disambiguate the meaning of novel words—a process called mutual exclusivity,
which refers to the use of a heuristic name when facing a new word that is presented
contingently with two objects. Only the name of one of the objects is known, so
listeners tend to assume that the new word corresponds to the non-known object.
Bilinguals take longer to develop this strategy during early word learning than
monolinguals (Sebastián-Gallés 2010). Finally, another difference between bilin-
guals and monolinguals in lexical acquisition is that bilinguals frequently use lexi-
cal items from one language when speaking the other in order to fill in gaps of
vocabulary knowledge.
Regarding the acquisition of morphosyntax, the most complex structures—in
terms of the representation of natural properties, e.g. the ambiguous use of much
and many in English; or their requirement of use in a language of these structures,
e.g. the requirement of that in English— show a delay in bilinguals when compared
with monolingual learners (Gathercole 2007; Paradis 2010), especially in produc-
tion tasks as compared to syntactic judgement tasks (Paradis et al. 2008). Following
a constructivist approach (Gathercole 2007), these delays are explained by the fact
that complex structures need more input to be learned, but differences tend to disap-
pear as children grow and are more exposed to input. For example, Gathercole
(2007) found a delay in the acquisition of gender—which follows a natural rule in
English but a grammatical rule in Spanish— and mass count—which follows a
natural rule in Spanish and a grammatical rule in English—in bilingual Spanish-
English children as compared with monolingual English learners. Most of these
morphosyntactic delays tended to disappear as children were more exposed to input

and/or went from preschool to primary school ages (Gathercole 2007; Paradis et al.
2008).
Sentence repetition accuracy—as a measure of morphosyntax development—
has also been found to be delayed in bilingual children when compared with their
monolingual age peers (Komeili and Marshall 2013). In this task, bilingual children
have specific difficulties with functional words—i.e. prepositions, determiners, con-
junctions— in contrast with content words—i.e. names, verbs and adjectives.
Finally, some morphosyntax differences found in bilingual children when compared
to monolingual ones are related to the transference of grammatical structures from
one language to the other (Díaz et al. 2016; Melby-Lervåg and Lervåg 2011). This
transference can accelerate the acquisition process when the structures are similar
between languages, but can hinder language acquisition when structures are differ-
ent between languages.
With respect to pragmatics, bilingual children know when to use each language,
when to code-mix and how much—even with unfamiliar interlocutors —from a
very early age (Genesee and Nicoladis 2006). They are also able to identify break-
downs in communication that are due to inappropriate language choice; they can do
so even if feedback is implicit and unspecified; and they have strategies for repairing
such breakdowns. Intra-sentence and inter-sentence code-switching constitute a lin-
guistic characteristic of children learning two languages (Gutiérrez-Clellen et al.
2009; Tay 1989). Both intra and inter-sentence code-switching can be seen as a
communicative strategy (Tay 1989) and not merely as a code confusion (King and
Fogle 2009). Its use grows both when language dominance decreases in typically-
developing (TD) children and also in children with language delay (Aguilar-
Mediavilla et al. in press; Gutiérrez-Clellen et al. 2009) and is associated with social
factors, such as the language of the parents and the relative frequency of use of each
language within the community.
In summary, studies have shown delays, but also advances, in the acquisition of
some language components in bilingual children, as compared to monolingual ones.
Most of the delays—e.g. vocabulary growth or learning of complex morphosyntac-
tic structures—are due to differences in the amount/frequency of exposure and, in
some cases, to differences in the context of exposure (Genesee and Nicoladis 2006).
In this sense, bilingual children have less exposure to either language than monolin-
guals, which could lead to both production and comprehension delays when com-
pared to monolingual children, or in any aspect of acquisition that is
frequency-dependent. Other differences are due to distinct processing strategies
observed in bilingual children. For example, Sebastian-Galles (2010) interpreted
the lower outcomes by bilingual children in tasks of phonological recognition and
mutual exclusivity not as a developmental delay, but as an adaptive strategy used by
children learning two linguistic systems that include more than one word for each
concept and multiple variations between speakers in both languages—e.g. varia-
tions in the production of individual words make bilinguals more tolerant with pho-
neme categories. In other words, bilingual infants develop their own processing
strategies to optimally cope with the bilingual input. Finally, other differences are
due to the transfer from one language into the other (Genesee and Nicoladis 2006)—
e.g. the use of lexical items from one language when speaking the other or when
assigning grammatical structures from one language into the other.
1.2 V
ariables That Modulate Language Acquisition
in Bilinguals
In studies of bilingual language acquisition, a greater variability in the language

acquisition process has been repeatedly reported for bilinguals when compared to
monolinguals (Paradis 2010). This larger variability can be explained by several
factors, besides the ones that usually modulate language acquisition (i.e., age, socio-
economic status, gender, birth order, and parenting style). These variables must be
taken into account not only to better understand some of the differences and simi-
larities observed between monolingual and bilingual language development, but
also to comprehend the apparently contradictory results reported in different
studies.
It is likely that the differences observed between bilingual children are related to
language dominance. Even in the case of bilinguals who are exposed to both lan-
guages from birth, a dominant language prevails (Sebastián-Gallés et al. 2005).
Some delays found in bilinguals are observed in their non-dominant language and
differences between monolinguals and bilinguals are not present when language
dominance is controlled (Paradis et al. 2008). Nevertheless, it is not easy to deter-
mine which is the dominant language of a child because bilingual children have
distributed skills between languages; in some tasks one language is dominant and,
in other tasks, the other language is dominant (Kohnert 2010).
Another variable that relates to language dominance corresponds to the language
input received in each language. Children learning two languages experience more
variability in their exposure to language (Paradis 2010). They not only have less
time of exposure to each language but also more restrictions in context exposure,
the number of interlocutors is lower, and dialects vary with time due to schooling,
familiar changes or other reasons. Recent studies (Cattani et al. 2014; Elin-
Thordardottir 2011) have estimated that an exposure of around 60% of the time in
one language during preschool years results in a similar vocabulary proficiency as
compared to monolinguals in the same language. Given that language input plays an
important role when it comes to explain the variability in bilingual language acqui-
sition, several of the language differences observed between monolinguals and
bilinguals attenuate and even disappear as children grow (Gathercole 2007) because
they receive enough input to develop the required language structures.
Several studies have also shown that initial age of acquisition plays a relevant
role in language proficiency. In this regard, early sequential bilinguals attain a lower
level of proficiency in their second language when compared to simultaneous bilin-
guals (Sebastián-Gallés et al. 2005).
Furthermore, language characteristics that fall outside the linguistic domain also
influence bilingual language acquisition and proficiency. One such variable is the sta-
tus of each language in the social context. Non-dominant language acquisition
depends more on the input received by the child (Gathercole and Thomas 2009).
Gathercole and Thomas (2009) have shown that regardless of the home language
background, speakers develop an equivalent, mature command of the dominant lan-
guage in a given context. In contrast, the command of a non-dominant language in a
given context is directly correlated with the level of input in the different situations
that the child is exposed. Furthermore, the maintenance of the non-dominant language
level in adulthood is closely related to the continued exposure to that language.
Another variable that affects language proficiency in bilingual children is the
complexity of language structures. Differences between bilinguals and monolin-
guals in scores of grammatical tasks increase with the complexity of language struc-
tures—in terms of prosodic transparency (e.g. past tense –ed in the English language
has a low transparency), or representation of natural properties (e.g. objects are
given an arbitrary gender mark in Spanish), or requirement of a structure (e.g. the
use of complementizer that is not required in English) — scores being lower for
bilinguals (Paradis 2010). This result is explained by the fact that complex s tructures
need more input than simpler ones. Given that bilinguals have less exposure to each
language, they will need more time to reach the same level of performance
(Gathercole 2007). In addition, the structural syntactic distance between languages
also influences bilingual language acquisition, and differences between bilinguals
and monolinguals increase as differences between languages increase. For instance,
Díaz et al. (2016) have found that syntactic processing of early second language
acquisition approximates native-like processing acquisition and shows a high level
of proficiency when syntactic structures are shared between the first and the second
language. However, syntactic traits that are not present in the first language do not
rely on native-like processing and require thus more exposure to be integrated.
Finally, the type of linguistic task confronting children also seems to impact
language-related performance in bilinguals. Several studies (Paradis et al. 2008)
have shown that bilingual children perform better in grammatical judgement tasks—
e.g. to judge the correct use of verb morphemes—and they do worse in grammatical
production tasks—e.g. the use of verb morphemes. Paradis (2010) explained these
task effects under the perspective of the differences in cognitive processing between
bilinguals and monolinguals, which are particularly evident in the domain of con-
trolled attention. Given the importance of considering the cognitive capacities of
monolingual and bilingual children, in the next section we will delineate the differ-
ences in terms of cognitive processing that have been observed between them.
1.3 Cognitive Differences Associated with Bilingualism
In recent years, a large number of studies have reported that bilingual adults show
several boosted cognitive abilities, as compared to monolinguals (for a review see
Adrover-Roig and Ansaldo 2009), especially in tasks that involve conflict resolution
and the inhibition of irrelevant information (Bialystok 2005, 2009). This line of
research has also shown that bilingual children develop several of their higher-order
cognitive processes—e.g., task analysis (representation) and task control (selective
attention)—, at about 3 years of age, earlier than monolingual children (at about 4–5
years; Bialystok 1999). This fact has been attributed to their experience in managing
two languages in constant competition (Green 1998). In this sense, bilingual chil-
dren perform better in resolving conflict tasks and in tasks demanding high cogni-
tive processing (e.g. reversing ambiguous figures, solving problems with conflicting
cues, and theory of mind tasks), which generally involve enhanced attentional abili-
ties as compared to monolingual children.
Nevertheless, disadvantages have also been reported for bilinguals when com-
pared with monolinguals in cognitive tasks related to the access to information
stored in long-term memory, specifically naming tasks (Gollan and Acenas 2004;
Ivanova and Costa 2008) and fluency tasks (Gollan et al. 2005).
Finally, monlinguals and bilinguals perform similary on reward delay tasks—
tasks that require controlling impulses, such as delay of gratification or gift delay—
and working memory tasks (Bialystok 2009; Carlson and Meltzoff 2008). However,
recent studies have found an advantage in terms of visuospatial attention and verbal
working memory in bilinguals, when socio-economic status and vocabulary scores
are controlled (Blom et al. 2014).
In sum, the extant literature shows that bilinguals perform more poorly than
monolinguals on verbal recall tasks, but bilinguals perform better than monolin-
guals on executive control tasks (Bialystok 2009).
2 L
anguage Development in Bilingual Children with Specific
Language Impairment
Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) experience a significant impair-

ment in language ability in the absence of neurological, cognitive, sensory, or physi-
cal impairment (American Pshychiatric Association 2013; Leonard 2015). A great
heterogeneity has been described in children with SLI in part due to their age
(Conti-Ramsden 2008; Conti-Ramsden and Botting 1999) and in part due to the
different profiles of language impairment (Rapin and Allen 1983; Rapin et al. 2003).
Besides, SLI manifest itself differently across languages (Leonard 2014b).
Therefore, studies on children with different profiles of SLI speaking different lan-
guages and at different ages have become crucial to disentangle which are those
common difficulties to SLI, which vary between languages, domains and ages.
2.1 Core Difficulties in Bilingual Children with SLI
Bilingual children with SLI manifest their linguistic deficits in both languages, in
such a way that both languages are learned more slowly and following an atypical
development, when compared with their age-matched bilingual peers (Hakansson
et al. 2003). Similar to monolingual children with SLI, bilingual children with SLI
have difficulties using both languages, especially in the most complex aspects—in
terms of transparency and language structure—of the languages being learned.
These difficulties are evident in different linguistic areas, such as phonology, seman-
tics, morphology, syntax and pragmatics (Leonard 2015 for a review). But most of
all, morphosyntax is the most affected area in all languages. Grammatical errors
observed in children with SLI usually show a large amount of variation depending
upon different language conditions (e.g. the language been learned and monolingual
or bilingual condition; Armon-Lotem et al. 2015; Leonard 2014b). Therefore, the
description of specific linguistic profiles of different bilingual types (sequential-
simultaneous) and languages (e.g. English-Spanish, Catalan-Spanish, French-
English) in children with SLI is necessary (Leonard 2014a; b).
Other difficulties that must be taken into account in bilingual children with SLI
are related to executive functions. As previously stated, bilingual children with TD
show a ‘bilingual advantage’ in some cognitive processes. According to this, it is
expected that bilinguals with SLI have a greater potential for compensating their
difficulties in acquiring two languages (Engel de Abreu et al. 2014). However, those
cognitive abilities in bilingual children with TD that are similar to or poorer than
TD monolinguals, will have a negative effect in bilingual children with SLI generat-
ing a “bilingual disadvantage”.
For instance, a large number of studies have reported a deficit in most executive
functions in monolingual children with SLI (Chávez & Auza, this volume; Marton
et al. 2014; Marton 2008; Vissers et al. 2015). But except for a few studies (Ebert &
Pham, this volume), the information about executive functions in bilingual children
with SLI is still scarce. However, the extant literature shows that several compo-
nents of executive functions—such as selective attention, interference control,
visuo-spatial working memory, inhibition of prepotent responses, and verbal and
non-verbal working memory—follow the same pattern of performance in monolin-
gual and bilingual children with SLI (Elin-Thordardottir and Brandeker 2013; Engel
de Abreu et al. 2014; Kohnert 2010; Sandgren and Holmström 2015). When com-
paring bilingual and monolingual children with their respective language-matched
peers with TD (Buil-Legaz et al. in press-b; Sandgren and Holmström 2015) studies
have found that verbal and non-verbal working memory tasks are less impaired in
bilingual children with SLI than in monolingual children with SLI. The latter has
shown clear difficulties in most of the tasks involving executive functions, such as
selective attention, interference control and working memory. This result could be
interpreted as greater protection for bilingual children with SLI in some tasks tap-
ping executive functioning. Additionally, a recent study has reported that a ‘bilin-
gual disadvantage’ was absent, even when the bilingual groups had a lower
socio-economic status and a lower exposure to language than monolinguals
(Sandgren and Holmström 2015).
These results show that although bilingual children with SLI do not demonstrate
the same advantages in some aspects of executive functions—such as selective
attention, inhibition and interference suppression—as bilinguals with TD, they do
not lag behind monolinguals with TD in these abilities and show fewer cognitive
difficulties than monolingual children with SLI. Therefore, bilingualism can be con-

sidered as a protective factor against some of the cognitive limitations that are asso-
ciated with SLI.
In spite of this ‘bilingual advantage’, some executive functions remain affected
when comparing bilingual children with SLI with TD bilingual children.
Phonological working memory has been reported as one of the most frequent
impaired abilities in children with SLI (Buil-Legaz et al. in press-a; Conti-Ramsden
et al. 2001) which has been mainly measured using non-word repetition (NWR)
(Girbau, this volume) and sentence repetition (SR) tasks (Ebert & Pham, this vol-
ume; Simón-Cereijido, this volume). Studies have shown that Phonological Working
Memory (PWM) is impaired similarly in monolingual and bilingual children with
SLI, and has been proposed as a clinical marker for SLI independent of IQ, social
economic status and languages being learned (Armon-Lotem et al. 2015; Conti-
Ramsden et al. 2001). Besides, NWR and SR tasks have been considered as two
potential measures of PWM that would help diagnose language difficulties in bilin-
gual children (Armon-Lotem et al. 2015; Elin-Thordardottir and Brandeker 2013).
Nevertheless, some studies have found that bilingual children (without language
impairment) score more poorly than monolinguals in SR, when receptive vocabu-
lary scores are controlled for (Komeili and Marshall 2013). Despite this, the kinds
of errors are different from those produced of children with SLI (omission of func-
tion words). However, results in NWR have shown no differences between mono-
lingual and bilingual children, with very low scores for children with SLI
independently of the languages being acquired (Aguado et al. 2006; Casalini et al.
2007; Ebbels et al. 2012; Elin-Thordardottir and Brandeker 2013; Girbau and
Schwartz 2008; Sahlén et al. 1999; van Daal et al. 2009). In sum, NWR is a promis-
ing measure of PWM to be included in the evaluation of children with SLI indepen-
dently of their language condition (monolingual or bilingual).
2.2 SLI in Bilingual Children: Different Languages at Play
Given the similarities and differences in language acquisition and cognitive skills
between bilingual and monolingual TD learners, it is natural to find differences
between monolingual and bilingual children with SLI. In this regard, it is important
to consider whether similar difficulties are to be expected between simultaneous and
early sequential—who first learn their first language and then their second language
during preschool or early school years— bilingual children with SLI. In addition,
the specific linguistic and cognitive domains where either similarities and/or differ-
ences appear between bilingual and monolingual children with SLI should be noted.
For instance, some recent studies comparing sequential bilinguals with SLI with
monolinguals with SLI have found no differences in several cognitive abilities (pro-
cessing speed, attention, and perception; Windsor and Kohnert 2009) and in narra-
tion tasks (micro and macro structure; Rezzonico et al. 2015). However, the majority
of studies focusing on language skills have reported distinct results in sequential
bilinguals as compared to monolinguals (Blom et al. 2013; Crutchley et al. 1997;

Orgassa and Weerman 2008). These studies have shown that sequential bilingual
children with SLI, as compared with monolingual children with SLI, show a less
proficient morphosyntactic profile (Crutchley et al. 1997), showing difficulties in
the use of gender mark in determinants and adjectives (Orgassa and Weerman 2008)
and verb inflection errors (Blom et al. 2013; Rezzonico et al. 2015). In contrast,
Rothweiler et al. (2011) and Clahsen et al. (2014) found equivalent profiles between
monolingual and sequential bilingual children with SLI in the use of tense mark
(present vs. preterite) and syntactically complex sentences—such as embedded
clauses and wh-questions—, similar difficulties in producing correct agreement-
marked verbs and did not report problems in the production of the past participle (as
compared with children with TD). Similar outcomes between bilingual and mono-
lingual children with SLI have also been found in phonetics (articulation; Crutchley
et al. 1997). Therefore, the existing literature suggests that early sequential bilingual
language acquisition involves a slight cost for children with SLI in the domain of
morphosyntax, but not in cognitive skills and phonetics.
Studies that have evaluated simultaneous bilingual children show a different pic-
ture. Most studies comparing simultaneous bilingual children with SLI with mono-
lingual children with SLI have reported a similar morphosyntactic profile with equal
difficulties for both groups of children when it comes to the use of direct objects,
definite articles (Paradis et al. 2006; Rapin et al. 2003), verb morphology (espe-
cially with tense morphemes) and verb-argument structure (Gutiérrez-Clellen et al.
2008; Peristeri et al. 2015; Spoelman and Bol 2012). Several of these studies have
also described better results in simultaneous bilinguals with SLI when contrasted
with monolingual children with SLI. For instance, an advantage has been shown for
bilingual children with SLI in the correct use and the number of errors in clitics
(Gutiérrez-Clellen et al. 2008; Paradis et al. 2006; Peristeri et al. 2015).
With regard to the lexical domain, a small cost (in terms of vocabulary) has been
reported for simultaneous bilingual children with SLI as compared to monolingual
children with SLI (Westman et al. 2008). Thereby, simultaneous bilingual children
with SLI exhibit lower vocabulary scores than their monolingual counterparts.
Finally, simultaneous bilingual children with SLI also exhibit both similarities
and differences in terms of phonology when compared with monolingual children
with SLI (MacLeod and McCauley 2003). While both groups of children show sim-
ilar productive phonetic inventories (i.e., list of stable phones, defined as a phone
occurring three or more times in more than one phonetic context without focusing
on errors of production relative to adult forms) and phonological processes (i.e.
phonological rules that describe the relationship between the child’s production and
the expected, adult version of the word), bilingual children with SLI showed a less
accurate production of consonants, but attempted to use more complex words than
monolingual children with SLI.
Thus, it seems that simultaneous bilingual children with SLI show a similar mor-
phosyntactic deficit as monolingual children with SLI do, but they experience
greater lexical difficulties, given the difficulty in learning two languages at the same
time. Some of the differences shown between studies are due the type of bilingual-
ism considered (sequential versus simultaneous; Multilingual Affairs Committee of
Table 1 Main results of studies on monolingual and bilingual children with SLI
Monolingual vs.
Reference Languages Bilinguals Domain bilingual in SLI
Crutchley et al. English & Sequential Language profile and ↓
(1997) varied test results
languages
Paradis et al. English & Simultaneous Morphosyntax =
(2003) French
MacLeod and English & Simultaneous Phonology ↓PCC = Phonetic
McCauley (2003) French inv. ↑ Complexity
Paradis et al. English & Simultaneous Morphosyntax ↑
(2006) French (clitics)
Gutiérrez-Clellen English & Simultaneous Morphosyntax (verb =
et al. (2008) Spanish morphemes)
Westman et al. Swedish & Simultaneous Lexicon and =↓ SR
(2008) Finnish morphosyntax &vocabulary
Orgassa and Turkish & Sequential Morphosyntax ↓
Weerman (2008) Dutch (gender)
Windsor and English & Sequential Processing abilities =
Kohnert (2009) Spanish
Rothweiler et al. German Sequential Morphosyntax =
(2011) &Turkish (subject-verb
agreement and verb
past participle)
Spoelman and Dutch & Simultaneous Morphosyntax (verb =
Bol (2012) Frisian agreement and
argument structure)
Blom et al. Turkish & Sequential Morphosyntax (verb ↓
(2013) Dutch inflection)
Rezzonico et al. English & Not defined Narratives =↓ Verb inflection
(2015) diverse
languages
Peristeri et al. Greek & Not defined Morphosyntax ↑
(2015) diverse (Clitics)
Note: = non-significant differences between monolingual children with SLI and bilingual children
with SLI (equivalent results); Upward arrow: statistic shows better outcomes in bilingual children
with SLI as compared with monolingual children with SLI; Downward arrow: statistic shows
lower outcomes in bilingual children with SLI as compared with monolingual children with SLI
SR Sentence Repetition, PCC Percentage of Correct Consonants
IALP, 2006) and the specific language domain examined. Table 1 includes a brief
summary of these results.
2.3 Longitudinal Perspectives in Bilingual Children with SLI
In the last years, longitudinal studies have become a key focus of interest in the field
bilingualism and SLI, since these provide a clear picture of the underlying difficul-
ties in children with SLI over time. However, longitudinal studies are still scarce as
compared with cross-sectional ones, and most of the studies have been carried out
with monolingual children speaking especially English.
Longitudinal studies carried out with monolingual English children with SLI
have not revealed a significant variation over time in their pattern of difficulties,
neither when considering different subgroups of children (i.e. mainly with an
expressive or mainly with a receptive deficit) nor when taking into account several
degrees of severity (in terms of MLU, number of morphosyntactic errors or scores
in language tests; Beitchman et al. 1996; Conti-Ramsden et al. 2012; Johnson et al.
1999; Rice et al. 1998, 2006). Longitudinal studies in monolingual children with
SLI also point that those children that maintain their language difficulties at the
beginning of the school years (at 6 years of age) also manifest language difficulties
in all language domains during adolescence. In contrast, those children that have
resolved their language deficits in their school years only maintain their difficulties
in phonological processing and literacy skills during adolescence (Bishop and
Edmundson 1987; Stothard et al. 1998).
The few longitudinal studies conducted in bilingual children with SLI has
revealed that they are able to learn two languages, although the pace of development
is much slower in both languages than in TD bilingual children. Therefore, bilingual
children with SLI are more vulnerable to limited exposure to their two languages
and they need thus a higher quantity and quality of exposure in order to compensate
for their deficits (Holmström et al. 2016; Salameh et al. 2004). Studies have also
revealed that bilingual children with SLI maintain their difficulties from preschool
years to adolescence in the domains of PWM (NWR and SR), in access to phono-
logical units (APU, e.g. phonological fluency) and in phonological awareness (PA;
Buil-Legaz et al. in press-a).
In summary, the above-mentioned studies suggest that several linguistic difficul-
ties and especially those related to phonological processing persist in children with
SLI through adolescence and adulthood. Furthermore, the pattern of growth remains
relatively constant according to the degree of the severity of the linguistic impair-
ment. Therefore, bilingual children with SLI need more quantity and quality of
language exposure in order to develop two or more languages in a competent man-
ner than TD bilingual learners.
2.4 D
evelopment in Bilingual Spanish-Catalan Children
with SLI
To date, very few studies have described the linguistic outcomes of bilingual
Spanish–Catalan children with SLI. Thus, the purpose of the present section is to
provide a general picture of the linguistic deficits in bilingual children who speak
Spanish and Catalan. It is worth mentioning that almost all native Catalan-Spanish
children are practically simultaneous or very early bilinguals and experience a simi-
lar amount of exposure to both languages. Spanish and Catalan are Romance lan-
guages with a very similar morphosyntax and a high degree of correspondence,
which has been estimated to be 76% (Lewis et al. 2013).
Due to this common occurrence of bilingualism and the high degree of similarity
between languages, adults frequently switch from one language to the other during
a conversation. In young children, the alternation between both languages (intra-and
inter-sentence code-switching) frequently occurs with the same person or in the
same communicative setting. Sanz-Torrent et al. (2008a) found that code-switching
appears with equal frequency in Spanish-Catalan children with and without SLI
between 1;5 and 3;9 years of age. In scholar years, Aguilar-Mediavilla et al. (in
press) have recently reported that 8-year-old Spanish-Catalan children with SLI use
more inter-sentential code-switching than their age-matched peers, but this pattern
attenuates when children reach 12 years of age. At age 12, both the frequency of use
of inter-sentential and intra-sentential code-switching decreases in children with
SLI and their frequency are comparable to their age-matched peers.
This is an unusual and interesting bilingual context and population in which to
study bilingual characteristics in a native and balanced bilingual sample with
SLI. Linguistic and cognitive characteristics of Spanish-Catalan bilingual children
with SLI have been described in a number of studies that focus on different lan-
guage components at different ages. We provide here a review of the main findings
of these studies and focus on the development of phonology, morphosyntax, seman-
tics, pragmatics, cognitive abilities, reading and socialization.
2.4.1 P
honological Development in Bilingual Spanish-Catalan Children
with SLI
Although phonology has not frequently been reported as a core difficult in SLI,
Aguilar-Mediavilla et al. (2002) showed not only delay, but also a deficit in five
bilingual children with SLI speaking Spanish and Catalan at 3;10. Children with
SLI exhibited a delay in phonological acquisition in almost all segments, syllabic
and word structures when compared with age controls at an early stage of acquisi-
tion. But phonological deficits were also found in the correct use of vowels, nasals
and stops at the segmental level and in CVs at the syllabic level when compared
with MLU-matched controls and late talkers. There were also more frequent omis-
sions of unstressed syllables (Aguilar-Mediavilla 2013). One year later, at 4;9, the
same children had improved their phonological capacities only slightly and still
showed a delay in both the acquisition of segments and syllables, as compared with
both language- and age-matched control groups (Aguilar-Mediavilla and Serra-
Raventós 2006), despite word structure proficiency (word prosodic pattern) was
similar to the two other groups. Nevertheless, their profile of language difficulties
changed from 3 to 4 years of age. At 4 years of age, bilingual Spanish-Catalan chil-
dren with SLI produced less correct nasals, liquids, and complex syllabic structures,
as well as more trill omissions, cluster reductions and consonant deletions.
In sum, bilingual Spanish-Catalan children with SLI show an early phonological
deficit that attenuates slowly as children grow. This deficit is more evident in those
language structures that are acquired earlier, and they produce more syllabic omis-
sions and reductions.
2.4.2 M
orphosyntactic Development in Bilingual Spanish-Catalan
Children with SLI
The most notable morphological deficit of bilingual Spanish-Catalan children with

SLI is the omission of words, especially function words (Sanz-Torrent et al. 2008a;
b). Omission of clitics, articles, and prepositions are found at pre-school-ages (3;6–
5;6) children (Sanz-Torrent et al. 2008a; b; Serra-Raventós et al. 2002), being these
results confirmed and extended to Spanish-Catalan children with SLI at 7;0 age
(Bosch-Galcerán and Serra-Raventós 1997). Their performance improves with age,
with a marked improvement at 5;6 years of age, but some persistent difficulties
remain. In contrast, morphological commission errors are infrequent at each age
evaluated and do not characterize the linguistic profiles of children with SLI speak-
ing Spanish and Catalan. A detailed analysis revealed that clitics, definite articles
and copula verbs are the most frequently omitted function words by Spanish-Catalan
children with SLI (Aguilar-Mediavilla et al. 2007; Bosch-Galcerán and Serra-
Raventós 1997; Gavarró 2012). Problems with definite articles, but not with indefi-
nite articles, have also been reported in Spanish speaking children with SLI (Auza
and Morgan 2013).
Morphological and phonological difficulties reflect problems in other domains.
For instance, Aguilar-Mediavilla et al. (2007) reported that the number of omissions
of weak syllables explained 71% of the variance in functional word omissions in
children with SLI but not in the age-matched and MLU-matched control groups,
and established that morphological omissions increase as the prosodic weigh
decreases. This relation could be explained by limitations in cognitive processing in
children with SLI (Leonard 2014a, b). Function words are phonological particles
with low prosodic weight that need high cognitive resources to be processed (both
a phonological and a morphological analysis). When children overload their cogni-
tive processing systems, they use automatic patterns that help them process data at
the word and syllable level, which forces them to omit the syllables and elements
that do not adjust to the phonological pattern. These patterns are overused by chil-
dren with SLI and lead to the most characteristic errors made by Spanish and
Catalan-speaking children with SLI: weak syllable omissions (phonological errors)
and functional word omissions (morphosyntactic errors).
Children with SLI who are bilingual speakers of Spanish and Catalan also exhibit
deficits in tense marking. They tend to use the correct present, future and plural
forms less frequently than their MLU- or age-matched peers (Sanz-Torrent et al.
2008b). These children also produce a larger number of correct infinitive and singu-
lar forms at 3;9 than their age and language-matched controls, but verb errors only
reach 6,1% of total verbs uttered. At 4;9, children with SLI improve significantly in
their use of the correct past tense, the future tense and plurals, but they still use more
infinitives, and the number of verb errors is maintained (7,7% of the verbs uttered).
Therefore, the occurrence of inflected verb forms is rather low in Spanish-Catalan
children with SLI, as compared with TD children, especially at 3;9 years of age, but
they make fewer errors than children learning other languages (Leonard 2014b).
These children also exhibit syntactic deficits. Spanish-Catalan children with SLI
use simpler and shorter sentences, as measured by MLU-words (Serra-Raventós
et al. 2002) at 3;6 (MLU = 1.8 vs. MLU = 3.8 for age-matched controls), at 4;6
(MLU = 3.0 vs. MLU = 5.5 for age-matched controls), and at 5;6 (MLU = 4.6 vs.
MLU = 6.3 for age-matched controls). Most of the utterances produced by children
with SLI were sentences with multiple omissions and syntactic errors that were not
interpretable by adults. Sentences produced by children with SLI speaking Spanish
and Catalan included more appropriate elliptical sentences (without a verb) or inap-
propriate sentences without a verb, together with a less frequent use of complete
simple and complex sentences than their age-matched and MLU-matched controls.
2.4.3 L
exical-Semantic Development in Bilingual Spanish-Catalan
Children with SLI
Bilingual Catalan-Spanish children with SLI also have deficits in lexical semantics.
These children produce more content words and fewer function words than their
age-matched controls at 3;9 and 4;9, but these differences tend to disappear at 5;9
(Serra-Raventós et al. 2002).
Sanz-Torrent et al. (2008b) found that children with SLI used a lower number of
less diverse verbs when compared with their age-matched and MLU-matched con-
trols at 3;9. At 4;9, the number of verbs increased significantly and matched those
of the age-matched and MLU-matched controls. School-aged (5;3–8;2), bilingual
children with SLI still produced fewer nouns and verbs correctly and were slower in
response times than their age-matched controls in naming verbs, but were equally
fast in producing nouns (Andreu Barrachina et al. 2012).
The specific verbs used differed as well. Spanish-Catalan bilingual children with
SLI used more self-activity verbs (i.e., to go, to jump), fewer external activity verbs
(i.e., to break, to put), and omitted more obligatory arguments, especially in general
all-purpose verbs (e.g. to put or to want) than their age and MLU-matched controls
(Sanz-Torrent et al. 2001). Sanz-Torrent et al. (2011) found that Spanish-Catalan
children with SLI at 3;9 produced fewer verbs of all types, but did not omit more
arguments than their MLU-matched controls. One year later, the same children at
4;9 primarily used verbs with no arguments (e.g., rain) or one argument (e.g., play)
and used fewer verbs that required two arguments (e.g., likes) or three arguments
(e.g., put). They also omitted more thematic roles (especially theme and agent roles)
when compared with their age and MLU-controls.
Therefore, Spanish-Catalan children with SLI show a very simplified syntactic-
semantic profile (limited variety of verbs and syntactically simpler verbs in terms of
argument structure) along with omissions and errors. These results were confirmed
by a recent study that used eye tracking, where children had to describe events with
different argument structures in the presence of visual scenes. Spanish-Catalan chil-
dren with SLI made more thematic role omissions, especially of theme, as verb
argument complexity increased in their descriptions. They also looked less at the
event and theme zone than their age controls pairs (Andreu Barrachina et al. 2013).
2.4.4 P
ragmatic Development in Bilingual Spanish-Catalan Children
with SLI
Pragmatics is also affected in some children with SLI speaking Spanish and Catalan.
For instance, Katsos et al. (2011) reported a less efficient use of the Gricean prag-
matic maxim of informativeness (Grice 1975) in the comprehension of numerals
and quantifiers in Spanish in expressions such as all, none, some, some...not, most
and not all in a group of children with SLI from a bilingual Catalan-Spanish region
(4;0–9;1). Children had to decide whether a sentence describing a scene was true or
false, being the sentence conditions: logically true and informative (e.g. Scene: Two
oranges are in the boxes; Sentence: Some of the oranges are in the boxes), logically
false (e.g. Scene: None oranges are in the boxes; Sentence: Some of the oranges are
in the boxes), and logically true but non informative (e.g. Scene: All of the oranges
are in the boxes; Sentence: Some of the oranges are in the boxes). Despite a lower
number of correct responses than age-matched controls in all conditions, bilingual
Spanish-Catalan children with SLI performed better in logical means (e.g. all has a
semantically true value; none has a semantically false value), than in pragmatics
(e.g. be informative).
Story-telling is another aspect of pragmatics that has been examined in bilingual
Spanish-Catalan children with SLI (Andreu Barrachina et al. 2011). In an eye track-
ing study, bilingual children with SLI (5;6) performed similarly to their MLU-
matched peers in a story comprehension task, as measured by the eye movements
during the visual exploration of successive scenes in a story while listening to the
associated narrative. In contrast, they had poorer scores in a production scene-
description task when compared with their MLU-matched peers. Spanish-Catalan-
speaking children with SLI produced fewer correct statements, made more semantic
substitutions and syntactic omissions, and they stayed less time looking at the
semantically relevant areas of the scene.
An additional task that has been used to examine pragmatic abilities in children
with SLI is a referential communication task. In this task, children have to describe
objects arranged in a picture, being some of them ambiguous (some object but dif-
ferent colour or size), to a listener separated by a visual barrier. When the child
produces an ambiguous or an incorrect message, the adult has to regulate the behav-
iour of the child, so that he/she can improve the informative content of the message
as many times as he/she considers necessary in order to reach a correct description.
Buil Buil-Legaz et al. (2016) recently reported a lower number of initial (without
adult regulations) and final (after adult regulations) correct messages in Spanish-
Catalan eight-year-olds with SLI as compared to their age-matched TD peers,
despite an equivalent number and type of regulations by the adults. Given that the
task was linguistically simple, the morphosyntactic level of the children did not
predict the number of correct messages in the referential communication task and
children with SLI did not benefit from adults’ interactions, the authors interpreted
the communicative inefficiency as a specific difficulty that involved the analysis of
the communicative context, the ability to extract the relevant information, and the
capacity to consider other’s perspectives in order to do the task correctly.
2.4.5 E
xecutive Functions in Bilingual Spanish-Catalan Children
with SLI
As in monolinguals and other bilinguals with SLI, Spanish-Catalan children with

SLI also have other deficits that are related to both cognitive and language process-
ing. For example, there is evidence of a PWM deficit in Spanish-Catalan preschool
children with SLI (Aguilar-Mediavilla et al. 2014; Girbau and Schwartz 2007,
2008) and in elementary-school-aged children and adolescents with SLI (Buil-
Legaz et al. in press-b) compared to age-matched peers. These authors found a
delay in SR and NWR tasks in a group of bilingual Spanish-Catalan children with
SLI followed from 6 to 12 years of age. Therefore, a specific impairment in PWM
seems to be one of the most stable difficulties observed in bilingual Spanish-Catalan
children with SLI over time. Similarly, Girbau and Schwartz (2007) also showed
that Spanish-Catalan sequential bilinguals at 8;0–10;0 years of age were less accu-
rate in a NWR task, especially when repeating long non-words (composed by three,
four and five syllables), but not when repeating short ones. Besides, results in this
task correlated with other language outputs (especially grammar and auditory asso-
ciation as measured by the ITPA; Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Aptitudes) in
children with SLI.
Phonological Awareness (PA), as measured by phonological segmentation tasks
without visual prompts, also show a stable deficit in Spanish-Catalan children with
SLI from preschool years to school and preadolescent years. Studies conducted in
monolingual children with SLI have found contradictory results regarding this abil-
ity (Catts et al. 1999; Vandewalle et al. 2010). In this regard, differences between
studies could be explained by language transparency (a different degree of corre-
spondence between graphemes and phonemes), the presence or absence of reading
difficulties in children with SLI (Girbau, this volume; Kelso et al. 2007; McArthur
and Castles 2013), and the age of assessment of PA—usually impaired at kindergar-
ten, but frequently improves at school years— (Claessen et al. 2013; Zourou et al.
2010). Results in bilingual Spanish-Catalan children suggest that PA is impaired in
transparent languages, such as Catalan and Spanish (Aguilar-Mediavilla et al. 2014;
Buil-Legaz et al. in press-b).
Tasks related to Access to Phonological Units (APC), such as Rapid Access
Naming (RAN) and verbal (phonological and semantic) fluency do not show a sta-
ble pattern of deficit in Spanish-Catalan children with SLI. These children perform
more poorly in RAN and verbal fluency tasks at 6–8 years-of-age, and their difficul-
ties appear to be mitigated in preadolescence (12;0; Aguilar-Mediavilla et al. 2014;
Buil-Legaz et al. in press-b). Studies in monolingual children with SLI show contra-
dictory results for both tasks, being fluency tasks impaired specially in children with
difficulties in lexical access (Messer et al. 2004), while RAN is impaired only in
children that also have reading difficulties (Catts et al. 1999).
Further difficulties reported in Spanish-Catalan children with SLI concern audi-
tory perception, especially when integrating auditory and visual speech. In particu-
lar, Spanish-Catalan children with SLI need over 650 ms between the auditory and
the visual stimulus to detect an asynchrony. These results suggest that their difficulty
in speech processing involves the integration between auditory and visual informa-
tion during speech perception (Pons et al. 2013). These difficulties in auditory per-
ception also affect auditory attention. For instance, Aguilar-Mediavilla et al. (2014)
found that Spanish-Catalan children with SLI have reduced auditory attention, but
similar visual attention, as compared to their age-matched peers.
2.4.6 Reading in Bilingual Spanish-Catalan Children with SLI
Most of the difficulties in both cognitive processing and language found in Spanish-
Catalan children with SLI could be at the basis of their reading difficulties, given
that most of the delayed abilities described (PWM, PA and RAN) have been associ-
ated with reading deficits, besides that both oral expression and comprehension
deficits can also affect written language. Early PA difficulties (6;0), together with
problems with verbal fluency, is related to later (8;0) diminished reading skills in
children with SLI speaking Spanish and Catalan (Aguilar-Mediavilla et al. 2014).
Thus, Spanish-Catalan children with SLI also struggle with reading (Aguilar-
Mediavilla et al. 2014; Buil-Legaz et al. 2015, in press-a). In initial school years
(6–8 years) children with SLI show lower decoding and comprehension capacities;
however, at the end of middle high school (12 years of age) they only show difficul-
ties in text comprehension. Furthermore, their deficits in comprehension at 12 are
predicted by both their semantic fluency at 6 years of age (Buil-Legaz et al. 2015)
and also by their morphosyntactic competence at 8 years of age (Buil-Legaz et al. in
press-a).
2.4.7 S
ocial Development in Bilingual Spanish-Catalan Children
with SLI
The linguistic and cognitive processing difficulties in children with SLI can have
an impact in their social development. Recent reports have pointed to an inter-
play between linguistic, cognitive and social difficulties, which follow a vicious
circle: language difficulties limit social relationships, which would in turn trigger
lower social abilities, resulting in a decrease in language input (Valera-Pozo
et al. 2015). These authors showed that preadolescent (12 years of age) Spanish-
Catalan children with SLI showed lower scores in social skills, leadership, and
adaptive skills than their age peers going to the same school context, as reported
by their teachers. These abilities are directly involved in personal relationships,
especially with peer groups. Other studies have also showed that monolingual
children with SLI are more frequently victims of bullying and have less social
relations, which negatively impacts their academic achievement (Botting and
Conti-Ramsden 2008; Rice 2016).
3 Conclusions
The acquisition of two or more language systems involves similarities with mono-
lingual language acquisition but also implies some particularities in all language
components. Some differences with monolingual language acquisition include
delays in the acquisition of several language components (e.g. vocabulary) due to a
lower input in each language in bilinguals. However, bilingualism also entails
advantages in other language structures due to a linguistic transfer process and
boosted executive functions in bilinguals. In this regard, the development of bilin-
gual children entails permanent cognitive changes and makes them become more
flexible and more able to cope with interference than their monolingual peers thanks
to better inhibition capacities resulting from their experience in dealing with two
co-activated languages. Therefore, bilingual language acquisition is not the sum of
two monolingual acquisition processes, but a specific process experienced by a
unique learner.
The evaluation of both the similarities and differences between bilingual and
monolingual TD learners in language acquisition and the analysis of their cognitive
abilities can provide relevant clues for the assessment of monolingual and bilingual
children with SLI. Despite the larger difficulty in learning two languages, studies
show that bilingual children with SLI have similar linguistic difficulties as com-
pared with their monolingual counterparts. Probably, this is due to the fact that
bilingual children with SLI benefit from their advantage in executive functions.
Nevertheless, this bilingual advantage becomes less evident in children with SLI
than in bilinguals with TD. Therefore, bilingual children with SLI frequently show
some deficits in several executive processes as compared to monolinguals, espe-
cially in PWM, although other executive functions that are usually impaired in
monolinguals with SLI are more preserved in bilinguals with SLI, such as the inhi-
bition of prepotent responses and interference suppression.
Language deficits in bilingual children with SLI are evident in both languages
and affect phonology, lexicon, morphology, syntax and pragmatics, with morpho-
syntactic difficulties the most representative deficit in children with SLI in all lan-
guages. However, the specific linguistic characteristics of bilingual children with
SLI are variable and overlap with different language conditions (e.g. languages spo-
ken, sequential and simultaneous bilingualism). In particular, bilingual Spanish-
Catalan children with SLI show marked deficits in phonology (e.g., weak syllable
omission and syllabic reductions), lexicon (e.g., a low use of verbs and omission of
arguments), morphology (e.g., omissions of function words and errors in inflected
verb morphology), syntax (e.g., simpler syntactic structures), and pragmatics (e.g.,
errors in narration, difficulties in referential communication and inadequate use of
pragmatic rules). Besides these specific linguistic difficulties, bilingual Spanish-
Catalan children with SLI also manifest problems in several cognitive abilities
related to language (e.g. PWM, APC, PA, auditory perception and attention), in
reading (initially in decoding and later in comprehension) and in their social skills.
Thus, the reviewed literature shows that bilingual Spanish-Catalan children
e xperience problems in several domains beyond language, which in turn affect their
socialization process and thus, their quality of life.
Acknowledgements This work was supported by the Spanish government and the ERDF:
European Regional Development Fund [SEJ2006-12616] and [EDU2013-45174-P].
References
Adrover-Roig, D., & Ansaldo, A. I. (2009). El bilingüismo como factor de protección en el enve-
jecimiento cognitivo. Revista Latinoamericana de Neuropsicología, 1(1), 1–15.
Aguado, G., Cuetos-Vega, F., Domezáin, M., & Pascual, B. (2006). Repetition of pseudo-words in
Spanish children with specific language disorder: A psycholinguistic marker. Revista de
Neurologia, 43(Suppl 1), S201–S208.
Águila Martínez, E., Ramon-Casas, M., Pons, F., & Bosch-Galcerán, L. (2005). Efecto de la
exposición bilingüe sobre el desarrollo léxico inicial. In A. Mayor-Cinca, B. Zubiauz-de-Pedro,
& E. Díez-Villoria (Eds.), Estudios sobre la adquisición del lenguaje. Salamanca: Universidad
de Salamanca.
Aguilar-Mediavilla, E. (2013). Comparative analysis of the acquisition of syllabic structure and
errors in preschool children with SLI. Anuario de Psicología. The UB Journal, 43(2),
237–252.
Aguilar-Mediavilla, E., & Serra-Raventós, M. (2006). Phonological profile of Spanish-Catalan
children with specific language impairment at age 4: Are there any changes over time? Folia
Phoniatrica et Logopaedica, 58, 400–414.
Aguilar-Mediavilla, E., Sanz-Torrent, M., & Serra-Raventós, M. (2002). A comparative study of
the phonology of pre-school children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), Language
Delay (LD) and Normal Acquisition. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 16(8), 573–596.
Aguilar-Mediavilla, E., Sanz-Torrent, M., & Serra-Raventós, M. (2007). Influence of phonology
on morpho-syntax in Romance languages in children with Specific Language Impairment
(SLI). International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 43, 325–347.
Aguilar-Mediavilla, E., Buil-Legaz, L., Pérez-Castelló, J. A., Rigo-Carratalà, E., & Adrover-Roig,
D. (2014). Early preschool processing abilities predict subsequent reading outcomes in bilin-
gual Spanish-Catalan children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Journal of
Communication Disorders, 50, 19–35.
Aguilar-Mediavilla, E., Buil-Legaz, L., Pérez-Castelló, J. A., López-Penadés, R., & Adrover-Roig,
D. (in press). Code-switching and code-mixing in bilingual Spanish-Catalan children with and
without specific language impairment. In C. dos Santos & L. de Almeida (Eds.), Bilingualism
ans specific language impairment. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
American Pshychiatric Association. (2013). DSM-5: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental
disorders. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.
Andreu Barrachina, L., Sanz-Torrent, M., Buil-Legaz, L., & Macwhinney, B. (2012). Effect of
verb argument structure on picture naming in children with and without specific language
impairment (SLI). International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 47(6),
637–653.
Andreu Barrachina, L., Sanz-Torrent, M., Guàrdia Olmos, J., & Macwhinney, B. (2011). Narrative
comprehension and production in children with SLI: An eye movement study. Clinical
Linguistics & Phonetics, 25(9), 767–783.
Andreu Barrachina, L., Sanz-Torrent, M., Guàrdia Olmos, J., & MacWhinney, B. (2013). The
formulation of argument structure in SLI: An eye-movement study. Clinical Linguistics &
Phonetics, 27(2), 111–133.
Armon-Lotem, S., de Jong, J., & Meir, N. (2015). Language impairment testing in multilingual
settings. Bristol: Multilingual matters.
Auza, A., & Morgan, G. P. (2013). El uso del artículo en niños hispanohablantes con trastorno
específico del lenguaje. Revista Chilena de Fonoaudiología, 12, 03–20.
Bedore, L. M., Peña, E. D., García, M., & Cortez, C. (2005, July). Conceptual versus Monolingual
scoring : When does it make a difference ? Language. Speach and Hearing Services in Schools,
36, 188–200.
Beitchman, J., Brownlie, E. B., Inglis, A., Wild, J., Ferguson, B., Schachter, D., et al. (1996). Seve-
year follow-up of speech/language impaired and control children: Psychiatric outcome. Journal
of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 37(8), 961–970.
Bialystok, E. (1999). Cognitive complexity and attentiona control in the bilingual mind. Child
Development, 70, 633–644.
Bialystok, E. (2005). Consequences of bilingualism for cognitive development. In E. Bialystok
(Ed.), Handbook of bilingualism (pp. 417–432). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bialystok, E. (2009). Bilingualism: The good, the bad, and the indifferent. Bilingualism: Language
and Cognition, 12(01), 3–11.
Bilson, S., Yoshida, H., Tran, C. D., Woods, E. a., & Hills, T. T. (2015). Semantic facilitation in
bilingual first language acquisition. Cognition, 140, 122–134.
Bishop, D. V. M., & Edmundson, A. (1987). Language impaired 4-years-old distinguishing tran-
sient from persistent impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 52, 156–173.
Blom, E., de Jong, J., Orgassa, A., Baker, A., & Weerman, F. (2013). Verb inflection in monolin-
gual Dutch and sequential bilingual Turkish-Dutch children with and without SLI. International
Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 48(4), 382–393.
Blom, E., Küntay, A. C., Messer, M., Verhagen, J., & Leseman, P. (2014). The benefits of being
bilingual: Working memory in bilingual Turkish-Dutch children. Journal of Experimental
Child Psychology, 128, 105–119.
Bosch-Galcerán, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (1997). Native-language recognition abilities in
4-month-old infants from monolingual and bilingual environments. Cognition, 65(1), 33–69.
Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=psyh&AN=
1997-38635-003&lang=es&site=ehost-live.
Bosch-Galcerán, L., & Serra-Raventós, M. (1997). Grammatical morphology deficits of Spanish-
speaking children with specific language impairment. In A. Baker, M. Beers, G. Bol, J. de Jong,
& G. Leemans (Eds.), Child language disorders in a cross-linguistic perspective: Proceedings
of the fourth symposium of the European group on child language disorders (pp. 33–45).
Amsterdam: Institute for General Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam.
Botting, N., & Conti-Ramsden, G. (2008). The role of language, social cognition, and social skill
in the functional social outcomes of young adolescents with and without a history of SLI.
British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 26(2), 281–300.
Buil-Legaz, L., Adrover-Roig, D., & Aguilar-Mediavilla, E. (in press-a). Longitudinal trajectories
of the representation and access to phonological information in bilingual children with specific
language impairment. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology.
Buil-Legaz, L., Aguilar-Mediavilla, E., & Rodríguez-Ferreiro, J. (in press-b). Oral morphosyntac-
tic competence as a predictor of reading comprehension in children with specific language
impairment. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders.
Buil-Legaz, L., Aguilar-Mediavilla, E., & Rodríguez-Ferreiro, J. (2015). Reading skills in young
adolescents with a history of Specific Language Impairment: The role of early semantic capac-
ity. Journal of Communication Disorders, 58, 14–20.
Buil-Legaz, L., Pérez-Castelló, J. A., Adrover-Roig, D., & Aguilar-Mediavilla, E. (2016).
Referential communication effectiveness in Spanish-Catalan children with and without Specific
Language Impairment (SLI). Anuario de Psicología. The UB Journal of Psychology, 46(1),
31–40.
Carlson, S. M., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2008). Bilingual experience and executive functioning in young
children. Developmental Science, 11(2), 282–298.
Casalini, C., Brizzolara, D., Chilosi, A. M., Cipriani, P., Marcolini, S., Pecini, C., et al. (2007).
Non-word repetition in children with specific language impiarment: A deficit in phonological
working memory or in long term verbal knowledge? Cortex, 43(6), 769–776.
Cattani, A., Abbot-Smith, K., Farag, R., Krott, A., Arreckx, F., Dennis, I., & Floccia, C. (2014).
How much exposure to English is necessary for a bilingual toddler to perform like a monolin-
gual peer in language tests? International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders,
49(6), 649–671.
Catts, H. W., Fey, M. E., Zhang, X., & Tomblin, J. B. (1999). Language basis of reading and read-
ing disabilities: Evidence from a longitudinal investigation. Scientific Studies of Reading, 3,
331–361.
Claessen, M., Leitão, S., Kane, R., & Williams, C. J. (2013). Phonological processing skills in
specific language impairment. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 15(5),
471–483.
Clahsen, H., Rothweiler, M., Sterner, F., & Chilla, S. (2014). Linguistic markers of specific lan-
guage impairment in bilingual children: The case of verb morphology. Clinical Linguistics &
Phonetics, 28(9), 709–721.
Conti-Ramsden, G. (2008). Heterogeneity of Specific Language Impairment (SLI): Outcomes in
Adolescence. In C. F. Norbury, J. B. Tomblin, & D. V. M. Bishop (Eds.), Understanding devel-
opmental language disorders: From theory to practice (pp. 115–129). New York: Psychology
Press.
Conti-Ramsden, G., & Botting, N. (1999). Classification of children with specific language impair-
ment: Longitudinal considerations. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 42,
1195–1204.
Conti-Ramsden, G., Botting, N., & Faragher, B. (2001). Psycholinguistic markers for specific
language impairment (SLI). Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines,
42(6), 741–748.
Conti-Ramsden, G., St Clair, M. C., Pickles, A., & Durkin, K. (2012). Developmental trajectories
of verbal and nonverbal skills in individuals with a history of specific language impairment:
From childhood to adolescence. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 55(6),
1716–1735.
Crutchley, A., Botting, N., & Conti-Ramsden, G. (1997). Bilingualism and specific language
impairment in children attending language units. European Journal of Disorders of
Communication, 32(2), 267–276.
De Houwer, A., Bornstein, M. H., & Putnick, D. L. (2013). A bilingual–monolingual comparison
of young children’s vocabulary size: Evidence from comprehension and production. Applied
PsychoLinguistics, 35(06), 1189–1211.
Díaz, B., Erdocia, K., de Menezes, R. F., Mueller, J. L., Sebastián-Gallés, N., & Laka, I. (2016,
February). Electrophysiological correlates of second-language syntactic processes are related
to native and second language distance regardless of age of acquisition. Frontiers in Psychology,
7, 133.
Ebbels, S. H., Dockrell, J. E., & van der Lely, H. K. J. (2012). Non-word repetition in adolescents
with specific language impairment (SLI). International Journal of Language & Communication
Disorders, 47(3), 257–273.
Elin-Thordardottir. (2011). The relationship between bilingual exposure and vocabulary develop-
ment. International Journal of Bilingualism, 15(4), 426–445.
Elin-Thordardottir, & Brandeker, M. (2013). The effect of bilingual exposure versus language
impairment on nonword repetition and sentence imitation scores. Journal of Communication
Disorders, 46(1), 1–16.
Engel de Abreu, P. M. J., Cruz-Santos, A., & Puglisi, M. L. (2014). Specific language impairment
in language-minority children from low-income families. International Journal of Language &
Communication Disorders, 49(6), 736–747.
Gathercole, V. C. M. (2007). Miami and North Wales, so far and yet so near: Constructivist account
of morpho-syntactic development in bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingual
Education and Bilingualism, 10(3), 224–247.
Gathercole, V. C. M., & Thomas, E. M. (2009). Bilingual first-language development: Dominant
language takeover, threatened minority language take-up. Bilingualism: Language and
Cognition, 12(2), 213.
Gavarró, A. (2012). Third person clitic production and omission in Romance SLI. In P. Guijarro
Fuentes & P. Larrañaga (Eds.), Pronouns and clitics in early language (pp. 79–104). Berlin/
New York: De Gruyter/Mouton.
Genesee, F., & Nicoladis, E. (2006). Bilingual acquisition. In E. Hoff & M. Shatz (Eds.),
Handobook of language development (pp. 1–34). Oxford: Blackwell.
Gildersleeve-Neumann, C., Kester, E., Davis, B., & Peña, E. D. (2008). English speech sound
development in preschool-aged children from bilingual Spanish-English environments.
Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 39(3), 314–328.
Girbau, D., & Schwartz, R. G. (2007). Non-word repetition in Spanish-speaking children with
specific language impairment (SLI). International Journal of Language & Communication
Disorders, 42(1), 59–75.
Girbau, D., & Schwartz, R. G. (2008). Phonological working memory in Spanish-English bilingual
children with and without specific language impairment. Journal of Communication Disorders,
41(2), 124–145.
Gollan, T. H., & Acenas, L. A. (2004). What is a TOT? Cognate and translation effects on tip-of-
the-tongue states in Spanish–English and Tagalog–English bilinguals. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30, 246–269.
Gollan, T. H., Montoya, R., Fennema-Notestine, C., & Morris, S. (2005). Bilingualism affects
picture naming but not picture classification. Memory and Cognition, 33(7), 1220–1234.
Green, D. W. (1998). Mental control of the bilingual lexico–semantic system. Language &
Cognition, 1, 67–81.
Grice, P. (1975). Studies in the way of words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Gutiérrez-Clellen, V., Simon-Cereijido, G., & Wagner, C. (2008). Bilingual children with language
impairment: A comparison with monolinguals and second language learners. Applied
Gutiérrez-Clellen, V., Simon-Cereijido, G., & Erickson Leone, A. (2009). Codeswitching in bilin-
gual children with specific language impairment. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(1),
91–109.
Hakansson, G., Salameh, E., & Nettelbladt, U. (2003). Measuring language development in bilin-
gual children: Swedish–Arabic children with and without language impairment. Linguistics,
41, 255–288.
Holmström, K., Salameh, E.-K., Nettelbladt, U., & Dahlgren Sandberg, A. (2016). A descriptive
study for lexical organisation of bilingual children with language impairment. International
Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 18, 178–189.
Ivanova, I., & Costa, A. (2008). Does bilingualism hamper lexical access in speech production?
Acta Psychologica, 127(2), 277–288.
Johnson, C. J., Beitchman, J., Young, A., Escobar, M., Atkinson, L., Wilson, B., et al. (1999).
Fourteen-year follow-up of children with and without speech language impairments: Speech
language stability and outcomes. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 42(3),
744–760.
Katsos, N., Andrés Roqueta, C., Clemente Estevan, R. A., & Cummins, C. (2011). Are children
with specific language impairment competent with the pragmatics and logic of quantification?
Kelso, K., Fletcher, J., & Lee, P. (2007). Reading comprehension in children with specific lan-
guage impairment: An examination of two subgroups. International Journal of Language &
King, K., & Fogle, L. (2009). La crianza de niños bilingües: preocupaciones comunes de los padres y las
investigaciones actuales. CAL Digest, Febrero(Febrero), 1–4. Retrieved from https://www.academia.
edu/6821877/La_crianza_de_ni%C3%B1os_biling%C3%BCes_preocupaciones_comunes_
de_los_padres_y_las_investigaciones_actuales
Kohnert, K. (2010). Bilingual children with primary language impairment: Issues: Evidence and
implications for clinical actions. Journal of Communication Disorders, 43(6), 456–473.
Komeili, M., & Marshall, C. R. (2013). Sentence repetition as a measure of morphosyntax in
monolingual and bilingual children. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 27(2), 152–162.
Leonard, L. B. (2014a). Children with specific language impairment and their contribution to the
study of language development. Journal of Child Language, 41(Suppl 1), 38–47.
Leonard, L. B. (2014b). Specific language impairment across languages. Child Development
Perspectives, 8(1), 1–5.
Leonard, L. B. (2015). Specific language impairment (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (MA).
Lewis, P., Simons, G., & Fennig, C. (2013). Ethnologue. Dallas: SIL International.
Lleó, C. (2002). The role of markedness in the acquisition of complex prosodic structures by
German-Spanish bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingualism, 6(3), 291–313.
Lleó, C., & Demuth, K. (1999). Prosodic constraints on the emergence of grammatical morphemes:
Crosslinguistic evidence from Germaninc and Romance languages. In A. Greenhill (Ed.),
BUCLD 23 Proceedings (pp. 407–418).
MacLeod, A. A. N., & McCauley, R. J. (2003). The phonological abilities of bilingual children
with Specific language Impairment: A descriptive analysis. Revue d’Orthophonie et
d’Audiologie, 27(1), 29–44.
Marton, K. (2008). Visuo-spatial processing and executive functions in children with specific lan-
guage impairment. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 43(2),
181–200.
Marton, K., Campanelli, L., Eichorn, N., Scheuer, J., & Yoom, J. (2014). Information processing
and proactive interference in children with and without specific language impairment. Journal
of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 57(1), 106–119.
McArthur, G., & Castles, A. (2013). Phonological processing deficits in specific reading disability
and specific language impairment: Same or different? Journal of Research in Reading, 36(3),
280–302.
Melby-Lervåg, M., & Lervåg, A. (2011). Cross-linguistic transfer of oral language, decoding, pho-
nological awareness and reading comprehension: a meta-analysis of the correlational evidence.
Journal of Research in Reading, 34(1), 114–135.
Messer, D. J., Dockrell, J. E., & Murphy, N. (2004). The relation between naming and literacy in
children with word finding difficulties. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 462–470.
Oller, D. K., Eilers, R. E., Urbano, R., & Cobo-Lewis, A. B. (1997). Development of precursors to
speech in infants exposed to two languages. Journal of Child Language, 24(2), 407–425.
Orgassa, A., & Weerman, F. (2008). Dutch gender in specific language impairment and second
language acquisition. Second Language Research, 24(3), 333–364.
Paradis, J. (2010). Bilingual children’s acquisition of english verb morphology: Effects of lan-
guage exposure, structure complexity, and task type. Language Learning, 60(3), 651–680.
Paradis, J., & Genesee, F. (1996). Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children: Autonomous or inter-
dependent? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 1–25.
Paradis, J., Crago, M., Genesee, F., & Rice, M. L. (2003). French–English bilingual children with
SLI: How do they compare with their monolingual peers? Journal of Speech & Language
Hearing Research, 46(2), 113–127.
Paradis, J., Crago, M., & Genesee, F. (2006). Domain-general versus domain-specific accounts of
specific language impairment: Evidence from bilingual children’s acquisition of object pro-
nouns. Language Acquisition, 13(1), 33–62.
Paradis, J., Tremblay, A., & Crago, M. (2008). Bilingual children’s acquisition of English inflec-
tion: the role of language dominance and task type. In BUCLD 32 Proceedings. Retrieved from
http://www.ualberta.ca/~jparadis/Paradisetal_BUCLD32Proceed.pdf
Peristeri, E., Andreou, M., & Tsimpli, I. (2015). Clitic production in monolingual and bilingual
children with Specific Language Impairment. In Proceedings of the Bi-SLI 2015. Bilingualism
and Specific Language Impairment −2015. Tours (France). Retrieved from http://bisli.sci-
encesconf.org/58423
Pons, F., Andreu Barrachina, L., Sanz-Torrent, M., Buil-Legaz, L., & Lewkowicz, D. J. (2013).
Perception of audio-visual speech synchrony in Spanish-speaking children with and without
specific language impairment. Journal of Child Language, 40(3), 687–700.
Poulin-Dubois, D., Bialystok, E., Blaye, A., Polonia, A., & Yott, J. (2013). Lexical access and
vocabulary development in very young bilinguals. The International Journal of Bilingualism:
Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Linguistic Studies of Language Behavior, 17(1), 57–70.
Ramon-Casas, M., Swingley, D., Sebastián-Gallés, N., & Bosch-Galcerán, L. (2009). Vowel cate-
gorization during word recognition in bilingual toddlers. Cognitive Psychology, 59(1), 96–121.
Rapin, I., & Allen, D. A. (1983). Developmental language disorders. Nosologic considerations. In
V. Kirk (Ed.), Neuropsychology of language, reading and spelling. New York: Academic Press.
Rapin, I., Dunn, M., & Allen, D. A. (2003). Developmental Language Disorders. In S. J. Segalowitz
& I. Rapin (Eds.), Handbook of neuropsychology (2nd ed., Vol. 8, Part II, pp. 593–630).
New York: Elsevier Science.
Rezzonico, S., Chen, X., Cleave, P. L., Greenberg, J., Hipfner-Boucher, K., Johnson, C. J., et al.
(2015). Oral narratives in monolingual and bilingual preschoolers with SLI. International
Rice, M. L. (2016). Specific Language Impairment, nonverbal IQ, attention-deficit/hyperactivity
disorder, autism spectrum disorder, cochlear implants, bilingualism, and dialectal variants:
Defining the boundaries, clarifying clinical conditions, and sorting out causes. Journal of
Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 59, 122–132.
Rice, M. L., Redmond, S. M., & Hoffman, L. (2006). Mean length of utterance in children with
specific language impairment and in younger control children shows concurrent validity and
stable and parallel growth trajectories. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research,
49(4), 793–808.
Rice, M. L., Wexler, K., & Hershberger, S. (1998). Tense over time: The longitudinal course of
tense acquisition in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language
and Hearing Research, 41(6), 1412–1431.
Roberts, P. M., Garcia, L. J., Desrochers, A., & Hernandez, D. (2002). English performance of
proficient bilingual adults on the Boston Naming Test. Aphasiology, 16(4), 635–645.
Rothweiler, M., Chilla, S., & Clahsen, H. (2011). Subject–verb agreement in specific language
impairment: A study of monolingual and bilingual German-speaking children. Bilingualism:
Language and Cognition, 15(01), 39–57.
Sahlén, B., Reuterskiöld-Wagner, C., Nettelbladt, U., & Radeborg, K. (1999). Nonword repetition
in children with language impairment: Pitfalls and possibilities. International Journal of
Language & Communication Disorders, 34, 337–352.
Salameh, E.-K., Håkansson, G., & Nettelbladt, U. (2004). Developmental perspectives on bilin-
gual Swedish-Arabic children with and without language impairment: A longitudinal study.
International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 39(1), 65–90.
Sandgren, O., & Holmström, K. (2015). Executive functions in mono- and bilingual children with
language impairment – Issues for speech-language pathology. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(July),
1–5.
Sanz-Torrent, M., Aguilar-Mediavilla, E., Serrat Sellabona, E., & Serra-Raventós, M. (2001). Verb
type production in Catalan and Spanish children with SLI. In M. Almgrem, A. Barreña, M. J.
Ezeizabarrena, I. Idiazábal, & B. Macwhinney (Eds.), Research ono child language acquisition
(Vol. II, pp. 909–922). Somerville: Cascadilla Press.
Sanz-Torrent, M., Andreu Barrachina, L., Badia, I., & Sidera, F. (2011). Argument omissions in
preschool Catalan and Spanish speaking children with SLI. Infancia y Aprendizaje, 34(1),
49–66.
Sanz-Torrent, M., Badia, I., & Serra-Raventós, M. (2008a). Contributions from bilingual language
impairment in Catalan and Spanish to the understanding of typical and pathological language
acquisition. In C. Pérez Vidal, M. Juan-Garau, & A. Bel (Eds.), A portrait of the young in the
new multilingual Spain (pp. 135–158). Clevedon: Multilingual matters.
Sanz-Torrent, M., Serrat Sellabona, E., Andreu Barrachina, L., & Serra-Raventós, M. (2008b).
Verb morphology in Catalan and Spanish in children with SLI: A developmental study. Clinical
Linguistics and Phonetics, 22(6), 459–474.
Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2010). Bilingual language acquisition: Where does the difference lie?
Human Development, 53(5), 245–255.
Sebastián-Gallés, N., Echeverría, S., & Bosch-Galcerán, L. (2005). The influence of initial expo-
sure on lexical representation: Comparing early and simultaneous bilinguals. Journal of
Memory and Language, 52(2), 240–255.
Serra-Raventós, M., Aguilar-Mediavilla, E., & Sanz-Torrent, M. (2002). Evolución del perfil pro-
ductivo en el trastorno del lenguaje. Revista de Logopedia, Foniatría y Audiología, 22(2),
77–89.
Spoelman, M., & Bol, G. W. (2012). The use of subject–verb agreement and verb argument struc-
ture in monolingual and bilingual children with specific language impairment. Clinical
Stothard, S. E., Snowling, M. J., Bishop, D. V. M., Chipchase, B. B., & Kaplan, C. A. (1998).
Language-impaired preschoolers: A follow-up into adolescence. Journal of Speech, Language,
and Hearing Research, 41(2), 407.
Tay, M. W. J. (1989). Code switching and code mixing as a communicative strategy in multilingual
discourse. World Englishes, 8(3), 407–417.
Valera-Pozo, M., Buil-Legaz, L., Rigo-Carratalà, E., Casero-Martínez, A., & Aguilar-Mediavilla,
E. (2015). Habilidades sociales en preadolescentes con trastorno específico del lenguaje.
Foniatría y Audiología: Revista de Logopedia.
van Daal, J., Verhoeven, L., & van Balkom, H. (2009). Cognitive predictors of language develop-
ment in children with specific language impairment (SLI). International Journal of Language
& Communication Disorders, 44(5), 639–655.
Vandewalle, E., Boets, B., Ghesquière, P., & Zink, I. (2010). Who is at risk for dyslexia?
Phonological processing in five-to seven-year-old dutch-speaking children with SLI. Scientific
Studies of Reading, 14(1), 58–84.
Vihman, M. M., Thierry, G., Lum, J. A. G., Keren-Portnoy, T., & Martin, P. (2007). Onset of word
form recognition in English, Welsh, and English–Welsh bilingual infants. Applied
Vissers, C., Koolen, S., Hermans, D., Scheper, A., & Knoors, H. (2015). Executive functioning in
children with specific language impairment. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(1574), 1–8.
Westman, M., Korkman, M., Mickos, A., & Byring, R. (2008). Language profiles of monolingual
and bilingual Finnish preschool children at risk for language impairment. International Journal
of Language & Communication Disorders, 43(6), 699–711.
Windsor, J., & Kohnert, K. (2009). Processing speed, attention, and perception: Implications for
child language disorders. In R. G. Schwartz (Ed.), The handbook of child language disorders
(pp. 445–461). New York: Psychology Press.
Zourou, F., Ecalle, J., Magnam, A., & Sanchez, M. (2010). The fragile nature of phonological
awareness in children with specific language impairment: Evidence from literacy development.
Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 26(3), 347–358.
Bilingual and Monolingual Children’s
Patterns of Syntactic Variation: Variable
Clitic Placement in Spanish
Naomi L. Shin, Pablo E. Requena, and Anita Kemp
Abstract This study addresses whether monolingual and bilingual Spanish-

speaking children differ in their acquisition of grammar by examining direct object
clitic placement in children’s narratives. Specifically, we analyze contexts where
either proclisis or enclisis is possible (Lo voy a ver ~ Voy a verlo). Corpus studies of
adult monolingual Spanish show that proclisis is more frequent than enclisis.
Furthermore, variation between proclisis and enclisis is constrained by linguistic
factors, such as verb lexeme. We hypothesize that if bilingual children’s Spanish
syntax is influenced by English, they will (i) produce higher rates of enclisis, and
(ii) display decreased sensitivity to factors that constrain variation. One previous
study of bilingual children suggests that English influences Spanish clitic place-
ment. Pérez-Leroux, Cuza, and Thomas (Biling Lang Cogn 14(02):221–232, 2011)
asked children to repeat sentences with proclisis and enclisis, and found that bilin-
gual children reordered sentences with proclisis, and produced enclisis instead. In
contrast, research on adult bilinguals’ production of proclisis/enclisis suggests no
impact of English on Spanish. In fact, bilingual adults’ proclisis rates are similar to
those of monolingual adults, and the same linguistic factors constrain variation
between proclisis and enclisis among monolinguals and bilinguals alike (e.g.
Gutiérrez M, Hisp Res J 9(4):299–313, 2008; Peace M, Southwest J Linguist
31(1):131–160, 2013). Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, no previous
research has examined variable clitic placement in bilingual children’s naturalistic
production data.
N.L. Shin (*)

University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
e-mail: naomishin@unm.edu
P.E. Requena
University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA
e-mail: pablo.requena@umontana.edu
A. Kemp
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
e-mail: anita.k.rao@gmail.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_3
64 N.L. Shin et al.
Our study aims to address this gap in the literature, and asks whether bilingual
children produce higher rates of enclisis than monolingual children do, which is
predicted if indeed bilinguals transfer English word order into Spanish. Furthermore,
we ask whether monolingual and bilingual children are similar to each other and to
adults with respect to the tendency to pair proclisis with certain verb lexemes and
enclisis with others. To address these questions, third person direct object clitics
were extracted from narratives/sociolinguistic interviews with (i) 17 Spanish-
English bilingual children of Mexican descent in the U.S. and (ii) 43 monolingual
children in Mexico. All child participants were between 6 and 11 years old. Our
results show no differences between monolingual and bilingual children, neither in
overall rates of enclisis, nor in rates with particular verb lexemes. Furthermore, data
from 21 adults from the same community as the bilingual children suggest that
children match patterns of use found in their community. We interpret this as evi-
dence that children learn probabilistic patterns of variation by attending to distribu-
tional tendencies in the input. We also discuss how our findings contribute to the
current and pressing need to find ways to differentiate between typical and atypical
bilingual language development in contexts of language dominance shift.
Keywords Bilingual child language • Direct object clitics • Acquisition of Spanish

• Child syntax • Bilingualism
1 Introduction
Over- and under-identification of language disorders is all too common in the bilin-
gual population (Armon-Lottem 2012; Bedore and Peña 2008; Restrepo and
Gutiérrez-Clellen 2012). One reason for this problem is that both monolingual chil-
dren with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing bilingual
children appear to diverge from typically developing monolingual children in similar
ways, sometimes omitting grammatical structures in contexts where they are required
or producing forms that do not adhere to monolingual norms (Armon-Lottem 2012).
Such similarities between children with LI and bilingual children make it difficult to
detect SLI in the bilingual population. Children who experience language dominance
shift from a home language to the language of the community are particularly at risk
for being misdiagnosed because we still lack information about typical language
development in contexts of language dominance shift (Bedore and Peña 2008).
A shift in language dominance is the norm for Spanish-speaking children in the
U.S. Children who speak Spanish at home quickly become English-dominant bilin-
guals not long after starting school (Anderson 1999, 2001, 2012; Merino 1982,
1983; Silva-Corvalán 1994; Rivera-Mills 2012; Veltman 1990). Research has shown
that children who undergo such language dominance shift experience some first
language attrition (Anderson 1999, 2001, 2012; Polinsky 2011) and/or do not
acquire some of the features that are typically acquired by monolingual children
(Polinsky 1997; Montrul 2002; Rothman 2009, cf. Putnam and Sánchez 2013). How
can atypical language development be detected among these bilingual children
Bilingual and Monolingual Children’s Patterns of Syntactic Variation: Variable Clitic… 65
whose Spanish language development might differ from that of monolingual chil-
dren? Scholars have begun to address this issue, as evidenced by the creation of the
Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (BESA) (Peña et al. 2014) and research
focusing on SLI in Spanish-English bilingual children in the U.S. (Anderson and
Marquez 2009; Castilla-Earls et al. 2015; Jacobson 2012). We hope to make a mod-
est contribution to this growing body of literature, which ultimately should help
establish a baseline of typical Spanish-English bilingual language development.
The current study focuses on typically developing, Spanish-English bilingual
children in the U.S., and examines their use of direct object clitics. Object clitics
have been deemed “vulnerable grammatical morphemes” (Bedore and Leonard
2001, p. 922), and are thus suitable for research that aims to advance our ability to
detect SLI. Indeed, difficulty with object clitics has been found for bilingual chil-
dren (Castilla-Earls et al. 2015; Montrul 2008; Pérez-Leroux et al. 2009; Paradis
et al. 2006), child second language learners (Grüter 2004, 2005; Grüter and Crago
2012), and children with SLI (Bedore and Leonard 2001; Grüter 2004 2005;
Castilla-Earls et al. 2015; Jacobson 2012; Leonard and Bortolini 1998; Leonard
et al. 1992; Morgan et al. 2009; Paradis et al. 2006). This body of research suggests
that bilingual children, second language learners, and/or language impaired chil-
dren omit clitics more often than typically developing monolingual children do, and
sometimes struggle with agreement features, producing gender and/or number mis-
matches between the clitic and its referent. Thus, object clitics have proven useful
as a diagnostic for detecting SLI.
Although the literature on object clitics is vast, there has not yet been any empiri-
cal research investigating a possible connection between SLI and variable clitic
placement, which in the case of Spanish refers to the option of placing the clitic
before or after the [finite + nonfinite verb] construction. Examples of object clitics
in preverbal position (‘proclisis’) are in (1), and an example in postverbal position
(‘enclisis’) is in (2).
(1) (a) Carlos lo estaba vie-ndo

Carlos him.acc.m3sg be.ipfv.3sg looking-prog
‘Carlos was looking at him.’
(b) La voy a ve-r mañana.
her.acc.f3sg go.prs.1sg to see-inf tomorrow
‘I’m going to see her tomorrow.’
(2) Quiero ve-r= la
want.prs.1sg see-inf=her.acc.f3sg
‘I want to see her.’
Analyses of the use of proclisis and enclisis in discourse reveal a variable, but
probabilistically constrained and structured, grammatical pattern. To illustrate such
structured variation, consider, for example, word order in Spanish. Subjects usually
appear before verbs, as in yo voy ‘I go’, but sometimes subjects occur after the verb,
as in voy yo. This variation between placing the subject before or after the verb is
probabilistically constrained by factors such as whether the subject is a lexical noun
phrase or a pronoun (Erker et al. Forthcoming). In usage-based formulations of
grammar, which include probabilistic information about the likelihood of form-form
66 N.L. Shin et al.
and form-meaning pairs, patterns of constrained variation are considered part of

grammar (Bybee 2010; Croft 2010). Such variable patterns of grammar can be con-
trasted with categorical patterns, such as the rule that determiners obligatorily occur
before nouns in English, as in ‘the door’, rather than *‘door the’. Inquiries focusing
on categorical patterns of grammar have dominated the field of language acquisition.
Consider research on subject expression. Resting on the assumption that there are
two types of languages, those that allow subject omission (‘pro drop’) and those that
categorically require subject expression (‘non-pro-drop’), acquisitionists have inves-
tigated how children figure out whether their language is pro-drop or not (Hyams
1986; Valian 1991; Yang 2002, 2010). Yet, patterns that are often assumed to be cat-
egorical are in fact variable, including subject expression in English (e.g. Torres
Cacoullos and Travis 2015). The recent and growing attention to grammatical varia-
tion has important repercussions for studies of language acquisition. If we recognize
that many grammatical patterns are variable, then we must ask how children acquire
those patterns. Scholars have begun to pursue this question (Hudson Kam 2015;
Miller 2013; Shin 2016; Smith et al. 2007, 2013), but few have focused on bilingual
children’s acquisition of variable grammatical patterns (cf. Shin and Buren 2016).
The increasing interest in variable grammatical patterns will be of particular
interest to researchers who study SLI. There is reason to believe that variable fea-
tures of grammar in general may present a further obstacle during language acquisi-
tion. Studies by Karen Miller, for example, have demonstrated that the more
variation there is in the input, the longer it takes children to learn features of gram-
mar, such as number agreement (e.g. Miller 2012, 2013; Miller and Schmidt 2012).
Regarding object clitics in particular, there is reason to hypothesize that children
with SLI may struggle with variable clitic placement. Jacobson (2012, p. 32) found
that bilingual children with SLI omit clitics more often in postverbal (e.g. ya termi-
naron de … soplar la ‘they already finished… blowing it’) than in preverbal posi-
tion (e.g. ¿Qué hicieron con la vela? – La soplaron. ‘What did they do with the
candle? –They blew it.’). This suggests that producing clitics in postverbal position
is an especially difficult task for children with SLI. In contexts where both proclisis
and enclisis are possible, will children with SLI rely primarily on proclisis? By
examining variable clitic placement among typically developing bilingual children,
the current study sets the stage for future research to investigate whether children
with SLI diverge from the patterns we find.
We focus on third person direct object clitic pronouns lo, la, los, and las in [finite
+ nonfinite verb] constructions where clitics may appear in either preverbal or post-
verbal position. There is mounting evidence that as soon as monolingual children can
produce such constructions, their variable clitic placement patterns mirror those of
adults (Requena 2015). Do bilingual children differ from monolingual children in
this regard? In an experimental study, Pérez-Leroux et al. (2011) found evidence of
an increased preference for enclisis among Spanish-English bilingual children, sug-
gesting transfer of English word order. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, no
previous research has examined variable clitic placement in bilingual children’s nat-
uralistic production data. Our study aims to address this gap in the literature, and asks
whether bilingual children produce higher rates of enclisis than monolingual
children do, which is predicted if indeed bilinguals transfer English word order into
Spanish. Furthermore, we ask whether monolingual and bilingual children are simi-
lar to each other and to adults with respect to the tendency to pair proclisis with cer-
tain verb lexemes and enclisis with others (Davies 1995). To address these questions,
third person direct object clitics were extracted from narratives/sociolinguistic inter-
views with (i) 17 Spanish-English bilingual children of Mexican descent in the U.S.
and (ii) 43 monolingual children in Mexico. All child participants were between 6
and 11 years old. Our results show no differences between monolingual and bilingual
children, neither in overall rates of enclisis, nor in rates with particular verb lexemes.
Furthermore, data from 21 adults from the same community as the bilingual children
suggest that children match patterns of use found in their community. We interpret
this as evidence that children learn probabilistic patterns of variation by attending to
distributional tendencies in the input. We also discuss how our findings contribute to
the current and pressing need to find ways to differentiate between typical and atypi-
cal bilingual language development in contexts of language dominance shift.
2 Previous Research
2.1 Variable Clitic Placement in Monolingual Adult Spanish
The first corpus studies of variable clitic placement analyzed written texts (Colburn
1928; Keniston 1937; Myhill 1988; Spaulding 1927). Davies (1995) constitutes the
first large-scale study of variable clitic placement encompassing not only written,
but also spoken, corpora from ten different Spanish-speaking countries. One broad
generalization to emerge from Davies’ (1995, p. 373) study is that in present day
spoken Spanish proclisis is more frequent than enclisis. In addition, the study
showed that rates of proclisis and enclisis differ according to the finite verb in the
construction. When certain verb lexemes like estar ‘to be’ appear as the finite verb
of [finite + nonfinite verb] constructions, rates of enclisis are very low. That is,
examples like lo estoy leyendo ‘I’m reading it’ with the clitic placed before estar,
are common, whereas estoy leyéndolo ‘I’m reading it’ with the clitic after estar are
infrequent. But with other verb lexemes, such as tratar de, enclisis is common; in
fact, examples like trato de verlo ‘I try to see him’ are more common than lo trato
de ver ‘I try to see him’. Figure 1 displays the continuum-like distribution of enclisis
across verb lexemes that appear in finite position in the [finite + nonfinite verb]
construction in Davies’ study.
Since Davies (1995), a number of studies have verified that the variation between
enclisis and proclisis in Spanish is guided by the verb lexeme (Navarro Correa 1990;
Requena 2015; Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos 2014; Sinnott and Smith 2007;
Troya Déniz and Pérez Martín 2011; Zabalegui 2008). Moreover, the consistency
across dialects of particular pairings of verb lexemes with either proclisis or enclisis
has opened avenues to explanation. For example, scholars have noted a correlation
between high frequency lexemes and proclisis. In their study of Mexican Spanish,
68 N.L. Shin et al.
100%
90%
80%
70%
Rate of enclisis
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Fig. 1 Rate of enclisis by verb lexeme in spoken Spanish (Adapted from Davies 1995: 374)
Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos (2014) find low rates of enclisis in constructions
with highly frequent verb lexemes, as in [ir a ‘go to’ + Infinitive] and [estar ‘be’ +
Gerund]. The pairing of frequent lexemes with proclisis rather than enclisis is inter-
preted as an outcome of grammaticalization (Hopper and Traugott 2003): verbs
with more grammaticalized meanings/functions form a unit with the non-finite form
due to increased frequency of use (a process known as chunking, cf. Bybee 2010;
Torres Cacoullos 1999). This, in turn, results in a strong tendency for clitics to
appear preverbally, as they do with single finite verbs. Supporting the notion that
grammaticalized verbs promote proclisis, while non-grammaticalized verbs pro-
mote enclisis, Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos (2014) and Requena (2015) report
that different uses of a polysemous verb may exhibit different rates of enclisis.
Consider ir a ‘go to’ in examples (3) and (4).
(3) Interviewer: ¿Está embarazada?

be.prs.3sg pregnant
‘Is she pregnant?’
Child: Sí va a da-r, lo va a
Yes go.prs.3sg to give-inf it.acc.m3sg go.prs.3sg to
‘Yes she is going to give [birth], she’s going to have it in December.’
tener en diciembre.
have-inf in December [U.S._Child_501]
(4) y su papá fue a acompaña-r= la
and her dad go. pst .3 sg to accompany-
inf=her.acc.f3sg
‘And her dad went to accompany her.’
[Mexico_Child_327]
In (3) the underlined tokens of ir (va a ‘go to’) are future tense markers: the
woman will have a baby in December. In contrast, in (4) the underlined token fue a
‘went to’ denotes movement in space: the father traveled in order to be with his
daughter. Thus, ir a in (3) is grammaticalized, as it has a grammatical function of
conveying future tense. In (4) ir a is not grammaticalized and instead retains its
original meaning of motion. Rates of enclisis are higher in contexts in which ir a
means motion as compared contexts in which ir a is grammaticalized (32%, 7%,
respectively in Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos 2014; and 23%, 9%, respectively in
Requena’s 2015 study of Argentine Spanish). In summary, the specific verb lexeme
and the degree to which its meaning is grammatical has a strong impact on clitic
placement in adult Spanish speakers.
2.2 A
cquisition of Variable Clitic Placement: Monolingual
Children
Children produce object clitics before age 2;0 (Aguado Orea 2000; Blasco Asnar
2002; Fantini 1985; Hernández Pina 1990; López Ornat et al. 1994; Montrul et al.
2006). They also learn very early to place clitics before finite verbs and after non-
finite verbs in contexts where these positions are obligatory (Bel 2001 in Montrul
2004, p. 113; Sebastián and Slobin 1994). At the same time, young, typically
developing Spanish-speaking children sometimes omit clitics when they are syn-
tactically required (Aguado Orea 2000, p. 82ff.; Castilla and Pérez-Leroux 2010;
Castilla et al. 2008; Fujino and Sano 2002; Mateu 2015; Reglero and Ticio 2003;
but also see Wexler et al. 2004). Regarding clitic position, as soon as children
produce [finite + nonfinite verb] constructions, they also produce tokens of procli-
sis and enclisis (Rodriguez-Mondoñedo et al. 2004). In other words, proclisis and
enclisis constructions emerge at the same time. Furthermore, and most relevant to
the current study, young children appear to follow the same patterns found among
adults with respect to variation between proclisis and enclisis in contexts where
either option is grammatical. Children as young as 3;0 show a preference for pro-
clisis (Eisenchlas 2003), and, like adults, children’s clitic placement preferences
are guided by specific verb lexemes (Requena 2015). For example, children ages
2;2–5;3 and their caregivers alike produce more proclisis with ir a ‘go to’ +
Infinitive when ir conveys a grammaticalized meaning (Requena and Miller 2014).
In summary, previous research suggests that typically developing monolingual
children produce constructions with proclisis and enclisis very early and also con-
verge on the distributional tendencies that characterize the variation between pro-
clisis and enclisis in the input.
70 N.L. Shin et al.
2.3 Bilinguals and Variable Clitic Placement
We now turn to the question of whether bilinguals differ from monolinguals with
respect to variable clitic placement. First, given that direct object pronouns always
follow the verb in English, we might hypothesize that Spanish-English bilinguals
will transfer English word order into Spanish and produce higher rates of enclisis
than monolingual Spanish speakers do. A confirmation of this hypothesis remains
elusive, however, as previous research has yielded conflicting results. On the one
hand, corpus studies of Spanish-English bilingual adults suggest that their usage
patterns mirror those of monolinguals. On the other hand, experimental research on
bilingual children in Canada indicates that bilingual children evidence an increased
preference for enclisis. Below we review the corpus studies followed by the experi-
mental research.
Corpus studies of adult Spanish suggest that rates of enclisis and proclisis are
similar among bilingual and monolingual adults, as demonstrated by Fig. 2.
Averaging over the rates of enclisis in Fig. 2, the rate for adults in Latin America
is 25%, and the rate for adults in the U.S. is 28% (Latin America: Gudmestad 2006;
Requena and Miller 2014; Requena 2015; Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos 2014;
U.S.: Darwich 2007; Gutiérrez 2008; Gutiérrez and Silva-Corvalán 1993; Peace
2013; Silva-Corvalán 1994). The similarity between rates in Latin America and
rates in the U.S. suggests that knowledge of English does not result in increased
enclisis among bilinguals in the U.S. Bilingual and monolingual adults are similar
Rate of enclisis Rate of proclisis

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Studies of adults in Latin America Studies of adults in the U.S.
Fig. 2 Rates of enclisis/proclisis in varieties of Spanish spoken by adults in Latin America and the
U.S (Notes: Mexico-a: Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos 2014; Mexico-b: Requena and Miller
2014; Argentina: Requena 2015; Caracas: Gudmestad 2006; Houston: Gutiérrez 2008; Los
Angeles: Gutiérrez and Silva-Corvalán 1993; Silva-Corvalán 1994:129, also see Gutiérrez
2008:308; Massachusetts: Peace 2013; New York City: Darwich 2007)
not only in terms of overall rates of enclisis, but also patterns of use with particular
verb lexemes. Like monolingual adults, bilingual adults in Houston, Los Angeles,
and Massachusetts produce low rates of enclisis with ir a ‘go to’ (13%, 7%, and
11%, respectively) and estar ‘be’ (12%, 9%, and 11%, respectively) and estar
‘be’(12%, 9%, and 11%, respectively), and higher rates of enclisis with querer
‘want’ (50%, 55%, 41%, respectively), tener que ‘have to’ (43%, 37%, 57%, respec-
tively), empezar ‘start to’ (36%, 29%, 66%, respectively), and deber ‘must’ (44%,
62%, 41%, respectively) (Houston: Gutiérrez 2008; Los Angeles: Gutiérrez and
Silva-Corvalán 1993; Silva-Corvalán 1994:129, also see Gutiérrez 2008:308;
Massachusetts: Peace 2013).
In contrast to the conclusion drawn from research on adult bilinguals in the U.S.,
Pérez-Leroux et al.’s (2011) study of Spanish-English bilingual children in Canada
suggests that knowledge of English results in an increased preference for enclisis.
The children in this study were between 3 and 8 years old and were classified as
either sequential bilinguals, who learned English after age 3;0, or simultaneous
bilinguals, who were either born in Canada or the U.S. or arrived before age 3;0.
Twenty children were given an elicited imitation task that was first used by
Eisenchlas (2003) with monolingual children. For this task, children repeated eight
target sentences containing either proclisis, as in La princesa Jazmín lo puede ver
esta noche ‘Princess Jasmine can see him tonight’, or enclisis, as in Por la tarde
Aladín quiere darme un caramelo ‘In the afternoon, Aladdin wants to give me a
candy.’ Of the eight sentences, four contained direct object clitics lo ‘him’ and la
‘her’; the other four contained indirect object clitics me ‘me’ and le ‘to him/to her’.
Also, the finite verbs used in the target items were forms of either querer ‘want’ or
poder ‘may/can’. For 25% of the contexts that contained proclisis, the bilingual
children repositioned the clitics into enclisis. Although the authors do not provide
specific examples of sentences that the children reordered into enclisis, an example
might be something like the following: upon hearing La linda sirenita la quiere
invitar esta noche, they perhaps produced La linda sirenita quiere invitarla esta
noche. Given that the monolingual children in Eisenchlas’s (2003: 203) study repo-
sitioned from proclisis to enclisis only 6% of the time, the bilinguals’ 25% reposi-
tioning rate supports Pérez-Leroux et al.’s (2011, p. 230) conclusion that “word
order preferences are affected by English in bilingual children.”
The corpus studies of adult bilinguals and Pérez-Leroux et al.’s (2011) study of
child bilinguals present a puzzle. The former show no evidence of impact from
English and instead suggest that bilingual and monolingual adults produce enclisis
at similar rates. In contrast, Pérez-Leroux et al.’s (2011) study suggests that knowl-
edge of English results in an increased preference for enclisis. This discrepancy may
be due, in part, to methodological differences: the adult bilingual studies have
focused on corpora of naturalistic production data, whereas the bilingual child
language study was experimental. Thus, the need for a corpus study of bilingual
child language is clear. Furthermore, as the only two-verb lexemes included in
Pérez-Leroux et al.’s (2011) study were querer and poder, we do not know whether
bilingual children’s rates of enclisis vary across particular verb lexemes. Our study
fills this lacuna in the literature, and asks the following research questions:
72 N.L. Shin et al.
1 . Do bilingual children differ from monolingual children in their rate of enclisis?

2. Do bilingual children differ from monolingual children in their use of enclisis
with particular verb constructions?
3. Does children’s use of enclisis match that of the adults in their community?
3 Methods
3.1 Participants
The primary participants for the current study are 17 Spanish-English bilingual chil-
dren of Mexican descent, ages 6;0–11;9 years old (mean age 9;1). These children
reside in the U.S. and are part of a community of farm workers of Mexican descent
who travel to Montana each summer to pick cherries. For more detailed descriptions
of this community, see Villa et al. (2014) and Shin and Buren (2016). We compare
these U.S. children’s direct object clitic placement patterns to those found among (i)
21 adults from their same community of farm workers (10 monolingual, 11 bilin-
gual); and (ii) 43 monolingual children in Mexico, ages 6;3–11;9 (mean age 9;1).
3.2 Data Compilation and Coding
Sociolinguistic interviews were conducted with the children and adults. The chil-
dren were also asked to tell stories and to narrate a picture book in a no-shared-
knowledge context, that is, the researcher told the children she was unfamiliar with
the pictures, and she did not look at the book while the children narrated. Each
interview was transcribed and checked for accuracy by at least one additional
transcriber.
We then extracted from the interviews all contexts in which third person (3P)
direct object clitics occurred in preverbal or postverbal position where either option
was possible, as in (1) and (2) above. The following is a list of criteria for including
and excluding tokens.
1. Include accusative case only: Only accusative 3p direct object clitics lo, la, los,
and las were included. Cases of indirect object clitics le/les were excluded even
if they occurred in direct object position and were thus instances of leísmo
(where indirect object pronouns le/les are used instead of lo/la/los/las), as in
example (5).
(5) Nada más que ahorita le estuvimos todos cuida-ndo

nothing more that now him/her.dat.3sg be.pst.1pl all tak-ing.prog care
‘Only that we were all just taking care of him/her.’
[Mexico_Child_207]
2. Include two nonfinite verbs: We included cases in which there was a finite verb
followed by two nonfinite verbs (1 and 2, respectively), as in (6).
(6) lo tenemos que volve-r1 a mete-r2

it.acc.m3sg have.prs1pl to return- inf to insert- inf
‘We have to insert it again.’
[Mexico_Child_111]
3. Include with intervening material: We included tokens with intervening material,

as in (7), where discourse marker dizque, which we translate here as ‘apparently,’
occurs between the finite verb empezó and the construction with the enclitic lo.
Another example with intervening material is provided in (8), where subject uno
occurs between the finite verb sabe and the enclitic lo.
(7) empezó a dizque cura-r= lo

start.pst.3sg to apparently heal-inf=him.acc.m3sg
‘he started to apparently heal him’
[Mexico_Child_318]
(8) Si no sabe uno controla-r= lo
if neg know.prs.3sg one control-inf=it.acc.m3sg
‘If one doesn’t know how to control it.’
[U.S._Child_9]
Although we included cases with two nonfinite verbs and also cases with inter-
vening material, as in examples (6)–(8) above, we excluded cases in which both
conditions held, that is, when there was intervening material and two nonfinite
verbs, as in (9).
(9) estaba la rana , trata-ndo1 de busca-r2=los

be.imp.3sg the frog try-ing. prog1 of look- inf2.for=them.acc.m3pl
‘The frog was trying to look’ for them.
[Mexico_Child_204]
We suspect that in cases like (9) the presence of two finite verbs and intervening
material increases the distance between the finite verb and the clitic to such an
extent that proclisis may no longer be an option.
4. Exclude double object clitics: We excluded all tokens of double object clitics, which
were usually dative + accusative clitics, as in (10). Even though double object clitics
can appear preverbally and postverbally, they differ from single clitics in terms of
overall rates of enclisis (Davies 1995), and are likely prone to constraints associated
with the dative clitic. Thus, here we excluded such cases, replicating previous
approaches (Requena 2015; Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos 2014).
(10) pensó que se la iban a come-r.

think.pst.3sg that se.dat.3pl her.acc.f3sg go.ipfv.3pl to eat-inf
‘She thought that they were going to eat her (themselves)’.
[Mexico_Child_111]
74 N.L. Shin et al.
5. Exclude English verb: One case of enclisis occurred with kickar, an English verb
‘kick’, that appeared with Spanish morphology (11). It is possible that code
switching increases the likelihood of enclisis, but with only one token this hypoth-
esis cannot be tested in the current data set, and so we excluded this example.
(11) porque unos veces yo ‘stoy a la goli y gano los. . .estos son los golie posts y estos son
‘la pelota y cuando los kick it, ‘cupamos a try kickar= lo pa’tras.” [U.S._Child_102]
‘because sometimes I’m in the soccer field and win the… these are the goal posts
and these are the ball and when [I/you] kick it, we try to try to kick=it back.’
6. Exclude clitic repeated in preverbal and postverbal position: If the clitic appeared
in both preverbal and postverbal position, as in (12), the token was excluded.
(12) No, porque no lo quiso toca-r= lo

neg because neg it.acc.m3sg want.pst.3sg touch-inf=it.acc.m3sg
‘No, because he didn’t want to touch it.’
[Mexico_Child_206]
This process of data extraction yielded a total of 56 tokens for the bilingual children,
112 tokens for the monolingual children, and 140 tokens for the adults.
Each token was coded for (i) whether the pronoun appeared in preverbal (proclisis)
or postverbal position (enclisis), and (ii) the finite verb lexeme that occurred in the
construction. Constructions with ir a ‘go to’ were coded as either grammaticalized, as
in (3), or not grammaticalized, as in (4). In the majority of cases there was only one
nonfinite verb in each construction, as in (13), where the finite verb is querer.
(13) la querían agarra-r

her.acc.f3sg want.ipfv.3pl grab-inf
‘they wanted to grab her.’
[Mont_104]
For the tokens that had two nonfinite verbs following the finite verb, we followed
Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos’s (2014, p. 525) method of choosing which verb
would be coded as the relevant one: In cases of proclisis, we selected the finite verb,
and in cases of enclisis we selected the first nonfinite verb (as this one forms the periph-
rasis with the second nonfinite verb). For instance, tener was coded as the relevant verb
in example (14), whereas seguir was coded as the relevant verb in example (15).
(14) lo tenemos que volve-r a mete-r

it.acc.m3sg have. prs .1 pl to return-inf to insert-inf
‘we have to insert it again’
[Mexico_Child_111]
(15) Y luego este, fueron, siguie-ndo buscá-ndo= la
and then um go.pst.3pl keep- prog seek. prog=it.acc.f3sg
‘And then um, they went, kept on looking for her.’
[Mexico_Child_521]
Once all 308 tokens were coded for verb lexeme, we conducted analyses to determine
whether the participant groups differed in their overall rate of enclisis, as well as
their rate of enclisis with particular verb lexemes.
4 Results
4.1 Rate of Enclisis/Proclisis
To answer our first research question regarding whether bilingual children differ
from monolingual children in their overall rate of enclisis, we performed bivariate
analyses comparing rates of enclisis. First, we examined the U.S. adults’ rates.
Contrary to predictions that increased knowledge of English results in increased
enclisis, the monolingual adults produced higher rates of enclisis than the bilingual
adults (39%, 27%, respectively). This difference, however, was not significant
[X2(1,1) = 2.43, p = .12]; therefore, we combined the monolingual and bilingual
adults into one ‘Adults-U.S.’ group for the analyses presented below. Figure 3 shows
the rates of enclisis in the combined Adults-U.S. group and in the two groups of
children (‘Children-Mexico’ and ‘Children-U.S.’). We also include figures for
adults in Mexico reported in Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos (2014). For exposi-
tory purposes we present both the rate of enclisis and the rate of proclisis (gray bars)
for each group. For instance, the children in Mexico produced enclisis at a rate of
29% and proclisis at a rate of 71%.
enclisis proclisis
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Children-Mexico Adults-Mexico† Children-U.S. Adults-U.S.††
Fig. 3 Rates of enclisis and proclisis by participant group (†Note: the figures reported for adults in
Mexico come from Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos (2014). †† Adults-U.S. group includes 10
monolingual and 11 bilingual adults)
76 N.L. Shin et al.
As found in previous research, results in Fig. 3 show that proclisis is the more
common option than enclisis in present day Spanish, with rates ranging from 63 to
71% among the participants in our study. Our findings for the U.S. adults under-
score previous studies showing that the preference for proclisis remains, even for
speakers in the U.S. (e.g. Gutiérrez 2008; Peace 2013). Figure 3 also shows that the
children in the U.S. produced a higher rate of enclisis than the children in Mexico
did (34%, 29%, respectively), but that difference was not significant [X2(1,1) = .51,
p = .48]. The children’s enclisis rates were nearly identical to those of the adults in
their community (Mexico children and adults: 29%, 27%, respectively; U.S. chil-
dren and adults: 34%, 33%, respectively). Given the nearly identical rates between
children and adults from their same community, it is not surprising that there was no
significant difference between the children in U.S. and the adults in the U.S. [X2(1,1)
= .02, p = .89].
4.2 Rate of Enclisis with Particular Verb Lexemes
We now turn to our second research question regarding whether bilingual children
differ from monolingual children in terms of clitic placement with particular verb
lexemes in [finite + nonfinite verb] constructions. We also address our third research
question, which was whether children match patterns found among adults from
their same community. In Table 1 we present rates of enclisis with specific verb
lexemes: estar, ir, querer, tener que, and poder. Note that we only report results for
the verb ir ‘to go’ if it was separated into ir meaning motion versus grammatical-
ized ir (‘ir- gram’), such as when ir marks future tense. In our study, the category
‘ir-gram’ (N = 65) included ir + gerund (N = 6), as in (16), in addition to ir as a
future marker (N = 59).
(16) Yo la fui arregla-ndo poco a poco

I it.acc.f3sg go. pst .1 sg fix- prog little by little
‘I was fixing it little by little.’
[U.S._Adult_10]
Verb lexemes that were found to be infrequent in Schwenter and Torres

Cacoullos’s (2014) study were grouped together into one category called ‘infre-
quent verbs.’ In our data set there were 10 lexemes that fit into the infrequent verb
category; these were: acabar (N = 4), andar (N = 3), deber (N = 1), empezar (N =
11), llegar (N = 1), saber (N = 9), seguir (N = 2), tratar (N = 6), venir (N = 4), and
volver (N = 7). For the purpose of comparison, Table 1 includes rates from our own
participant groups, as well as three previous studies of adult Spanish, one with
speakers in Mexico (Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos 2014), one with speakers in
Houston (Gutiérrez 2008, p. 308), and one with speakers in Los Angeles (Gutiérrez
2008, p. 308).
Table 1 Rates of enclisis by verb lexeme, children and adults in Mexico and the U.S.
Children – Children Adults – Adults – Adults –
Adults – Mexico, this -U.S., this U.S., this U.S., U.S.,
Mexicoa study study study Houstonb LAb
Verb
lexeme % enc N % enc N % enc N % enc % enc % enc
Lower ir-gram 5 24 17 5 0 36 8 – –
rates of estar 13 10 10 14 14 15 7 12 12
enclisis
poder 26 28 29 11 27 6 33 14 16
Higher ir-motion 32 9 44 3 33 8 63 – –
rates of querer 37 23 26 15 53 9 67 50 55
enclisis tener que 30 7 43 1 0 21 71 43 37
Infrequent 39 11 55 7 71 30 40 – –
verbs
Total 27 112 29 56 34 140 33 29 21
a
Figures for adults in Mexico come from Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos (2014)
b
Figures for adults in Houston and Los Angeles come from Gutiérrez (2008: 308)
Table 1 demonstrates that several trends are similar across studies. First, proclisis
is much more common than enclisis in constructions containing estar, as in (17),
with rates of enclisis with ranging from 7 to 14%.
(17) cuando lo estaba busca-ndo no lo encontró

when it.acc.m3sg be.ipfv.3sg seek.prog neg it. acc.m3sg find.pst.3sg
‘When he was looking for him, he didn’t find him.’
[U.S._Child_101]
All tokens of estar in our data (N = 39) are grammaticalized and are used to mark
progressive aspect. Proclisis is also more common than enclisis in constructions
containing grammaticalized ir, as in (14) and (16). The finding that enclisis is rare
with grammaticalized ir and estar suggests that, like adults in previous research, the
children and adults in our study tend to place the clitic pronoun before the finite verb
more often if that verb is highly grammaticalized than when it retains its original
meaning. In fact, the results in Table 1 indicate a divide between ir-gram and estar
on the one hand, and ir-motion, querer and tener que, and the infrequent verbs on
the other. The former lexemes strongly favor proclisis, while the latter occur with
relatively high rates of enclisis. Examples of enclisis with querer, tener que, and the
infrequent verbs are provided in (18) through (24)
(18) Querer: Quiero conoce-r= lo .

want. prs .1 sg visit-inf=it.acc.m3sg
‘I want to visit it.’
[U.S._Child_201]
(19) Tener: tenía que atrapa-r= la.
have. ipfv .3 sg to catch-inf=it.acc.F3sg
‘(he) had to catch it.’
[Mexico_Child_210]
78 N.L. Shin et al.
Infrequent verbs with enclisis:
(20) Venir: cuando A. ya vino a visita-r= las.

when A already come.pst.3sg to visit-inf=them.acc.f3pl
‘when A. already came to visit them’
[U.S._Child_201]
(21) Tratar: mi papá trataba de mata-r= lo .

my dad try.ipfv.3sg to kill-inf=it.acc.m3sg
‘my dad was trying to kill it [a bird].’
[U.S._Child_204]
(22) Llegar: Ya cuando llegaban a visita-r= la .

Now when arrive.ipfv.3pl to visit-inf=her.acc.f3sg
‘Now, when they would come to visit her’
[U.S._Adult_10]
(23) Saber: y ni sé baila-r= la

and neither know.prs.1sg dance-inf=it.acc.F3sg
‘and I even don’t know how to dance it’
[U.S._Adult_4]
(24) Deber: no hace el trabajo como debe hace-r= lo

neg do.prs.3sg the job as should.prs.3sg do-inf=it.acc.m3sg
‘he doesn’t do the job as he should do it’
[U.S._Adult_9]
While there is a divide between ir-gram and estar on the one hand and ir-motion,
querer, tener que, and infrequent verbs on the other, poder ‘to be able to’ lies in the
middle, not differing much from the overall rate of enclisis. For example, in
Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos’s (2014) study of adults in Mexico, the overall rate
of enclisis was 27% and the rate with poder was 26%. In our study, the rate of encli-
sis with poder was identical to the overall rate of enclisis for two groups of partici-
pants: the children in Mexico and adults in the U.S. Therefore, we set poder aside
for the time being and focus on the verbs that fall clearly into one of two classes:
those that occur with very low rates of enclisis: ir-gram and estar (N = 104), and
those that occur with relatively higher rates of enclisis: ir-motion, querer, tener que,
and the group of infrequent verbs (N = 159). Figure 4 presents rates of enclisis in
each of these categories of verb lexemes for the children in Mexico, children in the
U.S., and the adults in the U.S. For purposes of comparison, we once again include
the adults in Mexico studied by Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos (2014).
The results in Fig. 4 demonstrate that the participants in our study display pat-
terns similar to those found in previous research. All groups produced significantly
higher rates of enclisis with querer, tener que, ir-motion, and infrequent verb lex-
emes, as compared to estar and ir-gram [Children-Mexico: X2(1,1) = 5.38, p = .02;
Children-U.S.: X2(1,1) = 8.99, p = .003; Adults-U.S.: X2(1,1) = 29.45, p < .0001].
Furthermore, the U.S.-children’s rates of enclisis did not differ from those of the
children in Mexico, neither with estar/ir-gram [X2(1,1) = .19, p = .67], nor with
enclisis with estar/grammaticalized ir

enclisis with querer/tener/ir-motion/infrequent lexemes
60
50
40
Rates of enclisis
30
20
10
0
Children-Mexico Adults-Mexico* Children-U.S. Adults-U.S.
Fig. 4 Rates of enclisis by two groups of verb lexemes (*Note: the figures reported for adults in
Mexico were calculated from those reported in Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos (2014))
querer/tener que/ir-motion/infrequent verbs [X2(1,1) = 1.75, p = .19]. Likewise,

there were no significant differences between the children in the U.S. and the adults
from their same community [estar/ir-gram: X2(1,1) = .13, p = .72; querer/tener que/
ir-motion/infrequent verbs: X2(1,1) = .03, p = .86]. In fact, each group of child par-
ticipants produced rates of enclisis that closely resemble those of the adults in their
linguistic environment.
5 Discussion
In this article, we asked three research questions, two focusing on comparisons of

monolingual and bilingual children and their clitic placement preferences, and one
on whether children’s clitic placement matches that of adults from their same com-
munity. Here we address each question in turn.
5.1 D
o Bilingual Children Differ from Monolingual Children
in Their Rate of Enclisis?
Our study suggests that the answer is no. First, both the monolingual and bilingual
children in our study produced low rates of enclisis (Fig. 3), which is in keeping
with previous studies of monolingual Spanish-speaking children (Eisenchlas 2003;
Requena 2015; Requena and Miller 2014). Even though the bilingual children’s rate
80 N.L. Shin et al.
of enclisis was higher than that of the monolingual children, no significant differ-
ence was found between the two groups of children. Thus our study diverges with
that of Pérez-Leroux et al. (2011), who found that bilingual children sometimes
produced enclisis when they were presented with sentences that contained
proclisis.
What accounts for the discrepancy between our study and that of Pérez-Leroux
et al. (2011)? One possible answer might be that an increased preference for enclisis
only emerges in particular conditions of bilingualism. In Pérez-Leroux et al.’s study,
of the 20 bilingual children given the elicited imitation task, 10 were simultaneous
bilinguals and 10 were sequential bilinguals. There were some differences between
the sequential and simultaneous bilinguals, particularly in that the latter produced
more sentences in which the clitic was omitted, which suggests that simultaneous
bilinguals have more difficulty with clitics in general. Nevertheless, both groups
repositioned from proclisis to enclisis at the same rate (Pérez-Leroux et al. 2011,
p. 228, Figure 3). Thus, the distinction between simultaneous and sequential bilin-
gualism does not appear to impact clitic placement preferences, and cannot explain
the difference between Pérez-Leroux et al.’s (2011) study and ours.
Another possible reason for the discrepancy between our results and those of
Pérez-Leroux et al. has to do with methodology. Our study examined naturalistic
production data, whereas Pérez-Leroux et al. was an experimental study. Support
for the idea that the experimental context may promote repositioning to enclisis
comes from Meijer and Fox Tree’s (2003, p. 191) experimental study of syntactic
priming. They found that for 25% of ten Spanish sentences containing proclisis,
bilingual adults repositioned the clitic to the postverbal position. Similarly, in an
experimental study of German-Portuguese children’s variable clitic placement in
Portuguese, Flores and Barbosa (2014) found that the bilingual children produced
enclisis where proclisis was expected, while a control group of monolingual
Portuguese children did not. One wonders, then, if there is something inherent to the
experimental condition that triggers this repositioning, since naturalistic production
data produced by adult bilinguals show no evidence of an increased preference for
enclisis. Another question that is raised by comparing our study with that of Pérez-
Leroux et al. is whether the type of clitic matters. Recall that Pérez-Leroux et al.
included both indirect and direct object pronouns, whereas we focused solely on the
latter. In light of the current findings, it would be helpful to replicate Pérez-Leroux
et al.’s study with modifications, such as including both monolingual and bilingual
children in the same study to enable direct comparisons, and also restricting the
stimuli to direct object clitics. Finally, it is noteworthy that Pérez-Leroux et al.’s
stimuli only contained poder and querer as finite verbs, whereas our study included
a wider variety of verb lexemes. There is good reason to suspect that bilingual chil-
dren would be less likely to reposition to enclisis with verb lexemes that favor pro-
clisis, such as estar. In recent experimental research on children’s clitic placement
preferences, Requena (2015) found that monolingual children also repositioned
from proclisis to enclisis, but they did so more often with verbs that tend to occur
with enclisis in adult Spanish, such as querer, rather than with verbs that mostly
occur with proclisis. Below we discuss the verb lexeme effect in our own study.
5.2 D
o Bilingual Children Differ from Monolingual Children
in Their Use of Enclisis with Particular Verb
Constructions?
The results reported in our study show that, similar to monolingual children, bilin-
gual children show sensitivity to the verb lexeme in their variable clitic placement
preferences. In fact, both the bilingual and monolingual children’s rates of enclisis
were low with estar and grammaticalized ir and comparatively high with other
verbs, such as querer and tener que (see Table 1). After noting this overall trend,
we created two categories of verb lexemes: (i) estar and grammaticalized ir and (ii)
other verb lexemes. By so doing, we found that both groups of children produced
significantly higher rates of enclisis with estar/grammaticalized-ir than with other
verbs (Fig. 4), and there were no significant differences between the groups of
children with respect to this trend. The low rates of enclisis with estar and gram-
maticalized ir are in keeping with findings in previous research, lending support to
the idea that these grammaticalized verbs undergo a process of chunking with the
following nonfinite verb (Bybee 2003; Bybee and Scheibman 1999). The result is
that [estar + infinitive] and [grammaticalized ir a + nonfinite verb] are processed
as a single unit rather than two separate verbs and, as such, that unit behaves like
other single-unit finite verbs in Spanish, for which the only option is proclisis (la
vi, *vi=la) (cf. Myhill 1988). One issue with this grammaticalization explanation
is that tener que is also grammaticalized; in examples like tengo que hacerlo ‘I
have to do it’, tener denotes obligation rather than possession. Why, then, are rates
of enclisis relatively high with grammaticalized tener que? Noting that the strong
tendency towards proclisis among grammaticalized verbs develops over time,
Requena (2015) offers a plausible answer. As tener que is a more recent case of
grammaticalization than future marker ir a or progressive marker estar, more time
is needed in order to establish the connection between proclisis and the tener que
pattern. If Requena (2015) is correct, we should expect that in the future tener que
will behave like ir a and estar and will occur with increasingly higher rates of
proclisis.
Although we find that bilingual and monolingual children display the same
general trends with respect to the verb-lexeme effect, the discrepancy between our
study and that of Pérez-Leroux et al. (2011) warrants a closer examination of
querer and poder, as these were the only two verb lexemes used as finite verbs in
Pérez Leroux et al.’s study. A closer look at those particular lexemes shows that
the bilingual children in our study produced higher rates of enclisis with querer
than the monolingual children did. The relevant rows from Table 1 are repeated in
Table 2.
Do the higher rates of enclisis with querer among the bilinguals suggest that
enclisis increases with more knowledge of English just for constructions containing
this particular verb lexeme? One reason to doubt this conclusion is that some studies
of monolingual adult Spanish also show high rates of enclisis with querer. For
example, in Davies’ (1995) study, the rate of enclisis with querer was 53% and in
82 N.L. Shin et al.
Table 2 Rates of enclisis with poder and querer

Children – Children – Adults – Adults –
Adults – Mexico, this U.S., this U.S.,this U.S., Adults –
Mexicoa study study study Houstonb U.S., LAb
Verb %
lexeme % enc N % enc N enc N % enc % enc % enc
poder 26 28 29 11 27 6 33 14 16
querer 37 23 26 15 53 9 67 50 55
Figures for adults in Mexico come from Schwenter and Torres Cacoullos (2014)
a
Figures for adults in Houston and Los Angeles come from Gutiérrez (2008: 308)
b
Requena’s (2015) study of adults in Argentina, it was 44%. Furthermore, if English

were impacting bilinguals’ variable clitic placement preferences, why would we
find an increase in enclisis only with querer? Clearly, more research is needed to
figure out whether bilingual children in the U.S. experience an increased preference
for enclisis, as suggested by Pérez-Leroux et al.’s (2011) study, or maintain the same
patterns of variable clitic placement, as we find in our study. We suspect that differ-
ences between monolingual and bilingual children found in experimental research
may disappear if test items are carefully designed to control for verb lexeme
(Requena 2015).
5.3 D
oes Children’s Use of Enclisis Match That of the Adults
in Their Community?
Our study indicates that the answer to our third research question is affirmative.
Children’s rates of enclisis closely match those of the adults in their community (see
Fig. 2). Previous research also supports this conclusion. Among children in Mexico,
children’s rates of enclisis matched those of their caretakers (Requena and Miller
2014). Matching rates of use of variable grammatical patterns has also been found
for other structures: In English and French, children approximate parents’ rates of
object omission (Pérez-Leroux et al. 2006). Furthermore, children match caregiv-
ers’ rates of use in particular contexts (e.g. Miller 2013; Smith et al. 2007, 2013).
For example, Miller (2013) studied –s deletion in Chilean Spanish and found that
both children and their caregivers deleted –s when it was a plural marker at a rate of
60% and 58%, respectively. In contrast, when –s was the second person singular
verbal morpheme, both children and caregivers deleted at a rate of 41%. These stud-
ies suggest that children learn patterns of grammatical variation by attending to
probabilistic patterns in the input (for discussion see Shin 2016).
5.4 I mplications for Bilingual Language Development

and Language Impairment
Our study indicates that bilingual and monolingual children are similar with respect
to variable clitic placement, and thus provides preliminary evidence that bilingual
children do not struggle with variable grammatical patterns (see also Shin and Van
Buren 2016). We assert that the endeavor to study bilingual children’s variable clitic
placement and other variable grammatical patterns is of utmost importance, as we
still know little about how these patterns develop during childhood. Furthermore,
clitic placement might prove particularly useful for research on atypical bilingual
language development, including bilingual children with SLI. As noted in our
Introduction, previous research has shown that children with SLI struggle with
object clitics in general: they tend to omit clitics and sometimes produce gender/
number mismatches between the clitic and its referent (Bedore and Leonard 2001;
Castilla-Earls et al. 2015; Grüter 2004, 2005; Jacobson 2012; Leonard and Bortolini
1998; Leonard et al. 1992; Morgan et al. 2009; Paradis et al. 2006). Perhaps patterns
of variable clitic placement may also serve to differentiate between typical and atyp-
ical language development. Such a prediction is warranted by Jacobson’s (2012,
p. 32) finding that bilingual children with SLI omit clitics more often in postverbal
than in preverbal position. This suggests that producing clitics in postverbal position
is an especially difficult task for children with SLI, and thus leads to a clear predic-
tion for variable contexts: We hypothesize that, compared to typically developing
bilingual children, those with SLI will produce lower rates of enclisis in contexts
that allow for variation. If this prediction is confirmed, then clitic placement would
be yet another grammatical feature that clinicians can use to detect SLI in the bilin-
gual population.
Attaining a firmer grasp on the nature of typical and atypical bilingual develop-
ment is crucial for decreasing the number of bilingual children who get misdiag-
nosed with SLI. Since some of the grammatical features used to detect SLI may also
be characteristic of children experiencing language dominance shift, differentiating
typical and atypical language development in such bilinguals is complicated.
Thankfully, there is now a growing body of literature that should help to mitigate the
problem of misdiagnosis of bilinguals (Aguilar-Mediavilla, Buil-Legaz, López-
Penadés & Adrover-Roig, this volume; Bedore and Peña 2008; Anderson and
Marquez 2009; Castilla-Earls et al. 2015; Jacobson 2012). The study presented here
showed that school-age bilingual and monolingual children display similar rates of
proclisis and enclisis with specific verb constructions. Therefore, if a child displays
a markedly different pattern from the one we found in our study, this could be an
indication of language impairment. Of course, this needs to be confirmed by future
research that directly compares bilingual children with and without SLI. To sum-
marize, we hope that by increasing our understanding of monolingual and bilingual
Spanish-speaking children’s patterns of object clitic placement, we have contributed
to the body of literature that ultimately aims to differentiate between typical and
atypical bilingual development in contexts of language shift.
84 N.L. Shin et al.
References
Aguado Orea, J. (2000). Adquisición de los complementos pronominales personales en español.

Madrid: Ediciones UAM.
Anderson, R. (1999). Loss of gender agreement in L1 attrition. Preliminary results. Bilingual
Research Journal, 23(4), 389–408.
Anderson, R. (2001). Lexical morphology and verb use in child first language loss: A preliminary
case study investigation. International Journal of Bilingualism, 5(4), 377–401.
Anderson, R. (2012). First language loss in Spanish-speaking children. In B. Goldstein (Ed.),
Bilingual language development and disorders in Spanish-English speakers (2nd ed., pp. 193–
212). Maryland: Brookes.
Anderson, R., & Marquez, A. (2009). The article paradigm in Spanish-speaking children with SLI
in language contact situations. In J. Grinstead (Ed.), Hispanic child languages: Typical and
impaired development (pp. 29–55). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Armon-Lottem, S. (2012). Introduction: Bilingual children with SLI – The nature of the problem.
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15(1), 1–4.
Bedore, L. M., & Leonard, L. B. (2001). Grammatical morphology deficits in Spanish-speaking
children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing
Research, 44(4), 905–924.
Bedore, L. M., & Peña, E. D. (2008). Assessment of bilingual children for identification of lan-
guage impairment: Current findings and implications for practice. International Journal of
Bilingualism and Bilingual Education, 11(1), 1–29.
Blasco Asnar, M. V. (2002). On the acquisition of object pronominal clitics in Spanish (Unpublished
doctoral dissertation). City University of New York Graduate Center, New York, NY.
Bybee, J. (2003). Mechanisms of change in grammaticization: The role of frequency. In B. D.
Joseph & J. Janda (Eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics (pp. 602–623). Oxford:
Blackwell.
Bybee, J. (2010). Language, usage and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bybee, J., & Scheibman, J. (1999). The effect of usage on degrees of constituency: The reduction
of don't in English. Linguistics, 37(4), 575–596.
Castilla, A. P., & Pérez-Leroux, A. T. (2010). Omissions and substitutions in Spanish object clitics:
Developmental optionality as a property of the computational system. Language Acquisition,
17(2), 2–25.
Castilla, A. P., Pérez-Leroux, A. T., & Eriks-Brophy, A. (2008). Syntax and the lexicon in early
omission of Spanish clitics. In H. Chan, H. Jacob, & E. Kapia (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd
annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 72–83). Boston:
Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Castilla-Earls, A. P. Restrepo, M. A., Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Gray, S., Holmes, P., Gail, D., & Chen,
Z. (2015). Interactions between bilingual effects and language impairment: Exploring gram-
matical markers in Spanish-speaking bilingual children. Applied Psycholinguistics, DOI:
http://dx.doi.org.libproxy.unm.edu/10.1017/S0142716415000521
Colburn, G. B. (1928). The complementary infinitive and its pronoun object. Hispania, 11,
424–429.
Croft, W. (2010). The origins of grammaticalization in the verbalization of experience. Linguistics,
48, 1–48.
Darwich, B. (2007). Los clíticos lo, la, los y las en situación de contacto: datos sobre el español en
Nueva York. LLJournal, 2(2.) Available at http://ojs.gc.cuny.edu/index.php/lljournal/article/
view/301/344.
Davies, M. (1995). Analyzing syntactic variation with computer-based corpora: The case of mod-
ern Spanish clitic climbing. Hispania, 78(2), 370–380.
Eisenchlas, S. (2003). Clitics in child Spanish. First Language, 23(2), 193–211.
Erker, D., E. Ho-Fernández, R. Otheguy & N.L. Shin. (Forthcoming). The order and expression of
nominal and pronominal subjects among first- and second-generation Cubans in the U.S. To
appear in A. Cuza (Ed.), Cuban Spanish Dialectology: Variation, Contact and Change.
Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Fantini, A. E. (1985). Language acquisition of a bilingual child: A sociolinguistic perspective.
Avon: Multilingual Matters.
Flores, C., & Barbosa, P. (2014). When reduced input leads to delayed acquisition: A study on the
acquisition of clitic placement by Portuguese heritage speakers. International Journal of
Bilingualism, 18(3), 304–325.
Fujino, H., & Sano, T. (2002). Aspects of the null object phenomenon in child Spanish. In A. T.
Pérez-Leroux & J. M. Liceras (Eds.), The acquisition of Spanish morphosyntax (pp. 67–88).
Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Grüter, T. (2004). Teasing apart L2 and SLI: Will comprehension make the difference? In
A. Brugos, L. Micciulla, & C. E. Smith (Eds.), Proceedings of the 28th annual Boston univer-
sity conference on language development (pp. 220–231). Somerville: Cascadilla Press.
Grüter, T. (2005). Comprehension and production of French object clitics by child second lan-
guage learners and children with specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26,
363–391.
Grüter, T., & Crago, M. (2012). Object clitics and their omission in child L2 French: The contribu-
tions of processing limitations and L1 transfer. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15(3),
531–549.
Gudmestad, A. (2006). Clitic climbing in Caracas Spanish: A sociolinguistic study of ir and querer.
IULC Working Papers, 6(3.) Available at https://www.indiana.edu/~iulcwp/wp/issue/view/06.
Gutiérrez, M. (2008). Restringiendo la subida de clíticos: Reflexividad, modalidad verbal y con-
tacto lingüístico en el español de Houston. Hispanic Research Journal, 9(4), 299–313.
Gutiérrez, M., & Silva-Corvalán, C. (1993). Clíticos del español en una situación de contacto.
Revista Española de Lingüística, 23(2), 207–220.
Hernández Pina, F. (1990). Teorías psicolingüísticas y su aplicación a la adquisición del español
como lengua materna (2nd ed.). Madrid: Siglo XXI de España Editores.
Hopper, P. J., & Traugott, E. C. (2003). Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Hudson Kam, C. (2015). The impact of conditioning variables on the acquisition of variation in
adult and child learners. Language, 91(4), 906–937.
Hyams, N. (1986). Language acquisition and the theory of parameters. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Jacobson, P. (2012). The effects of language impairment on the use of direct object pronouns and
verb inflections in heritage Spanish speakers: A look at attrition, incomplete acquisition and
maintenance. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15(1), 22–38.
Keniston, H. (1937). Spanish syntax list. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Leonard, L. B., & Bortolini, U. (1998). Grammatical morphology and the role of weak syllables in
the speech of Italian-speaking children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech,
Language, and Hearing Research, 41(6), 1363–1374.
Leonard, L. B., McGregor, K. K., & Allen, G. D. (1992). Grammatical morphology and speech
perception in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and
López Ornat, S., Fernández, A., Gallo, P., & Mariscal, S. (1994). La adquisición de la lengua
española. Madrid: Siglo XXI de España Editores.
Mateu, V. E. (2015). Object clitic omission in Child Spanish: Evaluating representational and pro-
cessing accounts. Language Acquisition, 22(3), 240–284.
Meijer, P., & Fox Tree, J. (2003). Building syntactic structures in speaking: A bilingual explora-
tion. Experimental Psychology, 50(3), 184–195.
Merino, B. (1982). Order and pace in syntactic development of bilingual children. In J. Fishman &
G. Keller (Eds.), Bilingual education for Hispanic students in the United States (pp. 446–464).
New York: Columbia Teachers College Press.
86 N.L. Shin et al.
Merino, B. (1983). Language loss in bilingual Chicano children. Journal of Applied Development
Psychology, 10, 477–494.
Miller, K. (2012). Not all children agree: Acquisition of agreement when the input is variable.
Language Learning and Development, 8(3), 255–277.
Miller, K. (2013). Acquisition of variable rules: /s/-lenition in the speech of Chilean Spanish-
speaking children and their caregivers. Language Variation and Change, 25(3), 311–340.
Miller, K., & Schmidt, C. (2012). Variable input and the acquisition of plural morphology.
Language Acquisition, 19, 223–261.
Mondoñedo, M. R., Snyder, W., & Sugisaki, K. (2004). Clitic-climbing in child Spanish and the
theory of parameters. In Poster presented BUCLD. Retrieved from http://faculty.human.mie-u.
ac.jp/~sugisaki/Papers/Rodriguez-Mondonedo_et_al_2005_BUCLD.pdf.
Montrul, S. (2002). Incomplete acquisition and attrition of Spanish tense/aspect distinctions in
adult bilinguals. Bilingualism Language and Cognition, 5, 39–68.
Montrul, S. (2004). The acquisition of Spanish: Morphosyntactic development in monolingual and
bilingual L1 acquisition and adult L2 acquisition. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Montrul, S. (2008). Incomplete acquisition in bilingualism. Re-examining the age factor.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Montrul, S., Foote, I., Perpiñán, S., Thornhill, D., & Vidal, S. (2006). Full access and age effects
in adult bilingualism: An investigation of accusative clitics and word order. In N. Sagarra &
J. Toribio (Eds.), Selected papers from the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium (pp. 217–228).
Sommerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Morgan, G., Restrepo, M. A., & Auza, A. (2009). Variability in the grammatical profiles of Spanish-
speaking children with specific language impairment. In J. Grinstead (Ed.), Hispanic child
languages: Typical and impaired development (pp. 283–302). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Myhill, J. (1988). The grammaticalization of auxiliaries: Spanish clitic climbing. Proceedings of
the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society pp. 352–363.
Myhill, J. (1989). Variation in Spanish clitic climbing. In T. J. Walsh (Ed.), Synchronic and dia-
chronic approaches to linguistic variation and change (Georgetown University Roundtable
1988) (pp. 227–250). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Navarro Correa, M. (1990). Clíticos y frases verbales en el habla de Valencia (Venezuela). Español
Actual, 53, 111–120.
Paradis, J., Crago, M., & Genesee, F. (2006). Domain-general versus domain-specific accounts of
specific language impairment: Evidence from bilingual children’s acquisition of object pro-
nouns. Language Acquisition, 13(1), 33–62.
Peace, M. (2013). ¿Lo puedo subir o puedo subirlo? La subida del clítico en el español del oeste
de Massachusetts. Southwest Journal of Linguistics, 31(1), 131–160.
Peña, E. D., Gutiérrez-Clellan, V. F., Iglesias, A., Goldstein, B., & Bedore, L. M. (2014). Bilingual
English-Spanish assessment (BESA). San Rafael: AR Clinical Publications.
Pérez-Leroux , A. T., Pirvulescu, M., & Roberge, Y. (2006). Early object omission in child French
and English. In J.-P. Montreuil, & C. Nishida (Eds.), New perspectives in Romance linguistics
(pp. 213–218). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Pirvulescu, M., & Roberge, Y. (2009). Bilingualism as a window into the
language faculty: The acquisition of objects in French-speaking children in bilingual and
monolingual contexts. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12(1), 97–112.
Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Cuza, A., & Thomas, D. (2011). Clitic placement in Spanish–English bilin-
gual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14(02), 221–232.
Polinsky, M. (1997). American Russian: Language loss meets language acquisition. In W. Browne
et al. (Eds.), Annual workshop on formal approaches to slavic linguistics: The cornell meeting
(1995) (pp. 370–406). Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publishers.
Polinsky, M. (2011). Reanalysis in adult heritage language: New evidence in support of attrition.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 33, 305–328.
Putnam, M. T., & Sánchez, L. (2013). What’s so incomplete about incomplete acquisition? A pro-
legomenon to modeling heritage language grammars. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism,
3(4), 478–508.
Reglero, L., & Ticio, E. (2003). The acquisition of clitics in child Spanish. In S. Montrul &
F. Ordóñez (Eds.), Linguistic theory and language development in hispanic languages: Papers
from the 5th hispanic linguistics symposium and the 4th conference on the acquisition of
Spanish and Portuguese (pp. 297–316). Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Requena, P. E. (2015). Direct object clitic placement preferences in Argentine child Spanish,
Unpublished doctoral dissertation. State College: Pennsylvania State University.
Requena, P. E., & Miller, K. (2014). Constraining Spanish clitic placement variation: Evidence
from child language. Paper presented at the Hispanic Linguistic Symposium 2014, Purdue
University. West Lafayette, Indiana.
Restrepo, M. A., & Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. (2012). Grammatical impairments in Spanish-English
bilingual children. In B. A. Goldstein (Ed.), Bilingual language development and disorders in
Spanish-English speakers (2nd ed., pp. 213–232). Baltimore/London/Sydney: Paul Brookes
Publishing.
Rivera-Mills, S. (2012). Spanish heritage language maintenance: Its legacy and its future. In
S. Beaudrie & M. Fairclough (Eds.), Spanish as a heritage language in the US: The state of the
science (pp. 26–64). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Rothman, J. (2009). Understanding the nature and outcomes of early bilingualism: Romance lan-
guages as heritage languages. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13(2), 155–163.
Schwenter, S., & Torres Cacoullos, R. (2014). Competing constraints on the variable placement of
direct object clitics in Mexico City Spanish. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish
Journal of Applied Linguistics, 27(2), 514–536.
Sebastián, E., & Slobin, D. I. (1994). Development of linguistic forms: Spanish. In R. A. Berman
& D. I. Slobin (Eds.), Relating events in narrative (pp. 239–284). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Shin, N. L. (2016). Acquiring constraints on morphosyntactic variation: Children’s Spanish subject
pronoun expression. Journal of Child Language, 43(4), 914–947.
Shin, N. L. & Van Buren, J. (2016). Maintenance of Spanish subject pronoun expression patterns
among bilingual children of farm workers in Washington/Montana. Spanish in Context, 13(2),
173–194.
Silva-Corvalán, C. (1994). Language contact and change. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sinnott, S., & Smith, E. (2007). ¿Subir o no subir? A look at clitic climbing in Spanish. Poster
presented at the 36th New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV 36), University of Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia, PA.
Smith, J., Durham, M., & Fortune, L. (2007). ‘Mam, My Trousers Is Fa’in Doon!’: Community,
caregiver, and child in the acquisition of variation in a Scottish Dialect. Language Variation
and Change, 19(1), 69–95.
Smith, J., Durham, M., & Richards, H. (2013). The social and linguistic in the acquisition of socio-
linguistic norms: Caregivers, children, and variation. Linguistics, 51(2), 285–324.
Spaulding, R. K. (1927). Puedo hacerlo versus lo puedo hacer and similar cases. Hispania, 10(5),
343–348.
Torres Cacoullos, R. (1999). Construction frequency and reductive change: Diachronic and regis-
ter variation in Spanish clitic climbing. Language Variation and Change, 11(02), 143–170.
Torres Cacoullos, R., & Travis, C. E. (2015). Foundations for the study of subject pronoun expres-
sion in Spanish in contact with English: Assessing inter-linguistic (dis)similarity via intra-
linguistic variability. In A. Carvalho, R. Orozco, & N. L. Shin (Eds.), Subject pronoun
expression in Spanish: A cross-dialectal perspective (pp. 81–100). Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press.
Troya Déniz, M., & Pérez Martín, A. M. (2011). Distribución de clíticos con perífrasis verbales en
hablantes universitarios de las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Lingüística, 26, 9–25.
Valian, V. (1991). Syntactic subjects in the early speech of American and Italian children.
88 N.L. Shin et al.
Veltman, C. (1990). The status of the Spanish language in the United States at the beginning of the
21st century. International Migration Review, 24(1), 108–123.
Villa, D., Shin, N. L., & Nagata, E. R. (2014). La nueva frontera: Spanish-speaking populations in
Central Washington. Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 7(1), 149–172.
Wexler, K., Gavarró, A., & Torrens, V. (2004). Feature checking and object clitic omission in child
Spanish and Catalan. In R. Bok-Bennema, B. Hollebrandse, B. Kampers-Manhe, & P. Sleeman
(Eds.), Romance language and linguistic theory (pp. 253–270). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Yang, C. D. (2002). Knowledge and learning in natural language. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Yang, C. D. (2010). Three factors in language variation. Lingua, 120, 1160–1177.
Zabalegui, N. (2008). La posición de los pronombres átonos con verbos no conjugados en el espa-
ñol actual de Caracas. Akademos, 10(2), 83–107.
Part II
Children at Risk of Language Disorders
Executive Functions and Language
Development in Pre-Term and Full-Term
Children
Miguel Pérez-Pereira, Manuel Peralbo, and Alberto Veleiro
Abstract Research question. The present study aims to compare one group of pre-
term (PT) children and another group of full-term children in their executive func-
tions (EFs) and linguistic abilities, and to study if executive functions abilities may
predict language development.
Background and rationale. The term executive functions include a series of cog-
nitive control processes related to the achievement of goals, such as planning,
updating of information in working memory, inhibitory control of inappropriate
responses, or shifting flexibility. EFs are considered to be involved in neurodevelop-
ment problems. Extremely and very preterm children were found to show deficits of
small to moderate magnitude in certain EFs tasks as compared to full-term children
(Aarnoudse-Moens, Duivenvoorden, Weisglas-Kuperus, Van Goudoever, &
Oosterlaan, 2012). It remains to check if these deficits also affect low risk preterm
children. Relationships between EFs and language development are well known,
particularly those concerning working memory. However, children with language
difficulties seem to show deficits in other EFs as well.
Methods. A sample of low risk PT children originally formed by 151 children
and another group of 49 FT children were longitudinally followed from birth to the
age of 5 years. Different tasks to assess executive functions were applied to the
children when they were 4, and 5 years of age, among them: language working
memory, visuospatial working memory, inhibitory control, risk taking strategies,
flexibility, and sustained attention. Different dimensions of language development
were assessed through different tests at the same ages: language comprehension,
phonological development, vocabulary comprehension, morphosyntactic produc-
tion, comprehension of grammar structures and pragmatics.
This research was funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of the Spanish Government
(grants PSI2008-03905 and PSI2011-23210 to the first author).
M. Pérez-Pereira (*)
University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain
e-mail: miguel.perez.pereira@usc.es
M. Peralbo • A. Veleiro
University of la Coruña, La Coruña, Spain
e-mail: peralbos@udc.es; albertoveleiro@edu.xunta.es

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_4
92 M. Pérez-Pereira et al.
Results. PT children did not obtain lower results than the FT children in any EFs
task, with the exception of more errors committed in the rapid naming task. The
group of PT children tended to show lower results than the FT children in all lan-
guage tests, although significant differences were only found in language compre-
hension (RDLS) at age 4.
Linear regression analyses indicate that EFs, verbal sequential memory and per-
formance in rapid naming task in particular, had a significant effect on phonological
development, productive ability in morphophonology, pragmatic development, and
grammar understanding.
Discussion. The results found indicate that low risk PT children do not show
generalized delays in executive functions or language development, in contrast to
extremely or very PT children. Executive functions were found to have a moderate
predictive effect on the development of several language dimensions, although not
so strong on others. Verbal sequential memory, in the first place, attention and inhib-
itory control seem to have the strongest effect on language, particularly on phono-
logical development, grammar development (comprehension and production) and
pragmatic abilities.
Keywords Preterm children • Executive functions • Language development •

Predictive factors • Working memory
1 Introduction
In this chapter we present the results of a study focused on the relationships between
language development and executive functions in a group of low risk preterm (PT)
children and another group of full-term (FT) children.
Preterm children are considered to be an at risk population, though not all of
them are exposed to the same amount of risk. Important differences exist among
preterm children. One of them, gestational age (GA), also determines whether other
factors co-exist. Birth weight (BW) is strongly associated with GA, in such a way
that the shorter the GA the lower the BW (with the exception of those children small
for GA). Usually, PT children are classified according to gestational age (GA) into
the following groups: late preterm (LPT) (GA 34–36 weeks), moderately preterm
(MPT) (GA 32–33 weeks), very preterm (VPT) (GA between 28 and 31 weeks),
and extremely preterm children (EPT) (GA below 28 weeks) (Blencowe et al. 2013).
The lower the GA is, the higher the risk of suffering medical complications. EPT
and VPT children have a greater probability of being affected by these than LPT and
MPT children (Johansson and Cnattigius 2010). The most common medical com-
plications affect the lungs (bronchopulmonary dysplasia, respiratory distress
syndrome) and the cerebrum (intraventricular hemorrhage, periventricular leukom-
alacia), with important consequences for the children’s development.
The term executive functions (EF) deals with a series of cognitive skills related
to goal-directed control, which is considered to be of central importance for every-
Executive Functions and Language Development in Pre-Term and Full-Term Children 93
day life. Scholars differentiate between cold and hot EF (Peterson and Welsh 2014).
Cold EF include skills such as attention, maintenance and updating of information
in memory, inhibition of inappropriate processes, mental flexibility or shifting, and
monitoring (Miyake et al. 2000). These skills are revealed under relatively decon-
textualized, non-emotional, and analytic testing conditions. Hot executive func-
tions, in contrast, are elicited in contexts in which emotion, motivation and tension
between immediate gratification and future rewards exist. Executive functions
emerge early in infancy and develop up to adolescence and early adulthood (Romine
and Reynolds 2005; Best and Miller 2010).
It is well known that EFs have an important role in the development of other
capacities during infancy and childhood, among them reading, mathematical and
other learning abilities, adaptive functioning or academic achievement (Blair and
Razza 2007; Espy et al. 2004; Thorell et al. 2012). Difficulties in EF are also typical
in several developmental impairments (Pennington and Ozonoff 1996).
Although differences in EFs mainly have a genetic origin (Friedman et al. 2008),
environmental circumstances, which affect early neurological development, can be
a risk factor for the appearance of executive dysfunction. For this reason, preterm
birth has been related to executive dysfunction. Although advances in medical care
and gestational monitoring have contributed to an important increase in the rates of
preterm newborn survivals even among EPT and VPT babies (Blencowe et al.
2012), the high incidence of neurodevelopment difficulties in preterm children con-
tinues to be a cause of worry. Brain immaturity, low BW, intra-ventricular hemor-
rhage (IVH), or bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), are frequent risk factors in PT
children (D’Onofrio et al. 2013; Jarjour 2014). Difficulties in EF, in particular, were
frequently found in PT children when compared to full-term children, although
these difficulties vary in relation to the particular functions affected, or the effect of
variables such as gestational age (GA), birth weight (BW) or cerebral damage.
In the literature review carried out by Mulder et al. (2009), the authors highlight
the moderating effect of GA on the difficulties found in selective or sustained atten-
tion, inhibition, verbal fluency, working memory or planning. These difficulties
occurred both in the studies that used performance tasks (Aarnoudse-Moens et al.
2009; Bayless and Stevenson 2007; Grunau et al. 2004; Marlow et al. 2007; Taylor
et al. 1998), as well as in the studies that used questionnaires of behavioral assess-
ment (Anderson et al. 2011; Luu et al. 2011; Ritter et al. 2014). Therefore, it seems
that GA and BW predict the severity of difficulties in executive functioning (Duvall
et al. 2015), in such a way that the lower the GA and the BW, the higher the difficul-
ties in EFs. Differences between children with GA above 26 weeks and FT children
were lower (Baron et al. 2012) than those found between children with lower GA
and control FT children, a pattern similar to that found when studying IQ (Johnson
2007). In other studies carried out with children born with a GA between 32 and 36
weeks (moderately preterm), only a few showed dysfunction (Van Baar et al. 2013,
2009), or differences with FT children were found only in a few EF tasks (Baron
et al. 2012; Brumbaugh et al. 2014). The aspects of the executive functioning that
seem to be impaired in these children vary across these studies, particularly inhibi-
tion or memory updating, which are the focus of this chapter.
Inhibition
Most studies carried out with preschoolers point to difficulties in PT children as

compared to FT children not only in response inhibition (Aarnoudse-Moens et al.
2009; Baron et al. 2012; Böhm et al. 2002, 2004; Harvey et al. 1999; Marlow et al.
2007; Ni et al. 2011), but also in interference control (Aarnoudse-Moens et al. 2009;
Marlow et al. 2007; Pizzo et al. 2010).
Inhibitory difficulties, however, were less evident in school age PT children than
in preschoolers. In any case, the results are controversial because a few studies
found that inhibition difficulties still continued in older PT children (Aarnoudse-
Moens et al. 2012; Bayless and Stevenson 2007; Mulder et al. 2011; Réveillon et al.
2015), whereas other studies did not find difficulties in school age PT children (Loe
et al. 2012; Ritter et al. 2014). For this reason, Ritter and colleagues (Ritter et al.
2013; 2014) have deemed that the difficulties found in inhibition in younger PT
children should be considered a delay in development rather than a deficit.
Complementarily, neuroimaging studies suggest the existence of compensatory
mechanisms in PT children, because these children tend to use alternative neural
pathways in comparison to FT children (Nosarti et al. 2006; Réveillon et al. 2013),
although PT children show a similar inhibitory ability.
Executive Functions tasks referred to as updating are linked to planning, task
monitoring, and, particularly, working memory (WM). There have been relatively
few studies that have examined planning tasks in these children. In any case, the
results point to the existence of difficulties in planning in extremely preterm chil-
dren, while PT children with a higher GA do not show differences with FT children
(Mulder et al. 2009). There are more studies carried out on working memory (WM),
although, again, the tasks used are very different, embracing both spatial and verbal
tasks, as well as tasks demanding different storing and manipulation of information
demands. As the relationship between WM and IQ is very close, it is necessary to
control IQ to determine if the impairment of WM is really independent of general
cognitive ability. Several studies have systematically found differences in WM
between PT and FT children from very early on, in favor of FT children (Lowe et al.
2009; Woodward et al. 2005). These differences seem to persist in adolescence (Luu
et al. 2011; Saavalainen et al. 2007). The difficulties found in PT children are related
to factors such as task complexity (more evident when both storing and manipula-
tion of information are required) (Baron et al. 2012), GA (the lower the GA the
higher the difficulties), and neonatal damage risk (Beauchamp et al. 2008; Luciana
et al. 1999; Woodward et al. 2012). Similarly, the studies that used questionnaires
assessing behaviors also found more difficulties in WM and metacognitive
components of EF related to updating in PT children when compared to their FT
controls (Ritter et al. 2014; Scott et al. 2012).
The relationships between language development and executive functions have
not been very widely studied in young children, and studies with preterm children
are rare. The direction of the influence between language development and EFs is
not well established. Some authors suggest a bidirectional influence between both
domains (Singer and Bashir 1999). Different studies have pointed out that executive
skills predict pragmatic abilities of language (Blain-Brière et al. 2014), or that EF
seem to be crucial for second language learning or language switching in bilingual
children (Bialystok 2011; Carlson and Meltzoff 2008). In contrast, other authors
emphasize the role that language, such as inner speech or verbal self-reminding, has
for executive functions or self-regulation (Barkley 1997; Marcovitch and Zelazo
2009), or that bilingual experience fosters executive control (Poulin-Dubois et al.
2011).
The relationship between WM and language has stirred more interest, however.
The first studies by Baddeley and colleagues were focused on the verbal compo-
nents of WM. According to the WM model proposed by Gathercole and Baddeley
(1990), there is a subcomponent, the phonological loop, that processes and stores
verbal contents. Using tasks such as a non-word repetition task it was found that the
degree of development of the phonological loop predicts the vocabulary size, the
mean length of utterances, and the amount and quality of language during the first
years (Adams and Gathercole 1995, 1996; Archibald and Gathercole 2007;
Gathercole et al. 1999). This relationship between the phonological loop and lan-
guage abilities however decreases with age. The relationship between this executive
dimension of WM and vocabulary acquisition, sentence processing or sentence
comprehension continues throughout time (Gathercole 2007; Montgomery 2003).
As evidence of the relationships between EFs and language development, vari-
ous studies have found that SLI children also had low performance in different EFs.
Empirical evidence for the impact of inhibition and working memory on language
processing ability of school age children is very strong, in comparison with the
evidence for cognitive flexibility (Henry et al. 2012; Im-Bolter et al. 2006; Marton
et al. 2007; Marton and Schwartz 2003). In addition, the relationships between
working memory and inhibition have clear implications for theory. Working mem-
ory tasks involving simultaneous processing are highly demanding on inhibition
control; a combination of deficits in working memory and inhibition affects the
relationship between processing capacity and language competence (Im-Bolter
et al. 2006; Marton et al. 2007; 2014). Preschool SLI children show significantly
lower results than typically developing children not only in working memory and
inhibition, but also in other EFs such as shifting or cognitive flexibility, planning
and emotional control (Vugs et al. 2014; Roello et al. 2015; Vissers et al. 2015),
which seem to mature later.
In PT children, Sansavini & colleagues (2007) found that very immature preterm
birth affected grammatical abilities, cognitive abilities, and phonological working
memory. The group of very preterm children (GA ≤ 33 weeks) obtained lower results
than the comparison group of FT children in these measures when assessed at 3,6
years of age, although the VPR children did not show severe deficits. The authors
found a closed relationship between phonological working memory and grammar
(measured through a test of repetition of phrases and sentences) in both VPT and FT
children, which indicates reciprocal support of these abilities in development. Maternal
level of education was found to be a relevant factor for the grammatical
and cognitive development of the VPR children. Guarini and Sansavini (2012)
also found that language (vocabulary, grammar, and phonological awareness) and
short term verbal memory had a predictive role on literacy for VPT and FT children.
In language development, the studies carried out with VPR or EPR children
tended to find differences compared to FT children around 5 years of age. PT chil-
dren had poorer scores than FT children in receptive as well as in expressive lan-
guage (Foster-Cohen et al. 2010; Howard et al. 2011; Largo et al. 1986; Luoma
et al. 1998; Mikkola et al. 2005; Noort-van der Spek et al. 2012). It is still necessary,
however, to see if the difficulties in language skills or in EF do exist when the PT
children studied are not at risk, in other words, if they do not have serious additional
biomedical problems and are not extremely PT children.
The present investigation studied receptive and expressive language abilities of
one group of low risk PT children and another group of FT children at 5 years of age
and related their language skills to some EF assessed at 4 and 5 years of age. At the
same time, other variables (cognition and quality of home environment) were also
studied in order to control their effect.
2 Method
2.1 Participants
The participants form part of a longitudinal sample of children followed since birth.
For the purposes of the present study, the children were assessed when they were 4
years old (± 1 month) and 5 years old (±1 month). At 4 years of age, there were 111
PT children and 34 FT children. At 5 years of age there were 109 PT children and
33 FT children. The group of PT children had a mean GA of 32.6 (SD = 2.5) while
that of the FT children was 39.8 (SD = 1.5). The PT group had a mean BW of 1712
grs. (SD = 428), while the FT Group had a mean BW of 3377 grs. (SD = 443).
The PT and FT groups did not differ in terms of mother’s education (X2 (1) =
8.66, p = .194), gender (X2 (1) = .000, p = .997) or Apgar score (t (197) = −.909, p
= .365). The PT children with the following characteristics were not included in the
study: cerebral palsy, periventricular leukomalacia (PVL), intraventricular hemor-
rhage (IVH) greater than grade II, hydrocephalus, encephalopathy, genetic malfor-
mations, chromosomal syndromes and metabolic syndromes associated with mental
retardation, important motor or sensory (vision or hearing) impairments, or Apgar
scores below 6 at 5 min. Therefore, by virtue of their characteristics, the group of
the PT children could be considered as low risk. The children of the FT group had
no associated medical problems.
For the analyses, the children were sorted into 4 GA groups: (1) PT children with
GA equal or lower than 31 weeks (VPR and EPR children); (2) PT children with
GAs of 32 or 33 weeks; (3) PT children with GAs between 34 and 36 weeks; and
(4) FT children with GA equal to or higher than 37 weeks. Groups 1, 2, 3 and 4 had
36, 33, 42, and 34 children respectively when the children were 4 years old. When
the children were 5 years of age, Groups 1, 2, 3 and 4 had 35, 32, 42, and 33 chil-
dren, respectively.
3 Instruments
The following instruments were employed:

1. The Spanish version (Moreno 1992) of the HOME scale (Observation for

Measurement of the Environment-Revised edition: Caldwell and Bradley 1984)
was used to evaluate the quality of home environment. The HOME measures the
quality and quantity of stimulation and support available to a child in the home
environment, and is based on direct observation and the information obtained in
an interview with mothers. Higher total HOME scores indicate a more enriched
home environment. The total raw score was used for the analysis.
2. The Spanish version of the Batelle Developmental Inventory -BDI) (Newborg
et al. 1996) was administered to assess cognitive development. The skills
assessed by the Batelle scale are adaptive, personal-social, communication,
motor, and cognitive. The cognitive raw score was used for the analysis.
3. The working verbal memory task (memoria secuencial auditiva) which forms
part of the EDAF (Evaluación de la Discriminación Auditiva y Fonológica)
(Brancal et al. 2005). In this task, the child has to repeat a sequence of words,
which progressively increases in number. The total raw total score was used for
the analysis.
4. The CORSI ordering task (Kessels et al. 2000; Farrell-Pagulayan et al. 2006)
was used to assess the non verbal working memory. Colored blocks are high-
lighted in a given sequence. The children must repeat the sequence. The total raw
score and the memory span score were used for the analysis.
5. The go/nogo task (Rueda et al. 2004) was used to assess sustained attention and
inhibitory control. The child is told to respond by pressing a key every time that
certain stimulus is presented (go stimulus) and withhold the response in those
trials where an alternative stimulus (nogo) appears. The total number of correct
responses as well as the reaction time (RT), and the number of commission
errors (nogo trials in which a response was produced) and RTs were used.
6. The Children’s Gambling Task (Kerr and Zelazo 2004) was used to assess affec-
tive decision-making, a hot EF. This task is a simplified 2-deck version of the
Iowa Gambling task used with adults. Participants have to pick up cards from the
decks, knowing that each card yields the possibility of gains or losses. One deck
is disadvantageous, so cards in this deck yield high gains, but higher losses and
an overall net loss, while the other deck is advantageous: Cards in this deck yield
low gains, but also lower losses, and an overall net gain. The total score of losses
minus gains was used for the analysis.
7. The Spanish version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Dunn et al. 2005)
was used to assess vocabulary comprehension. The total raw score was used for
the analysis.
8. The test Comprensión de Estructuras Gramaticales (CEG) (Mendoza et al.
2005), was used to assess the comprehension of syntactic structures. The CEG is
based on the TROG (Test of Reception of Grammar-2) (Bishop 2003). The total
number of correct answers was used for the analysis.
9. The production subscale of the Test de Sintaxis de Aguado (TSA) (Aguado

1999) was used to assess the children’s morphological and syntactic production
skills. The raw total scores were used for the analysis.
4 Procedure
When the children were 4 years old, a trained psychologist administered the follow-
ing instruments: The HOME scale (1), the Batelle Developmental Inventory (2), the
EDAF (3), and the child’s gambling task (6). The remaining tasks were adminis-
tered when the children were 5 years old. All the tasks were applied in a quiet room
in the children’s homes. For the administration of the children’s gambling task and
the go/nogo task an IBM compatible laptop computer was used. For different rea-
sons, not all the children could be assessed on all the tasks, and missing data were
not computed for the analyses.
Socio-demographic information and children’s health information (mother’s
educational level, gestational age, medical complications) were gathered through an
interview with the mothers and from hospital records shortly after the children’s
birth, and updated when the children were 4 years of age. Prior to the entrance in the
study informed consent was obtained from the mothers. The investigation conforms
to ethical standards and was approved by the Comité Ético de Investigación Clínica
de Galicia.
5 Results
Descriptive results obtained in the tests applied are presented in Table 1. This table
also shows the results of the one factor ANOVA. As can be observed in Table 1,
there were no significant differences among the 4 groups in any of the tests, with the
single exception of the CEG, in which the post hoc test (with Bonferroni) indicates
that the difference (p <. 05) between groups 3 (GA 34–36 weeks) and 4 (FT chil-
dren) was responsible for the significant difference found.
Univariate analyses of variance were also performed in order to control for cog-
nition. The four gestational age groups were the between subjects factor, and the
raw cognitive score in the Batelle was introduced as a co-variable. No significant
difference was found between the four GA groups, even for the results in the CEG
(comprehension of grammar structures) (F = 2.35, p = .075, eta squared = .050).
Three linear regression analyses were performed in order to determine the
effect of different predictors on the results obtained in vocabulary comprehension
(Peabody Vocabulary Test), comprehension of grammar structures (CEG), and
morphosyntax production (TSA), which were the three dependent variables.

Three models of predictive variables were hierarchically tested. In the first model,
the predictors or independent variables were gender, gestational age in weeks,
Table 1 Descriptive results found in language tests, cognitive skills, HOME scales and executive
functions tasks, and ANOVA results
Degrees Partial
of Eta
Test GA Group mean (SD) F freedom Sig. Squared
≤31 32–33 34–36 ≥37
Peabody 56.26 57.00 57.86 62.00 1.46 3, 138 .23 .03
(13.07) (12.11) (11.42) (12.59)
CEG 48.65 47.13 44.40 52.06 2.80 3, 136 .04* .06
(13.48) (9.16) (13.88) (7.33)
TSA 39.71 41.55 38.41 43.59 .98 3, 134 .40 .02
production (15.99) (11.29) (15.86) (8.17)
BDI score 84.48 85.58 82.40 85.91 .94 3, 135 .41 .02
(cognitive) (8.54) (5.34) (15.64) (3.17)
HOME scale 48.14 49.12 49.40 49.97 1.86 3, 141 .13 .04
(3.35) (3.87) (3.48) (2.46)
Gambling task −2.22 −1.47 −.49 −4.59 .79 3, 140 .50 .02
(11.14) (12.54) (12.54) (10.77)
CORSI Blocks. 10.50 9.25 11.78 10.65 .54 3, 124 .66 .01
Total score (7.42) (8.30) (8.48) (7.61)
CORSI Blocks. 2.53 2.39 2.68 2.65 .62 3, 124 .60 .01
Memory Span (.90) (.94) (.96) (.80)
Verbal memory 5.41 5.28 5.98 5.79 .59 3, 138 .63 .01
(2.36) (2.79) (2.51) (2.54)
Go/Nogo 73.10 68.81 73.53 70.39 .87 3, 125 .46 .02
(Go accuracy) (11.34) (12.17) (10.55) (18.17)
Go/Nogo 26.90 35.04 26.48 26.58 2.10 3, 125 .10 .05
(commission (11.34) (24.39) (10.55) (13.90)
errors)
Go/Nogo RT 730.84 730.15 788.43 754.82 .82 3, 125 .49 .02
(msecs) (200.11) (181.79) (124.33) (209.28)
Go/Nogo 606.15 557.91 636.30 609.52 1.09 3, 125 .36 .03
commission (188.67) (92.03) (171.34) (196.09)
errors RT
(msecs)
BDI cognitive raw score and HOME score. Our intention was to test the effect of
cognitive, environmental and biological variables. In the second model, we added
the following scores: the scores in verbal memory (EDAF), the CORSI score, and
memory span in CORSI. In this way, the possible effect of the EF related to work-
ing memory (both verbal and non verbal) was tested. Finally, in the third model,
the following variables were added: errors in the Go/nogo task, RT in the items
with errors, RT in the items with accuracy, and total score in the child’s gambling
task (earnings minus losses). The score obtained in accuracy in the Go/nogo task
were not incorporated because of the high level of tolerance (co-linearity) of this
score, which is complementary of the score in errors. Therefore, the effects of hot
EF (gambling task) and different scores of inhibition were tested.
The results of the linear regression analysis for the first dependent variable
(vocabulary comprehension) are shown in Table 2. As can be observed, the variance
explained by Model 1 reached 17.5%, and the model clearly reached significance (p
= .001). The only factor which reached significance was BDI cognitive score. GA
showed a trend (p = .057). When the working memory variables were added, Model
2 increased the variance explained only 3.3%. Change in F did not reach signifi-
cance for Model 2, and BDI cognitive score (p < .001) and gestational age (p = .049)
reached significance. Finally, in Model 3, the total variance explained rises to
23.3%, with a minimal increment of 2.4%. None of the new variables introduced
contributed in a significant way to the variance explained, and BDI cognitive score,
in a highly significant way, and GA were the only variables with a significant
contribution.
Table 3 includes results of the linear regression analysis for understanding gram-
matical structures. Model 1 explained 15.9% of the overall variance in grammatical
structure comprehension, and the model contributed significantly (p = .002) to the
explanation of the dependent variable. BDI cognitive score was the only variable
which had a significant effect (p = .001). The introduction of new variables in Model
2 increased R2 by 10.5% and the change in F reached significance. The variables
that contributed in a significant way to the prediction of the CEG score were cogni-
tive score and verbal memory. The introduction in Model 3 of the variables related
to inhibition and hot EF (gambling task) only increased R2 in 5.5%, and change in
F did not reach significance. BDI cognitive score, verbal memory as well as reaction
time in the in the errors produced in the Go/nogo task were the variables which
significantly contributed to the prediction of grammar reception, with verbal mem-
ory being that with the highest influence.
Finally, the results of the linear regression for morphosyntactic production (TSA)
as a dependent variable are shown in Table 4. The variables introduced in Model 1
explained 24.2% of the variance in morphosyntactic production, and BDI cognitive
score as well as the total score in the HOME scale were the variables which had a
significant effect, with the cognitive score being the most significant. Model 1
reached a high level of significance. When those variables related to working
memory were introduced in Model 2, the variance explained rose to 32.9 (R2 change
=8.8%), and the change in F was significant (p = .008). Model 2 reached very high
significance level. The variables which had a significant effect were BDI cognitive
score, the quality of home environment (total HOME scale score), the memory span
assessed with the CORSI, and the total score in the CORSI, in this order. After
introducing the new predictive variables in Model 3, the variance explained
increased 2%, and change in F was not significant, although the entire Model 3 was
significant. The variables that individually contributed in a significant way were the
BDI cognitive score, the HOME score, and the memory span (CORSI), in this order.
This time the total score in the CORSI did not reach significance, and verbal mem-
ory showed a trend (p = .067).
Table 2 Hierarchical regression analysis: Executive functions and other variables as predictors of
the results in vocabulary comprehension
Standardized Change Change Significance
Predictors β Sig. R2 in R2 in F change in F F df p
Model 1 .175 .175 5.246 .001 5.246 4,99 .001
Gender −.75 .426
GA .177 .056
BDI .381 .000
Cognitive
score
HOME score .011 .907
Model 2 .208 .033 1.345 .264 3.606 3,96 .002
Gender −.72 .441
GA .183 .049
BDI .352 .000
Cognitive
score
HOME score −.008 .935
Verbal .173 .078
memory
CORSI total .178 .389
score
CORSI −.164 .443
memory
span
Model 3 .233 .024 .728 .575 2.534 4,92 .008
Gender −.083 .398
GA .191 .045
BDI .356 .000
Cognitive
score
HOME score −.014 .887
Verbal .164 .099
memory
CORSI total .220 .300
score
CORSI −.183 .399
memory rank
Gambling .129 .275
task total
Go/nogo .001 .996
errors
RT accuracy −.039 .720
Go/nogo
RT errors .099 .327
Go/nogo
the results in grammar reception
Model 1 .159 .159 4.673 .002 4.673 4,99 .002
Gender .166 .081
GA .140 .132
Cognitive .323 .001
score
HOME −.041 .662
score
Model 2 .264 .105 4.553 .005 4.909 3,96 .000
Gender .163 .074
GA .124 .163
Cognitive .249 .009
score
HOME −.074 .413
score
Verbal .304 .002
memory
CORSI −.237 .236
total score
CORSI .237 .253
memory
span
Model 3 .319 .055 1.862 .124 3.913 4,92 .000
Gender .127 .172
GA .156 .082
Cognitive .262 .006
score
HOME −.056 .535
score
Verbal .288 .003
memory
CORSI −.271 .175
total score
CORSI .241 .239
memory
span
Gambling .103 .250
task total
Go/nogo −.166 .115
errors
RT .022 .830
accuracy
Go/nogo
RT errors −.198 .039
Go/nogo
the results in morphosyntactic production
Model 1 .242 .242 7.804 .000 7.804 4,98 .000
Gender .089 .322
GA .082 .354
Cognitive .429 .000
score
HOME −.226 .013
score
Model 2 .329 .088 4.151 .008 6.668 3,95 .000
Gender .072 .406
GA .059 .485
Cognitive .340 .000
score
HOME −.255 .004
score
Verbal .161 .077
memory
CORSI total −.398 .039
score
CORSI .505 .012
memory
span
Model 3 .349 .020 .699 .549 4.444 4,91 .000
Gender .062 .497
GA .035 .689
Cognitive .330 .000
score
HOME −.258 .004
score
Verbal .169 .067
memory
CORSI −.352 .074
total score
CORSI .493 .016
memory
span
Gambling −.022 .804
task total
Go/nogo .132 .200
errors
RT .124 .223
accuracy
Go/nogo
RT errors .054 .561
Go/nogo
6 Discussion
One goal of the study was to test whether Gestational Age (GA), in the absence of
serious medical complications, had an influence on the results obtained in the lan-
guage test applied or not. The results indicated that there was no significant differ-
ence between the Full Term (FT) group and any of the GA groups into which the PT
children were classified in vocabulary comprehension (Peabody Vocabulary Test)
and in morphosyntactic production (TSA). Nor were there any differences among
the groups of preterm (PT) children. These results were replicated when the effect
of cognition was controlled (co-variable). In relation to the assessment of grammati-
cal structure comprehension, differences appeared between the GA Group 3 (34–36
weeks), and the FT Group 4 (GA of 37 and more weeks), although no other differ-
ence was found among other GA groups. However, when the effect of cognition was
controlled, there was no significant effect of GA on grammar reception (CEG test).
These results indicate that differences between groups of PT children of different
GA, on the one hand, and FT children, on the other, do not seem to exist in linguistic
skills when the PT children are of low risk and serious medical complications are
absent. Therefore, the results we found with low risk PT children differ from those
found in other studies (Foster-Cohen et al. 2010; Howard et al. 2011; Luoma et al.
1998; Mikkola et al. 2005; Noort-van der Spek et al. 2012) with EPR and VPR chil-
dren, who were more at risk (some of the children had medical complications). Our
results suggest that healthy PT children do not show language difficulties in relation
to FT children at 5 years of age in the skills analyzed.
In the EF assessments, there were no significant differences among the GA
groups. This was true for all the EFs studied: verbal memory, non-verbal working
memory, inhibition, or adopting decisions between immediate gratification and
future rewards. The scores for the four GA groups were very similar in these tasks,
which contrasts with the results obtained by other studies carried out with EPR or
VPR children and FT children, such as those which assessed inhibition (Aarnoudse-
Moens et al. 2009; Baron et al. 2012; Böhm et al. 2004; Harvey et al. 1999; Marlow
et al. 2007; Ni et al. 2011), or working memory (Lowe et al. 2009; Woodward et al.
2005, Sansavini et al. 2007). The lack of differences between PT and FT children
persisted when cognitive score was controlled on univariate analysis of variance.
There were also no group differences in the other two variables studied, cogni-
tion and quality of family environment. These results indicate that the four GA
groups were similar in their cognitive abilities and in the characteristics of their
family environments for promoting development.
The effects of different predictors, and particularly different EFs, on language
development measures were addressed through the three linear regression analyses
performed. The findings obtained for each language skill analyzed were separately.
In the case of vocabulary comprehension, Model 1 explained a relatively large
amount of variance (17.5%), and the main variable which contributed to this effect
was BDI cognitive score. When other EF variables were introduced in Model 2 and
3, the proportion of variance explained increased only minimally, and the change
was not significant. GA also contributed in a significant way to the variance

explained in Model 2 and Model 3. These results indicate that vocabulary compre-
hension seems to be mainly determined by cognitive abilities, and that GA has some
effect on the size of receptive vocabulary. Executive functions do not seem to play
any determining role on receptive vocabulary, as measured by the Peabody test,
although if we were employing other measures (such as lexical access) the results
might be different. It is important to keep in mind that the tasks of the Peabody test
do not demand as much working memory load as the tasks of the sentence compre-
hension (CEG) and sentence production (TSA) tests. This is probably the reason
why EFs do not play a determining role on vocabulary understanding (Im-Bolter
et al. 2006; Marton et al. 2007). No other variables such as gender or home quality
have any effect on vocabulary understanding.
What happens with understanding of grammar structures is very different. In this
case Model 1 explained nearly 16% of the variance, and, again, cognition seems to
make a stronger contribution. When working memory variables were introduced in
Model 2, the variance explained increased significantly (change in R2 = 10.5%), and
the change in F was significant. Verbal Memory was the variable which most highly
contributed (p = .002) to this result, together with cognitive score. Another variable
introduced in Model 3 related to the inhibition of inappropriate processes (RT for
errors in the Go/nogo test) had a significant effect (p = .039) on the comprehension
of grammar structures. In this case, there was a negative relationship, indicating that
the children who had shorter RTs, achieved better results in the CEG. Again, gender
or home quality did not seem to have any significant effect on reception of grammar.
These results are in agreement with what was found by Sansavini et al. (2007) with
very PT children, and reinforce the hypothesis that verbal working memory is
closely related to grammatical comprehension (Gathercole 2007; Montgomery
2003). In our case, the assessment of verbal working memory took place 1 year
before the assessment of grammar comprehension, this fact indicating that earlier
verbal memory ability has a strong predictive effect on the comprehension of gram-
mar structures. The moderate effect of inhibition is a new finding in the research
area, and confirms the links between working memory and inhibitory control
(Diamond 2013). Globally, the combined action of inhibitory control and working
memory may be very useful for grammar comprehension since they allow the child
to concentrate on the information received and avoid distractions, and, at the same
time, to retain in their memory previous elements of the structure to be understood.
The children who have high inhibition control do not need to attend to irrelevant
stimuli and therefore their working memory is not so overloaded. This makes infor-
mation processing more effective (Im-Bolter et al. 2006; Marton et al. 2007, 2014).
All this is particularly relevant for understanding complex sentences such as those
tested in the CEG.
Finally, the regression analyses carried out with morphosyntactic production as
a dependent variable confirmed, once again, the important predictive role that cog-
nitive skills have for language development. In addition, in Model 1, the quality of
home environment was also found to have a moderate predictive role (p = .013).
The variance explained by Model 1 reached 24.2% and was highly significant.
When working memory variables were introduced in Model 2, the variance

explained by the model rose to 32.9%, and the change in F was significant. Spatial
working memory (Corsi total score and Corsi span) had a significant effect on the
results in morphosyntactic production. The inclusion of inhibition and affective
decision-making scores in Model 3 barely increased the significance (change in R2
= 2%), and change in F was not significant. There was, however a restructuring of
the effects of the variables introduced previously. BDI cognitive score continued to
be the most important predictive variable, followed by the Home score and Corsi
memory span. Verbal memory did not reach significance, although it showed a
trend. Model 2 seems to be the most efficient for the explanation of morphosyntax
production.
The comparison of the three language skills explored indicates that cognitive
skills play an important role as a predictor of the three language dimensions explored
(vocabulary comprehension, comprehension of grammar structures, and morpho-
syntactic production), confirming the results of other studies (Sansavini et al. 2011;
Pérez-Pereira et al. 2014). The role of EF, however, varies substantially. Although
EFs did not seem to have any significant predictive effect on vocabulary compre-
hension, it did seem to be related to the comprehension of grammar structures and
to the production of morphology and syntax, although the nature of the relations
seems to vary.
Verbal memory may have a more direct role in the comprehension of complex
sentences, and, in fact, seems to be the variable with the highest impact on the
results obtained by the children on the CEG (grammar understanding) , even a
slightly higher than the apparent impact of cognition. It is logical that verbal mem-
ory plays such a relevant role for the understanding of complex sentences, since the
child needs to retain in working memory elements of the structure in order to under-
stand its meaning. In contrast, the type of memory processes, which play a more
important role on the production of morphosyntax, are of a nonverbal type, proba-
bly more linked to general working memory processes. These results point to the
effect of general processing resources, as opposed to language specific resources, on
language abilities (Im-Bolter et al. 2006; Marton et al. 2007; Vugs et al. 2014). The
results found confirm the potential importance of WM processes for the active com-
prehension and production of language.
Another difference between the results obtained for the CEG and the TSA (pro-
duction) lies in the effect of inhibitory control. It is certainly logical that inhibitory
control of distracting stimuli and a higher capacity for maintaining attention is more
important for understanding complex sentences since it helps verbal memory to
retain previous elements of the sentence, which are necessary for understanding its
meaning. Probably, inhibition plays a less important role for production processes.
Complementarily, the type of structures used in the CEG are of a higher complexity
than those used in the TSA, as is common with tests assessing language comprehen-
sion and language production, which demand higher control (inhibitory control).
Affective decision making (gambling task) does not seem to have any effect on
language skills. Their role in the language assessment tasks used in this research is
not relevant at all.
There were also other predictive variables that had various relations to perfor-
mance, depending on the dependent variable analyzed. First, GA (as a numerical
variable) had only a moderate effect on vocabulary understanding, with a small
effect size (p < .05). In contrast, GA did not have any effect on the results obtained
for the comprehension or production of grammar. These results point to a stronger
influence of GA on word understanding skills than in other linguistic skills. This
interpretation is reinforced with the results obtained for word production, MLU and
sentence complexity at 30 months with the same original sample of children (Pérez-
Pereira et al. 2014).
The results for the quality of home environment are paradoxical, since the only
significant effect was on morphosyntax production, not on vocabulary production or
comprehension of grammar. Surprisingly, there was a negative relationship (β have
negative values in the three models), which indicates that those children’s families
with lower results in the HOME scale have higher results in the Test de Sintaxis de
Aguado (TSA), and vice versa. Although the effect of differential social contexts on
language acquisition is well established (Hoff 2006), the reduced variability and
high scores obtained in the HOME (see Table 1) in our sample may have determined
the results found in the analysis.
7 Conclusions
The present paper indicates that low risk PT children do not have poorer scores than
FT children in cognition, in any of the EFs analyzed, or in language. These results
are a good counterbalance to previous studies carried out with higher risk PT chil-
dren, and highlight that the population of PT children cannot be considered as a
homogeneous group. The most interesting result, in our view, is that EFs plays a
relevant role in language development, although their effects vary depending on the
dimension of language studied and the demands related to working memory load
and inhibition control associated to the tasks of the assessment instruments. Verbal
memory is a very good predictor of grammar comprehension, and certain inhibition
processes also seem to have an effect on it. Non-verbal working memory processes
have a moderate effect on morphosyntax production as well. The effect of certain
EFs on grammar comprehension and production does not diminish the important
role that general cognitive skills have in the prediction of language skills.
The present study focused its interest on delimited executive functions. Future
research should study the effect of other executive functions (such as mental flexi-
bility or planning) on language skills and written language skills as well.
References
Aarnoudse-Moens, C. S. H., Smidts, D. P., Oosterlaan, J., Duivenvoorden, H. J., & Weisglas-
Kuperus, N. (2009). Executive function in very preterm children at early school age. Journal of
Abnormal Child Psychology, 37, 981–993.
Aarnoudse-Moens, C. S., Duivenvoorden, H. J., Weisglas-Kuperus, N., Van Goudoever, J. B., &
Oosterlaan, J. (2012). The profile of executive function in very preterm children at 4 to 12
years. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 54(3), 247–253.
doi:10.1111/j.1469-8749.2011.04150.x.
Adams, A.-M., & Gathercole, S. E. (1995). Phonological working memory and speech production
in young children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 38, 493–414.
Adams, A.-M., & Gathercole, S. E. (1996). Phonological working memory and spoken language
development in children. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 49A, 216–233.
Aguado, G. (1999). Desarrollo de la morfosintaxis en el niño (TSA). Madrid: CEPE.
Anderson, P. J., De Luca, C. R., Hutchinson, E., Spencer-Smith, M. M., Roberts, G., Doyle, L. W.,
& Victorian Infant Collaborative Study Group. (2011). Attention problems in a representative
sample of extremely preterm/extremely low birth weight children. Developmental
Neuropsychology, 36, 57–73.
Archibald, L. M., & Gathercole, S. E. (2007). Nonword repetition in specific language impair-
ment: More than a phonological short-term memory deficit. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,
14, 919–924.
Barkley, R. A. (1997). Behavioral inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions:
Constructing a unifying theory of ADHD. Psychological Bulletin, 121, 65–94.
Baron, I. S., Kerns, K. A., Müller, U., Ahronovich, M. D., & Litman, F. R. (2012). Executive func-
tions in extremely low birth weight and late-preterm preschoolers: Effects on working memory
and response inhibition. Child Neuropsychology, 18, 586–599.
Bayless, S., & Stevenson, J. (2007). Executive functions in school-age children born very prema-
turely. Early Human Development, 83, 247–254.
Beauchamp, M. H., Thompson, D. K., Howard, K., Doyle, L. W., Egan, G. F., Inder, T. E., &
Anderson, P. J. (2008). Preterm infant hippocampal volumes correlate with later working mem-
ory deficits. Brain, 131, 2986–2994.
Best, J. R., & Miller, P. H. (2010). A developmental perspective on executive function. Child
Development, 81(6), 1641–1660.
Bialystok, E. (2011). Coordination of executive functions in monolingual and bilingual children.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 110, 461–468.
Bishop, D. (2003). Test for reception of grammar (TROG-2). New York: Pearson.
Blain-Brière, B., Bouchard, C., & Bigras, N. (2014). The role of executive functions in the prag-
matic skills of children age 4–5. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 240.
Blair, C., & Razza, R. (2007). Relating effortful control, executive function, and false belief under-
standing to emerging math and literacy ability in kindergarten. Child Development, 78,
647–663.
Blencowe, H., Cousens, S., Oestergaard, M. Z., Chou, D., Moller, A.-B., Narwal, R., Adler, A.,
Garcia, C. V., Rohde, S., Say, L., & Lawn, J. E. (2012). National, regional, and worldwide
estimates of preterm birth rates in the year 2010 with time trends since 1990 for selected coun-
tries: A systematic analysis and implications. Lancet, 379, 2162–2172.
Blencowe, H., Cousens, S., Chou, D., Oestergaard, M., Say, L., & Moller, A.-B., et al. (2013). Born
too soon: The global epidemiology of 15 million preterm births. Reproductive Health, 10(Suppl
1), S2, 1–16.
Böhm, B., Katz-Salamon, M., Institute, K, Smedler, A. C., Lagercrantz, H., & Forssberg, H.
(2002). Developmental risks and protective factors for influencing cognitive outcome at 5 1/2
years of age in very-low-birth weight children. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology,
44, 508–516.
Böhm, B., Smedler, A. C., & Forrsberg, H. (2004). Impulse control, working memory and other
executive functions in preterm children when starting school. Acta Pediátrica, 93,
1363–1371.
Brancal, M., Alcantud, F., Ferrer, A., & Quiroga, M. (2005). E.D.A.F. Evaluación de la discrimi-
nación auditiva y fonológica. Madrid: TEA Ediciones.
Brumbaugh, J. E., Hodel, A. S., & Thomas, K. M. (2014). The impact of late preterm birth on
executive function at preschool age. American Journal of Perinatology, 31, 305–314.
Caldwell, B., & Bradley, R. (1984). Home observation for measurement of the environment.
Administration manual. (Revised ed.). Little Rock: University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Carlson, S. M., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2008). Bilingual experience and executive functioning in young
children. Developmental Science, 11, 282–298.
Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual review of psychology, 64, 135–168. doi:10.1146/
annurev-psych-113011-143750.
D’Onofrio, B. M., Class, Q. A., Rickert, M. E., Larsson, H., Långström, N., & Lichtenstein, P.
(2013). Preterm birth and mortality and morbidity: A population-based quasi-experimental
study. JAMA Psychiatry, 70, 1231–1240 (Chicago, Ill.).
Dunn, L. M., Dunn, L. M., & Arribas, D. (2005). PEABODY. Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes.
Madrid: TEA Ediciones.
Duvall, S. W., Erickson, S. J., MacLean, P., & Lowe, J. R. (2015). Perinatal medical variables
predict executive function within a sample of preschoolers born very low birth weight. Journal
of Child Neurology, 30, 735–740.
Espy, K. A., McDiarmid, M. M., Cwik, M. F., Stalets, M., Hamby, A., & Senn, T. E. (2004). The
contribution of executive functions to emergent mathematical skills in preschool children.
Developmental Neuropsychology, 26, 465–486.
Farrell-Pagulayan, K., Busch, R. M., Medina, K. L., Bartok, J. A., & Krikorian, R. (2006).
Developmental normative data for the Corsi Block-tapping task. Journal of Clinical and
Experimental Neuropsychology, 28(6), 1043–1052. doi:10.1080/13803390500350977.
Foster-Cohen, S. H., Friesen, M. D., Champion, P. R., & Woodward, L. J. (2010). High prevalence/
low severity language delay in preschool children born very preterm. Journal of Developmental
and Behavioral Pediatrics, 31(8), 658–667.
Friedman, N. P., Miyake, A., Young, S. E., DeFries, J. C., Corley, R. P., & Hewitt, J. K. (2008).
Individual differences in executive functions are almost entirely genetic in origin. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, 137(2), 201–225. http://doi.
org/10.1037/0096-3445.137.2.201.
Gathercole, S. E. (2007). Working memory and language. In M. G. Gaskell (Ed.), The Oxford
handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 757–769). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gathercole, S. E., & Baddeley, A. D. (1990). The role of phonological memory in vocabulary
acquisition: A study of young children learning new names. British Journal of Psychology, 81,
439–454.
Gathercole, S. E., Service, E, Hitch, G. J., Adams, A. M., & Martin, A. J. (1999). Phonological
short-term memory and vocabulary development: Further evidence on the nature of the rela-
tionship. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 13, 65–77.
Grunau, R. E., Whitfield, M. F., & Fay, T. B. (2004). Psychosocial and academic characteristics of
extremely low birth weight (< or =800 g) adolescents who are free of major impairment com-
pared with term-born control subjects. Pediatrics, 114, 725–732.
Guarini, A., & Sansavini, A. (2012). Language, executive functions, short-term memory and liter-
acy in preterm children: A longitudinal study. Rivista Di Psicolinguistica Applicata, 12(3),
101–115.
Harvey, J. M., O’Callaghan, M. J., & Mohay, H. (1999). Executive function of children with
extremely low birth weight: A case control study. Developmental Medicine and Child
Neurology, 41, 292–297.
Henry, L. A., Messer, D. J., & Nash, G. (2012). Executive functioning in children with specific
language impairment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 53(1), 37–45.
doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2011.02430.x.
Hoff, E. (2006). How social contexts support and shape language development. Developmental
Review, 26(1), 55–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2005.11.002.
Howard, K., Roberts, G., Lim, J., Lee, K. J., Barre, N., Treyvaud, K., et al. (2011). Biological and
environmental factors as predictors of language skills in very preterm children at 5 years of age.
Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 32(3), 239–249. doi:10.1097/
DBP.0b013e31820b7882.
Im-Bolter, N., Johnson, J., & Pascual-Leone, J. (2006). Processing limitations in children with
specific language impairment: The role of executive function. Child development, 77(6),
1822–1841.
Jarjour, I. T. (2014). Neurodevelopmental outcome after extreme prematurity: A review of the lit-
erature. Pediatric Neurology, 52, 143–152.
Johansson, S., & Cnattigius, S. (2010). Epidemiology of preterm birth. In C. Nosarti, R. M.
Murray, & M. Hack (Eds.), Neurodevelopmental outcomes of Preterm birth from childhood to
adult life (pp. 1–16). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, S. (2007). Cognitive and behavioural outcomes following very preterm birth. Seminars in
Fetal & Neonatal Medicine, 12, 363–373.
Kerr, A., & Zelazo, P. D. (2004). Development of “hot” executive function: The children’s gam-
bling task. Brain and Cognition, 55(1), 148–157. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
S0278-2626(03)00275-6.
Kessels, R. P. C., van Zandvoort, M. J. E., Postma, A., Kappelle, L. J., & de Haan, E. H. F. (2000).
The Corsi Block-tapping task: Standardization and normative data. Applied Neuropsychology,
7(4), 252–258. doi:10.1207/S15324826AN0704_8.
Largo, R. H., Molinari, L., Pinto, L. C., Weber, M., & Duc, G. (1986). Language development of
term and preterm children during the 1st 5 years of life. Developmental Medicine and Child
Neurology, 28(3), 333–350.
Loe, I. M., Luna, B., Bledsoe, I. O., Yeom, K. W., Fritz, B. L., & Feldman, H. M. (2012).
Oculomotor assessments of executive function in preterm children. The Journal of Pediatrics,
161, 427–433.
Lowe, J., MacLean, P. C., Shaffer, M. L., & Watterberg, K. (2009). Early working memory in
children born with extremely low birth weight: Assessed by object permanence. Journal of
Child Neurology, 24, 410–415.
Luciana, M., Lindeke, L., Georgief, M., Mills, M., & Nelson, C. A. (1999). Neurobehavioural
evidence for working memory deficits in school-aged children with histories of prematurity.
Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 41, 521–533.
Luoma, L., Herrgard, E., Martikainen, A., & Ahonen, T. (1998). Speech and language development
of children born at <= 32 weeks’ gestation: A 5-year prospective follow-up study. Developmental
Medicine and Child Neurology, 40(6), 380–387.
Luu, T. M., Ment, L., Allan, W., Schneider, K., & Vohr, B. R. (2011). Executive and memory func-
tion in Adolescents born very preterm. Pediatrics, 127, e639–e646.
Marcovitch, S., & Zelazo, P. D. (2009). A hierarchical competing systems model of the emergence
and early development of executive function. Developmental Science, 12, 1–18.
Marlow, N., Hennessy, E. M., Bracewell, M. A., & Wolke, D. (2007). Motor and executive function
at 6 years of age after extremely preterm birth. Pediatrics, 120, 793–804.
Marton, K., & Schwartz, R. G. (2003). Working memory capacity and language processes in chil-
dren with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research,
46(5), 1138–1153. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2003/089).
Marton, K., Kelmenson, L., & Pinkhasova, M. (2007). Inhibition control and working memory
capacity in children with SLI. Psychologia, 50(2), 110–121. doi:10.2117/psysoc.2007.110.
Marton, K., Campanelli, L., Eichorn, N., Scheuer, J., & Yoon, J. (2014). Information processing
and proactive interference in children with and without specific language impairment. Journal
of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 57(1), 106–119.
doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2013/12-0306).
Mendoza, E., Carballo, G., Muñoz, J., & Fresneda, D. (2005). CEG: Test de Comprensión de
Estructuras Gramaticales. Madrid: TEA Ediciones.
Mikkola, K., Ritari, N., Tommiska, V., Salokorpi, T., Lehtonen, L., Tammela, O., et al. (2005).
Neurodevelopmental outcome at 5 years of age of a national cohort of extremely low birth
weight infants who were born in 1996-1997. Pediatrics, 116(6), 1391–1400. doi:10.1542/
peds.2005-0171.
Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., & Howerter, A. (2000). The unity and
diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent
variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 49–100.
Montgomery, J. W. (2003). Working memory and comprehension in children with specific lan-
guage impairment: What we know so far. Journal of Communication Disorders, 36, 221–231.
Moreno, C. (1992). Escala H.O.M.E. (Home Observation for Measurement of the Enviroment;
Caldwell y Bradley, 1984) y C.V.C. Cuestionario de la Vida Cotidiana. Sevilla: University of
Sevilla.
Mulder, H., Pitchford, N. J., Hagger, M. S., & Marlow, N. (2009). Development of executive func-
tion and attention in preterm children: A systematic review. Developmental Neuropsychology,
34, 393–421.
Mulder, H., Pitchford, N. J., & Marlow, N. (2011). Processing speed mediates executive function
difficulties in very preterm children in middle childhood. Journal of the International
Neuropsychological Society, 17, 445–454.
Newborg, J., Stock, J. R., & Wnek, L. (1996). Batelle, Inventario de Desarrollo. Madrid: TEA
Ediciones.
Ni, T. L., Huang, C. C., & Guo, N. W. (2011). Executive function deficit in preschool children born
very low birth weight with normal early development. Early Human Development, 87(2), 137–
141. doi:10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2010.11.013.
Noort-van der Spek, I., Franken, M., & Weisglas-Kuperus, N. (2012). Language functions in
preterm-born children: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Pediatrics, 129(4), 745–754.
doi:10.1542/peds.2011-1728.
Nosarti, C., Rubia, K., Smith, A. B., Frearson, S., Williams, S. C., Rifkin, L., & Murray, R. M.
(2006). Altered functional neuroanatomy of response inhibition in adolescent males who were
born very preterm. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 48, 265–271.
Pennington, B. F., & Ozonoff, S. (1996). Executive functions and developmental psychopatholo-
gies. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry Annual Research Review, 37, 51–87.
Pérez-Pereira, M., Fernández, P., Gómez-Taibo, M. L., & Resches, M. (2014). Language develop-
ment of low risk preterm infants up to the age of 30 months. Early Human Development, 90,
649–656. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2014.08.004.
Peterson, E., & Welsh, M. C. (2014). The development of hot and cool executive functions in child-
hood and adolescence: Are we getting warmer? In S. Goldstein & J. A. Naglieri (Eds.),
Handbook of executive functioning (pp. 45–65). New York: Springer.
Pizzo, R., Urben, S., Van Der Linden, M., Borradori-Tolsa, C., Freschi, M., Forcada-Guex, M.,
et al. (2010). Attentional networks efficiency in preterm children. Journal of the International
Neuropsychological Society, 16(1), 130–137. doi:10.1017/s1355617709991032.
Poulin-Dubois, D., Blaye, A., Coutya, J., & Bialystok, E. (2011). The effects of bilingualism on
toddlers’ executive functioning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 108(3), 567–579.
doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2010.10.009.
Réveillon, M., Urben, S., Barisnikov, K., Borradori Tolsa, C., Hüppi, P. S., & Lazeyras, F. (2013).
Functional neuroimaging study of performances on a Go/No-go task in 6- to 7-year-old pre-
term children: Impact of intrauterine growth restriction. Neuro Image: Clinical, 3, 429–437.
Réveillon, M., Borradori Tolsa, C., Monnier, M., Hüppi, P. S., & Barisnikov, K. (2015). Response
inhibition difficulties in preterm children aged 9–12 years: Relations with emotion and behav-
ior. Child Neuropsychology, 22(4), 420–422. doi:10.1080/09297049.2014.994486.
Ritter, B. C., Nelle, M., Perrig, W., Steinlin, M., & Everts, R. (2013). Executive functions of chil-
dren born very preterm deficit or delay? European Journal of Pediatrics, 172, 473–483.
Ritter, B. C., Perrig, W., Steinlin, M., & Everts, R. (2014). Cognitive and behavioral aspects of
executive functions in children born very preterm. Child Neuropsychology, 20, 129–144.
Roello, M., Ferretti, M. L., Colonnello, V., & Levi, G. (2015). When words lead to solutions:
Executive function deficits in preschool children with specific language impairment. Research
in Developmental Disabilities, 37, 216–222. doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.11.017.
Romine, C. B., & Reynolds, C. R. (2005). A model of the development of frontal lobe function:
Findings from a meta-analysis. Applied Neuropsychology, 12, 190–201.
Rueda, M. R., Fan, J., McCandliss, B. D., Halparin, J. D., Gruber, D. B., Lercari, L. P., et al.
(2004). Development of attentional networks in childhood. Neuropsychologia, 42(8), 1029–
1040. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2003.12.012.
Saavalainen, P., Luoma, L., Bowler, D., Määttä, S., Kiviniemi, V., Laukkanen, E., et al. (2007).
Spatial span in very prematurely born adolescents. Developmental Neuropsychology, 32,
769–785.
Sansavini, A., Guarini, A., Alessandroni, R., Faldella, G., Giovanelli, G., & Salvioli, G. (2007).
Are early grammatical and phonological working memory abilities affected by preterm birth?
Journal of Communication Disorders, 40(3), 239–256. doi:10.1016/j.jcomdis.2006.06.009.
Sansavini, A., Savini, S., Guarini, A., Broccoli, S., Alessandroni, R., & Faldella, G. (2011).
The effect of gestational age on developmental outcomes: A longitudinal study in the first
2 years of life. Child: Care, Health and Development, 37(1), 26–36.
doi:10.1111/j.1365-2214.2010.01143.x.
Scott, M. N., Taylor, H. G., Fristad, M. A., Klein, N., Espy, K. A., Minich, N., & Hack, M. (2012).
Behavior disorders in extremely preterm/extremely low birth weight children in Kindergarten.
Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 33, 202–213.
Singer, B. D., & Bashir, A. S. (1999). What are executive functions and self-regulation and what
do they have to do with language-learning disorders? Language, Speech, and Hearing Services
in Schools, 30, 265–273.
Taylor, H. G., Hack, M., & Klein, N. K. (1998). Attention deficits in children with <750 gm birth
weight. Child Neuropsychology, 4, 21–34.
Thorell, L. B., Veleiro, A., Siu, A. F. Y., & Mohammadi, H. (2012). Examining the relation between
ratings of executive functioning and academic achievement: Findings from a cross-cultural
study. Child Neuropsychology, 19, 630–638.
Van Baar, A. L., Vermaas, J., Knots, E., de Kleine, M. J. K., & Soons, P. (2009). Functioning at
school age of moderately preterm children born at 32 to 36 weeks’ Gestational age. Pediatrics,
124, 251–257.
Van Baar, A. L., de Jong, M., & Verhoeven, M. (2013). Moderate Preterm children born at 32–36
weeks Gestational age around 8 years of age: Differences between children with and without
identified developmental and school problems. Preterm Birth. Offer Erez (Ed.), ISBN: 978-
953-51-0952-5, InTech, doi:10.5772/54623.
Vissers, C., Koolen, S., Hermans, D., Scheper, A., & Knoors, H. (2015). Executive functioning in
preschoolers with specific language impairment. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1574. doi:10.3389/
fpsyg.2015.01574.
Vugs, B., Hendriks, M., Cuperus, J., & Verhoeven, L. (2014). Working memory performance and
executive function behaviors in young children with SLI. Research in Developmental
Disabilities, 35(1), 62–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2013.10.022.
Woodward, L. J., Edgin, J. O., Thompson, D., & Inder, T. E. (2005). Object working memory defi-
cits by early brain injury and development in the preterm infant. Brain, 128, 2578–2587.
Woodward, L. J., Clark, C. A. C., Bora, S., & Inder, T. E. (2012). Neonatal White Matter abnor-
malities an important predictor of neurocognitive outcome for very preterm children. PloS One,
7(12), e51879. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0051879.
Processing Speed of Infants with High
and Low Communicative Skills
Elda Alicia Alva Canto and Paloma Suárez Brito
Abstract Background and rationale. While experimental psychology has focused

on the study of processes that determine the individual’s behaviour in specific experi-
mental situations, the studies concerning individual differences have analyzed the
stability of observed differences on performance between individuals, in particular
those which can be generalized through diverse situations or tasks (Williams et al., J
Exp Anal Behav 90:219–231, 2008). Several studies have shown that processing
speed is a useful variable to study how age and ability in a specific task affect the
performance in more general cognitive tasks such as language (Zheng et al., Psyc
Bulletin & Rev 7:113–120, 2000). In studies with infants for example, it is known
that younger children are slower to process linguistic stimuli compared with older
children while they respond to the same task (Fernald et al. 1998); and that there is a
positive relation between vocabulary development and processing speed during the
second year of life (Fernald et al., Child Dev 72(4):1003–1015, 2001; Fernald et al.,
Dev Psychol 42(1):98–116, 2006; Zangl et al., J Cogn Dev 6(2):179–208, 2005).
The present study analyzes the individual differences in processing speed of
infants and its relation with the development of communicative skills during the first
year of life. Methods. Using the Intermodal Preferential Looking paradigm (IPL),
an experimental task was designed whose goal was to determine the time that infants
took to look at the target in a word learning task, as well as the relation between
processing speed and the vocabulary of the infants measured with the MacArthur
Inventory (CD-I). The infants were assigned to one of two groups depending on
their performance on the comprehension subscale of the CDI-I Inventory (Group 1:
below percentile 25; Group 2: above percentile 75).
Results. Results showed that the infants who scored below percentile 25 on the
CDI-I Inventory presented a higher processing time in the experimental task; on the
contrary, the group of infants who scored above percentile 75 on the Inventory,
showed a lower processing time. In general, the infants above percentile 75 on the
comprehension subscale were 11% faster than their peers below percentile 25, in the
word learning task.
E.A. Alva Canto (*) • P. Suárez Brito

Department of Psychology, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM),
Mexico City, Mexico
e-mail: alva@unam.mx; palomm@hotmail.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_5
114 E.A. Alva Canto and P. Suárez Brito
Discussion. The findings shown here suggest that once age is controlled, differ-
ences in the infants’ communicative skills at early ages such as 12 months reflect
differences in linguistic skills, such as word learning. Finally, the findings showed
here support the study of individual differences in infants’ processing speed in the
first year of life in specific experimental tasks.
Keywords Speed of processing • Development • Vocabulary • Verbal skills •

Spanish-speaking children
1 Processing Speed and Language Development
Processing speed refers to the velocity with which an individual executes basic cog-
nitive functions such as object identification or simple discriminations between
stimuli. Hale (1990) suggested a Global Hypothesis that implied that all resources
or abilities involved in information processing increase with age, and predicted that
efficiency in information processing is affected by this variable. According to the
Global Hypothesis, the processing speed of a group of infants may be predicted
regardless of the task, given that all components of processing speed are equally
affected by development.
In this sense, Hale (1990) as well as Kail (1991) showed that the components of
processing speed develop together at an equivalent growth rate. Some researchers
have tried to differentiate cognitive processing speed from any other motor speed
involved in a response; thus, several studies have observed that performance in pro-
cessing speed improves substantially during infancy and moderately during adoles-
cence. Compared to young adults, children between the ages of 4 and 5 years take
three times as long, 8 year-olds take twice as long and 11 year-olds take 50% longer
to respond in an equivalent cognitive task. This pattern in development has been
seen in a diversity of perceptual and cognitive tasks, and refers to a common mecha-
nism responsible for changes in processing related to age (Fry and Hale 1996; Hale
1990; Kail 1991).
In order to analyze age differences in terms of processing speed, Kail (1991)
examined, via a meta-analysis, data from 72 studies that compared a group of 4
year-olds with a group of young adults in a variety of tasks that measure processing
speed. The results of the meta-analysis showed that the processing speed of chil-
dren, measured in terms of reaction time, was proportional to that of young adults
when performing the same task. Additionally, the author reported that the improve-
ment in processing speed could be represented by a non-linear function. This
function reveals that processing speed shows a fast increase in infancy and a pro-
gressive and gradual increase in adolescence and also that adult levels of processing
speed are reached during adolescence (Kail 1991; Fry and Hale 2000). Identifying
mathematical functions that describe a change pattern in processing speed is rele-
vant because it offers a precise description of development and can provide indexes
about its subjacent mechanisms.
Processing Speed of Infants with High and Low Communicative Skills 115
Age differences related to processing speed in school children have been reported
in a diversity of studies and experimental tasks showing that younger children have
a slower execution compared to older children, and older children present slower
performance than adults. For example, Fry and Hale (1996) analyzed four age
groups (10, 12, 15 and 19 years) in a battery of four different processing speed tasks.
The results showed that the increase in processing speed related to age was not spe-
cific to any task. It seems to be a global characteristic of children’s performance.
Throughout all tasks, the time required by younger children to perform the task was
proportional to the time required by the older group.
In motor, perceptual and cognitive tasks in which participants must respond fast,
a common pattern emerges: children 8–10 years old usually respond at a speed that
is 5 to 6 standard deviations below the average speed of young adults, and youths
aged 12 and 13 respond at a rate of slightly more than one standard deviation below
the mean average speed of young adults (Kail 2000) (Fig. 1).
According to Kail (2000), even when evidence persistently implies a global
mechanism in processing speed changes as age increases, the characteristics of this
hypothetical mechanism are barely understood. In his study, Kail (2000) proposed
to look for basic parameters of cognitive psychology concerning mental functioning
that could correspond to and explain such global mechanism. In fact, changes in
processing speed can produce systematic differences across a range of tasks similar
to those described above. Taking this approach further, the change in processing
speed reflects age-related changes in neural communication. The developmental
changes in processing speed are related to neural development, as there are periods
of development in which processing speed changes dramatically and concur with
SD
-5 -4 -3 -2 -1
X
Children Young Adults
Adults
SLOWER PROCESSING SPEED FASTER
Fig. 1 Processing speed of children and young adults compared to processing speed of adults
major changes in neuronal organization (Kail 2000). Likewise, there are age-related
changes in the number of connections in the central nervous system, as well as
accelerated increases in myelination. Furthermore, individuals with disabilities of
the nervous system frequently exhibit slower processing rates. For example, in mul-
tiple sclerosis, neurons suffer des-myelination, resulting in slower processing speed.
2 Measuring Processing Speed in Infants
In studies with infants, different tasks and methods have been used to measure pro-
cessing speed from an early age. One of these tasks is the Visual Expectation
Paradigm, VExP, (Haith et al. 1988) in which ocular movements are recorded while
the infant observes a series of images on a monitor in front of him or her. Images can
be presented in predictable sequences (alternating right-left) or unpredictable
sequences (random presentation). The central premise of this paradigm is to deter-
mine if infants can anticipate correctly where the visual stimulus is going to appear,
as interpreted by the ocular movements towards the next location in the predictable
sequence and whether an infant’s reaction times are faster when predictable
sequences are presented, compared to unpredictable sequences (Reznick et al.
2000).
In some studies that used the VExP Paradigm, Haith et al. (1988) showed that
infants do have expectations in the first months of life. In one of the studies, the
authors revealed that visual reaction time of 3.5 month-olds, was significantly faster
for predictable sequences (right-left) compared to random sequences. The authors
also observed that infants anticipate changing their gaze before the onset of the next
stimulus in predictable sequences in contrast to random sequences. In other studies
using the same paradigm (i.e. Reznick et al. 2000) it was also observed that infants
became faster even in baseline trials, in which the location of the stimulus varies
unpredictably from side to side. Reaction times during baseline trials decreased
14% from five to twelve months of age. These results are consistent with Wass et al.
(1998) who previously reported a decrease of 12% to 13% from three to eight
months of age.
Another task used to measure processing speed in infants, is the Continuous
Familiarization Task (Rose et al. 2003), in which a series of stimuli (faces) are pre-
sented on a monitor to infants. One of the stimuli remains constant while the other
varies from trial to trial. Each trial starts with a first look at any of the stimuli and
ends when the infant has been looking at the monitor for 4 sec. The test continues
for a maximum of 36 trials or until the infant shows a consistent preference for the
changing stimulus. This preference is defined as a proportion of looking at least
55% of the time (but less than 100% to ensure looking at both stimuli) at the chang-
ing stimulus, in four of five consecutive trials. The number of trials that an infant
takes to reach this criterion has been used as a measure of processing speed. In this
way, familiarization tasks provide an indicator of the speed with which infants cod-
ify visual stimuli (Rose et al. 2003).
With a series of analyses of the data obtained with the VExP paradigm, Rose
et al. (2003) determined the stability as well as the variability and predictive validity
of the processing speed measure in infants. In one study, the authors reported that
psychomotor speed measured as reaction time (RT) shows moderate reliability in
studies with typical developing infants at three and seven months of age (correla-
tions between 0.47 and 0.53). Further, in a small sample of infants (n = 13) seen
monthly from two to nine months of age and then at 12 months of age, a strong
stability was found over the first year (r = 0.62 to 0.90) and moderate stability over
longer periods of time, beginning at 6 months of age (r = 0.36 to 0.77).
Even though data are still scarce, there is fair evidence of discriminant variability
for both tasks (VExP and Familiarization Paradigm) in typically developing infants,
as well as in infants who were at pre - and perinatal risk. In particular, infants who
were prenatally exposed to alcohol, showed slower reaction time measures than con-
trol infants at 6.5 months of age, while those prenatally exposed to high levels of
cocaine showed the opposite pattern; that is, faster reaction times (Rose et al. 2003).
Conversely, premature infants were slower in codifying a stimulus compared to
infants born at term in the Continuous Familiarization Task; they required close to
20% more trials and took 30% longer to recognize the target. Even when both groups
showed similar development trajectories, the general level of performance of preterm
infants decreased during the first year of life. In general, preterm infants who suf-
fered more medical risks were slower to reach the criteria in the experimental task.
Furthermore, in a study by Rose et al. (2003), predictive validity was described
from previous data obtained in Dougherty and Haith’s (1997) study. In that research,
a small group of 3.5 month-old infants born at term (n = 23) was followed for 4 years
with data from the VExP paradigm. Infants with slower reaction times showed lower
IQ scores at 4 years of age (r = −.44, p < .05). Also, infants’ reaction times at 3.5
months of age correlated with their RT’s at 4 years of age (r = .51, p < .01), indicating
that this measure has considerable stability from infancy to preschool years.
Another visual preference method that is often used in studies about language
comprehension and language development in early ages is the Intermodal Preferential
Looking Paradigm (IPL) or Looking while listening (Alva 2007; Fernald et al. 2008;
Golinkoff et al. 1987; Golinkoff and Hirsch-Pasek 2001). The IPL is an adaptation
made by Golinkoff et al. (1987) of the visual preferences technique developed by
Fantz (1961), who used that technique in studies concerning visual preferences of
chimpanzees, as well as infants of 2–6 months of age. Among other findings, Fantz
(1961, 1975) discovered that babies tend to look longer at round and three-dimen-
sional images than flat and pyramidal ones. Likewise, the author showed that infants
gazed longer at images similar to faces compared to images with simple geometric
forms, when both images were presented simultaneously.
The IPL adaptation made by Golinkoff et al. (1987) has been employed in stud-
ies about language comprehension in infants. The procedure uses looking behavior
as a response and it is based on the presentation of two or more visual stimuli and
an auditory stimulus corresponding to just one of the visual stimuli. The purpose of
conducting a test in this paradigm is to observe whether the infant directs his gaze
to the image corresponding to the auditory stimulus presented. Visual stimuli are
Fig. 2 Graphic representation of the IPL procedure
presented in computer monitors in front of the participant and the infant’s look is
recorded on video during the entire task for further analysis. Evaluation consists of
analyzing, frame by frame, the gaze direction of the infant before and after the pre-
sentation of the auditory stimulus to observe its effect on the infant’s gaze.
One of the main advantages of using the IPL procedure is that language can be
studied in infants before they produce their first words (Golinkoff and Hirsch-Pasek
2001). Because the IPL paradigm is conducted under laboratory conditions, it is
essential that the visual stimuli used are properly selected and recognizable by prever-
bal infants. In studies using the IPL procedure, comprehension and word learning is
studied and analyzed in terms of the infants’ tendency to look at visual stimuli related
to the words presented. The value of using this paradigm resides in the fact that the
direction of the infants’ gaze must be mediated by the auditory stimulus and not only
by the physical features of the stimuli presented (Schafer and Plunkett 1998). In previ-
ous studies it has been shown that the IPL procedure can be used to evaluate cognitive
and linguistic skills such as comprehension and word learning in infants from the first
months of age (Alva 2004; Arias-Trejo and Plunkett 2010; Falcón et al. 2013; Fernald
et al. 2001; Jasso et al. 2014; Schafer and Plunkett 1998) (Fig. 2).
3 T
he Study of Individual Differences- Processing Speed
and Vocabulary
While experimental psychology has focused on the study of processes that deter-
mine the individual’s behavior in specific experimental situations, the studies con-
cerning individual differences have analyzed the stability of observed differences on
performance between individuals, in particular those which can be generalized

through diverse situations or tasks (Williams et al. 2008). Identifying individual dif-
ferences in discrete aspects of cognition, such as processing speed, help us to com-
prehend the origins of later differences in cognitive abilities. Given the central role
of processing speed in theoretical conceptions about intelligence and cognition,
individual differences may have long-term implications in cognitive development
(Rose et al. 2003).
From a behavioral perspective, there is growing evidence of individual consis-
tency in speed of response across very diverse tasks: several studies have shown
how some people are consistently fast on many tasks, whereas others are consis-
tently slow (Hale and Jansen 1994; Myerson et al. 2003; Zheng et al. 2000). This
consistency is reminiscent of that observed in intelligence tests and suggests that
individual differences in the speed with which people process information could
affect performance in many different psychological tests and everyday tasks
(Williams et al. 2008).
The study of individual differences reveals an important regularity in individual
behavior; one that already has shed substantial light on the behavioral processes
underlying changes observed in both child development and aging (Williams et al.
2008). In children as well as in adults, processing speed is considered a fundamental
aspect for general intellectual functioning, including the ability to abstract and inte-
grate information efficiently during problem solving (Kail and Salthouse 1994;
Marchman and Fernald 2008). Specifically, individual differences found in process-
ing speed seem to be a central factor that limits performance in a great variety of
cognitive tasks in infancy and adolescence. These results have systematically con-
firmed that specific cognitive skills detected in infancy, contribute importantly to
children’s later cognitive competence (Fry and Hale 1996, 2000; Kail 2007;
Marchman and Fernald 2008; Rose and Feldman 1997; Rose et al. 1992).
Likewise, another series of studies found that infants who habituated faster, are
more able to attend, codify and retrieve visual information; and that individual dif-
ferences in such processing measures are associated with performance in IQ tests in
later infancy (Bornstein et al. 2006; McCall and Carriger 1993; Rose et al. 2005,
2012). Also, processing speed is consistently related to cognitive and language
problems. The speed with which infants and young adults execute cognitive
processes, predicts their performance in a great variety of tasks. A faster processing
speed is associated with an increase in working memory capacity, allowing a better
inductive reasoning and more precision in arithmetic problem solving (Fry and Hale
1996; Kail and Hall 1999; Kail 2007). Thus, limitations in processing speed may
generate limitations in the construction of lexical and grammatical representations
essential for language development (Kail 1991; Fry and Hale 1996).
Another series of studies demonstrated a relationship between language develop-
ment and processing speed in infants during the second year of life (Fernald et al.
2001; Zangl et al. 2005). In a study by Fernald et al. (2001), the authors analyzed the
processing speed of infants between 18 and 21 months of age, presenting sounds
corresponding to complete or incomplete words associated to images. They found
that at both ages, infants were able to identify the visual stimulus even though the
corresponding auditory stimulus was only partially presented. The authors also
showed that the infants who had less errors and shorter reaction times had more than
100 words in their vocabularies as reported by their parents; compared to infants with
less than 60 words who showed longer reaction times and more errors in the task.
Zangl et al. (2005) analyzed comprehension of words modified in their sound and
other non-modified words associated with images in infants 12 to 31 month-olds
using the IPL procedure. They found that the ability to identify the word (modified or
not modified) varied according to the age of participants. In general, those most able
to identify the words even with the modified auditory stimulus were children who also
had a greater number of words in their vocabulary as reported by their parents.
Similarly, Fernald et al. (2006) found that processing speed measured at 25
months of age correlated with the number of comprehended words in the same
infants from 12 to 25 months of age. Infants who showed a faster processing speed at
25 months, also showed a greater number of words in their vocabulary as reported by
parents. In addition, in Fernald’s et al. (2006) the authors presented the babies with a
test that analyzed visual processing time without any linguistic stimulus to eliminate
the possibility that the infants’ reaction time is not due to maturation. They found no
differences in visual processing time throughout the ages studied. In this sense, it has
been shown that processing speed in experimental tasks at 25 months of age is also
related to performance in attention and memory tasks during infancy and adoles-
cence (Kail 1991; Fry and Hale 1996; Marchman and Fernald 2008). For example, in
a study with 8 year-olds, Marchman and Fernald (2008) applied several language and
working memory tests to children and found a positive relationship between process-
ing speed and vocabulary measures obtained at 25 months of age, with linguistic
abilities analyzed in the same participants at 8 years of age.
4 E
vidence from Learners of Spanish with Typical
Development
According to previous literature, individual differences observed in processing speed

seem to be a central factor that predicts infant performance in attention, memory and
language tasks in childhood and adolescence. These results have confirmed that pro-
cessing speed measured in infancy contributes importantly to the cognitive competence
of children some years later, in particular those related to language skills (Bornstein
et al. 2006; Fry and Hale 1996, 2000; Kail 2007; Marchman and Fernald 2008; McCall
and Carriger 1993; Rose et al. 1992, 2005, 2012; Rose and Feldman 1997).
In a recent study, Suárez (2015) showed how the processing speed of infants learning
Spanish depends on task difficulty and on whether the task presented was linguistic or
non-linguistic. Participants were 9–15 month-old infants and the IPL procedure was used
in three tasks, whose goals were to determine the time that infants take to process linguis-
tic (Word Recognition and Word Learning tasks respectively) and non-linguistic stimuli
(Neutral Stimuli task). Results show two major findings: first, that infants’ processing
speed to neutral stimuli, namely stimuli without linguistic or semantic content, was sig-
nificantly different from processing speed obtained from the linguistic tasks. Infants took
less time to identify and process neutral stimuli compared to linguistic stimuli. And sec-
ond, that an infant’s processing speed measured in linguistic tasks depends on the infant’s
age and task demand. The processing speed for familiar objects (Word Recognition Task)
remained constant from 9 to 15 months of age, while processing speed for novel objects
(Word Learning task) improves with age; older infants were faster than younger infants.
Processing speed is thus, a reliable measure for discriminating information processing in
tasks with different levels of difficulty at early ages. The findings highlight the importance
of considering age and linguistic ability in the study of infants’ processing speed (Fig. 3).
Based on previous findings and considering the literature regarding individual
differences, as well as the relationship between processing speed and vocabulary
production during the first year of life in Spanish learners, in this new study we
tested with a sample of 31 Mexican infants (16 girls and 15 boys), how processing
speed in infancy is related to specific abilities, such as vocabulary in Spanish learn-
ers at 12 months of age (X = 12.01 months, SD = 2.03). All participants were born
at term; Spanish was their native language; they had no auditory or visual problems
and no serious illness in their background as reported by their parents. All partici-
pants were recruited through advertisements in the university newspaper.
1400
1200
1000
Processing speed (ms)
800
Neutral Stimuli Task

600
Word Recognition Task
Word Learning Task
400
200
0
9 12 15
Age (months)
error bars: +/- 1 SE
Fig. 3 Processing speed of 9–15 month-olds obtained in three different experimental tasks from
Suárez & Alva (2015)
Using the IPL procedure (Alva 2007), an experimental task was presented to
determine the time that infants took to look at the target in a Word Learning task,
as well as the relation between processing speed and vocabulary measured with
the MacArthur Inventory (CD-I). To obtain processing speed measures, a Word
Learning task based on the work of Schafer and Plunkett (1998) was used. The
training phase consisted of 14 trials of 2.5 s each with a 1 s inter-trial interval. In
each training trial one visual stimulus on one side of the monitor (right or left)
was presented and at 1.5 s the auditory stimulus associated with the image was
introduced (mibo or cape). The test phase started 1 s after the training phase and
consisted of six trials of 6 s each. During the first 3 s of each test trial the two
images used in this task were presented simultaneously and from the third sec-
ond on, the auditory stimulus corresponding to one of the two images was heard
(see Fig. 4).
Fig. 4 Examples of training and test trials on the Word Learning task
For evaluation purposes, each test trial was divided into two stages: the PRE stage,
before the presentation of the auditory stimulus from 0 to 3 s, and the POST stage,
after the presentation of the auditory stimulus from 3 to 6 s. Total duration of the Word
Learning task was about 90 s. The gaze of the infants was recorded by video cameras
installed in the experimental booth for further analyses. In this task, the RT measure
was the time in milliseconds that each infant took to direct his gaze towards the visual
stimulus designated as target, from the presentation of the auditory stimulus.
The Communicative Development Inventory Version I (Inventario de Desarrollo
Comunicativo MacArthur Versión I) or CDI-I was used to evaluate language devel-
opment. It includes a questionnaire regarding infant health, information on their
care, ethnic background, education and parental occupations. In addition to the
basic questionnaire, the CDI-I consists of an inventory of vocabulary for infants of
8–18 months of age in which the mother or caregiver must mark each word listed as
known and/or produced by the infant. It is made up of six subscales: Comprehension
of First Sentences, Word Comprehension, Word Production, First Gestures, Late
Gestures and a total score of Gestures (Jackson-Maldonado et al. 2003).
The infants were then assigned to one of two groups depending on their perfor-
mance on the comprehension subscale of the CDI-I Inventory (Group 1: below
percentile 25; Group 2: above percentile 75). The table below shows the results of
the 31 infants on the CDI Inventory each subgroup of high and low communicative
ability, as well as the RT values obtained from the Word Learning task in each
subgroup.
Table 1 illustrates that the low ability group has lower scores in all six subscales
of the CDI-I Inventory compared to the high ability group. In the next graph it can
be observed that the infants who scored below percentile 25 on the CDI-I Inventory
present a slower processing time in the experimental task; on the other hand, the
group of infants who scored above percentile 75 in the Inventory, showed a faster
processing time. Comparing both subgroups, the infants above percentile 75 on the
comprehension subscale were 11% faster than their peers below percentile 25 in the
word-learning task. RT value in the low ability group (below CDI percentile 25) was
RT = 1042.11 ms (SD = 444.08 ms) and RT = 923.24 ms (SD = 471.63) in the high
ability group (above CDI percentile 75) (Fig. 5).
This result is consistent with previous work on older infants learning English,
where it has been shown that infants with low RT’s, namely, those who are faster in
identifying the referent, have higher scores in standardized language tests (e.g.
Table 1 CDI-I scores of 31 Mexican infants divided in low and high communicative skills
First First Late Total
Phrases Comprehension Production Gestures Gestures Gestures
Low 13.00 32.80 2.60 11.00 13.60 24.60
ability X
SD 5.78 31.23 3.71 4.60 7.36 10.71
High 20.60 244.80 19.50 12.90 18.70 31.90
ability X
SD 5.43 81.09 27.54 4.06 11.84 14.88
Fig. 5 RT’s obtained from TR, High

the Word Learning task of Communicative
infants of high and low Skills, 923.24
communicative skills
TR, Low
Communicative
Skills, 1042.11
RT (ms)
Infants who showed Infants who showed

faster RT slower RT
245 words 33 words
(Comprehension subscale) (Comprehension subscale)
Fig. 6 Number of words comprehended by subgroups of high and low communicative skills
MacArthur, CDI) compared to infants who took longer to identify the referent in the
same task. This result demonstrates that linguistic abilities measured in a Word
Learning task, have a relationship with language development at an early age in
Spanish learners (Fig. 6).
The findings of this study suggests that once age is controlled, differences in the
infants’ communicative skills as early as 12 months of age reflect differences in
linguistic skills, such as word learning. Finally, the results presented herein support
the study of individual differences in infants’ processing speed in the first year of
life on specific experimental tasks and underline the importance of the study of
language development in the first year of life.
5 P
rocessing Speed in Children with Specific Language
Impairment (SLI)
SLI refers to a significant deficit in language ability that cannot be attributed to hear-
ing loss, low non-verbal intelligence, or neurological damage (Leonard 2014).
However it is unlikely that this deficit itself can explain the diverse pattern of
language impairments observed in children who suffer this condition (Weismer and
Evans 2002).
SLI is usually diagnosed during the preschool years; people diagnosed with SLI
at young age continue to have relatively weak language skills as adults (Leonard
2014). Likewise, there is considerable evidence to show that children with SLI have
deficits in areas of cognitive ability besides language (Miller et al. 2001). To give an
example, a cognitive domain in which children with SLI may be deficient is speed
of information processing. In general, children with SLI process information more
slowly than children with typical development (Im-Bolter et al. 2006; Miller et al.
2001). Limited processing capacity has the potential to explain both the linguistic
and nonlinguistic difficulties found in children with SLI. Also, effective use of lan-
guage requires coordination of one’s linguistic, cognitive, and social skills; and
availability of cognitive resources (such as memory capacity) will affect this ability.
If children with SLI have reduced cognitive resources to allocate to ongoing pro-
cessing, then performance should suffer if the cognitive demand of the task is
greater than the resources available (Im-Bolter et al. 2006).
Miller et al. (2001) analyzed the speed with which 58 kindergarten children with
and without SLI respond on a range of linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks (10 differ-
ent tasks involving a total of 41 conditions). The results support the hypothesis that
speed of processing in children with SLI is generally slower than that of children
with normal language, although, some children with SLI do not appear to show defi-
cits of this type. Among other explanations, the authors discuss that it is quite plau-
sible that generalized slowness can contribute to the below-age-level functioning
seen in many areas of these children’s language, but that other factors can cause
their problems with grammatical morphology (Miller et al. 2001)
Weismer and Evans (2002) showed that processing-dependent measures have
been found to be more sensitive to language disorder than standardized measures.
Therefore, it seems worthwhile to further investigate the utility of a processing-
based approach in predicting later language abilities based on early performance in
these types of assessment measures. Processing limitations may manifest initially as
slow vocabulary growth at age two and subsequently as deficits in more specific
domains (morphosyntax, discourse, or written language problems) in later school-
age years. A child’s relative strength or weakness in processing abilities may cut
across these areas and thereby provide a more consistent index of language facility
over time (Weismer and Evans 2002).
In a more recent study, Im-Bolter et al. (2006) investigated mental attention
capacity and executive function in children with and without SLI to determine
whether children with SLI have a general processing deficit or deficits in certain
executive processes, and the extent to which these processes are related to language
competence. 90 children between 7 and 12 years (n = 45 children with SLI; n = 45
normally developing) were tested in their schools and receive three individual ses-
sions, one session per day, in which intelligence and language-screening tests (men-
tal attentional capacity and two executive functions) were applied. Findings
supported the premise that deficits in the functioning of mental attention are related
to language competence. Furthermore, children with SLI exhibit a relative defi-
ciency in a general (not just specific to language) executive process.
6 Conclusion
In summary, a great variety of studies have described the development of processing

speed, as well as indexes of its stability through time. Also, it has been shown here
that individual differences in processing speed point to a relevant relationship with
vocabulary competence. The findings relative to processing speed in infants of early
ages described in this chapter, allow us to obtain a better comprehension of the
implications of this variable over cognitive and language development of infants
learning English or Spanish; observed both at early ages as well as in preschool
ages.
Likewise, much investigation has gone into an attempt to clarify and understand
the role of processing speed over language constraints in children suffering
SLI. Given that it is common that children with SLI have deficits in areas of cogni-
tive ability besides language, studying SLI from a processing speed perspective can
make it possible to explain both the linguistic and nonlinguistic difficulties found in
children with this condition. Taking together the results of the different studies
described here, and bearing in mind the importance of the role of processing speed
over different cognitive domains, we consider more research is needed concerning
early performance in processing speed, searching not only for a better comprehen-
sion of the phenomenon, but also for a plausible prediction of language impairment
in later ages.
References
Alva, E. (2004). Modelos de desarrollo del lenguaje espontáneo en infantes y escolares: Análisis
de muestras masivas. Tesis doctoral. Facultad de Psicología. UNAM. México.
Alva, E. (2007). Del universo de los sonidos a la palabra: Investigaciones sobre el desarrollo del
lenguaje en infantes. México: UNAM.
Arias-Trejo, N., & Plunkett, K. (2010). The effects of perceptual similarity and category member-
ship on early word-referent identification. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 105,
63–80. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2009.10.002.
Bornstein, et al. (2006). Stability in cognition across early childhood: A developmental cascade.
Psychological Science, 17(2), 151. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01678.x.
Dougherty, T., & Haith, M. (1997). Infant expectations and reaction time as predictors of child-
hood speed of processing and IQ. Developmental Psychology, 33, 146–155.
Falcón, A., Alva, E., & Franco, A. (2013). Segmentación y categorización intraléxica por infantes
aprendices del español de 9 a 12 meses de edad. Psicológica, 34, 37–58.
Fantz, R. (1961). The origin of form perception. Scientific American, 204, 66–72. doi:10.1038/
scientificamerican0561-66.
Fantz, R. (1975). Visual attention to size and number of pattern details by term and preterm infants
during the first six months. Child Development, 46(1), 3–18. doi:10.2307/1128828.
Fernald, A., Swingley, D., & Pinto, J. (2001). When half word is enough: Infants can recognize
spoken words using partial phonetic information. Child Development, 72(4), 1003–1015.
doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00331.
Fernald, A., Perfors, A., & Marchman, V. (2006). Picking up speed in understanding: Speech pro-
cessing efficiency and vocabulary growth across the 2nd year. Developmental Psychology,
42(1), 98–116. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.42.1.98.
Fernald, A., Zangl, R., Portillo, A. & Marchman, V. (2008). Looking while listening, using eye
movement to monitor spoken language comprehension by infants and young children, En
Developmental Psycholinguistics. On-line methods in children’s language processing. Chapter
4. Amsterdan/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Fry, A., & Hale, S. (1996). Processing speed, working memory, and fluid intelligence: Evidence for
a development cascade. Psychological Science, 7(4). doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00366.x.
Fry, A., & Hale, S. (2000). Relationships among processing speed, working memory, and fluid
intelligence in children. Biological Psychology, 54, 1–34. doi:10.1016/
S0301-0511(00)00051-X.
Golinkoff, R., & Hirsch-Pasek, K. (2001). Cómo hablan los bebés: la magia y el misterio de len-
guaje durante los primeros tres años. México: Oxford University Press.
Golinkoff, R., Hirsch-Pasek, K., Cauley, K., & Gordon. (1987). The eyes have it: Lexical and
syntactic comprehension in a new paradigm. Journal of Child Language, 14, 23–45.
doi:10.1017/S030500090001271X.
Haith, M., Hazan, C., & Goodman, G. (1988). Expectation and anticipation of dynamic visual
events by 3.5-Month-Old babies. Child Development, 59, 467–479.
Hale, S. (1990). A global developmental trend in cognitive processing speed. Child Development,
61, 653–663. doi:10.2307/1130951.
Hale, S., & Jansen, J. (1994). Global processing-time coefficients characterize individual and
group differences in cognitive speed. Psychological Science, 5, 384–389.
Im-Bolter, N., Johnson, J., & Pascual-Leone, J. (2006). Processing limitations in children with
specific language impairment: The role of executive function. Child Development, 77(6),
1822–1841. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00976.x.
Jackson-Maldonado, D., Thal, D., Marchman, V., Newton, T., Fenson, L., & Conboy, B. (2003). El
Inventario del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas: User’s guide and technical manual.
Baltimore: Brookes Publishing Co..
Jasso, T., Falcón, A., Alva, E. & Miramontes, V. (2014). Pilito y pilote, ¿Se trata del tamaño?:
Adquisición de los diminutivos y aumentativos. Trabajo presentado en el XXII Congreso
Mexicano de Psicología, México.
Kail, R. (1991). Developmental change in speed of processing during childhood and adolescence.
Psychological Bulletin, 109, 490–501. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.109.3.490.
Kail, R. (2000). Speed of information processing: Developmental change and links to intelligence.
Journal of School Psychology, 38(1), 51–61.
Kail, R. (2007). Children and their development. Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall.
Kail, R., & Hall, L. (1999). Sources of developmental change in children’s word problem perfor-
mance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 660–668. doi:10.1037//0022-0663.91.4.660.
Kail, R., & Salthouse, T. (1994). Processing speed as a mental capacity. Acta Psychologica, 86,
199–225. doi:10.1016/0001-6918(94)90003-5.
Leonard, L. B. (2014). Children with Specific Language Impairment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Marchman, V., & Fernald, A. (2008). Speed of word recognition and vocabulary knowledge in
infancy predict cognitive and language outcomes in later childhood. Developmental Science,
11(3), 9–16. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00671.x.
McCall, R., & Carriger, M. (1993). A meta-analysis of infant habituation and recognition memory
performance as predictors of later IQ. Child Development, 64(1), 57–79. doi:10.2307/1131437.
Miller, C. A., Kail, R., Leonard, L. B., & Tomblin, J. B. (2001). Speed of processing in children
with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research,
44(2), 416–433. http://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2001/034).
Myerson, J., Hale, S., Zheng, Y., Jenkins, L., & Widaman, K. F. (2003). The difference engine: A
model of diversity in speeded cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10, 262–288.
Reznick, J., Chawarska, K., & Betts, S. (2000). The development of visual expectations in the first
year. Child Development, 71(5), 1191–1204.
Rose, S., & Feldman, J. (1997). Memory and speed: Their role in the relation of infant information
processing to later IQ. Child Development, 68(4), 630–641. doi:10.2307/1132115.
Rose, S., Feldman, J., & Wallace, I. (1992). Infant information processing in relation to six-year
cognitive outcomes. Child Development, 63(5), 1126–1114. doi:10.2307/1131522.
Rose, S., Feldman, J., & Jankowski, J. (2003). The building blocks of cognition. Journal of
Pediatrics, 143, 54–61. doi:10.1067/S0022-3476(03)00402-5.
Rose, S., Feldman, J., & Jankowski, J. (2005). The structure of infant cognition at 1 year.
Intelligence, 33, 231–250. doi:10.1016/j.intell.2004.11.002.
Rose, S., Feldman, J., Jankowski, J., & Van Rossem, R. (2012). Information processing from
infancy to 11 years: Continuities and prediction of IQ. Intelligence, 40(5), 445–457.
doi:10.1016/j.intell.2012.05.007.
Schafer, G., & Plunkett, K. (1998). Rapid word learning by fifteen-month-olds under tightly con-
trolled conditions. Child Development, 69(2), 309–320. doi:10.2307/1132166.
Suárez, P. (2015). Análisis de la velocidad de procesamiento y su relación con habilidades lingüísti-
cas en infantes mexicanos. Ciencia Nueva. UNAM. México.
Wass, T., Lewis, A., & Haith, M. (1998). Infants' sensitivity to temporal parameters of the visual
expectation paradigm. Infant Behavior & Development, 21, 747. doi:10.1016/
S0163-6383(98)91960-9.
Weismer, S. E., & Evans, J. L. (2002). The role of processing limitations in early identification of
specific language impairment. Topics in Language Disorders, 22(3), 15–29. Retrieved from
<Go to ISI>://000175506800004.
Williams, B., Myerson, J., & Hale, S. (2008). Individual differences, intelligence and behavior
analysis. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 90, 219–231.
Zangl, R., Klarman, L., Thal, D., Fernald, A., & Bates, E. (2005). Dynamics of word comprehen-
sion in Infancy: Developments in timing, accuracy and resistance to acoustic degradation.
Journal of Cognition and Development, 6(2), 179–208. doi:10.1207/s15327647jcd0602_2.
Zheng, Y., Myerson, J., & Hale, S. (2000). Age and individual differences in information- process-
ing speed: Testing the magnification hypothesis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 7, 113–120.
Relevance of Family Psychosocial
Environment in the Language Development
of Mexican Children
Silvia Izazola-Ezquerro, Mario Mandujano-Valdés,
Rolando Rivera-González, Antonio Sierra-Cedillo, Miriam Figueroa-Olea,
Karla Soler-Limón, and Yadira Villanueva-Romero
Abstract In this section, we establish a research model that explores the associa-
tion between the psycho-social environment of families with a low socioeconomic
situation (SES) and the early development of children’s (between the age of 0 and
12 months) language and communication traits.
The main goals of this research were: (1) Measure the development delay by type
of outcomes in relation to the expected development stage of children and (2) Describe
the association between children’s language acquisition categories (Perception, cogni-
tion, social interaction, communicative abilities and linguistic production) and their
home environment, which was measured through HOME inventary.
Methods and subjects
Prospective and cohort study of Mexican children that came from a low SES back-
ground and whose age were between 0 and 12 months. The measurement of the trait
progress and environmental conditions was assessed through the CAT/CLAMS
(Clinical Adaptive Test/Clinical Linguistic and Auditory Milestone Scale) and the
PCD-R (Revised Behavior Profile Developmental Scale). Some of the tests covered
areas of expressive and receptive language development, as well as some IT-HOME
(Infant/Toddler Home Observation) items. In total, 612 children were assessed
several times and 4442 language and communication development assessments
were accrued. Lastly, we interpreted children’s development level based on five
language development categories.
S. Izazola-Ezquerro • A. Sierra-Cedillo • M. Figueroa-Olea • K. Soler-Limón

National Institute of Pediatrics (INP), Mexico City, Mexico
e-mail: clementiniza@yahoo.es; sierrah57@hotmail.com; miriamneurodesarrollo@gmail.com;
kmsl_klk@yahoo.com.mx
R. Rivera-González (*)
Neurodevelopmental Follow-Up Laboratory, National Institute of Pediatrics (INP),
Mexico City, Mexico
e-mail: rolandorivera66@gmail.com
M. Mandujano-Valdés • Y. Villanueva-Romero
Metropolitan Autonomous University-Xochimilco (UAMX), Mexico City, Mexico
e-mail: mariomandujano@gmail.com; mecyatnietfrom@yahoo.com.mx

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_6
130 S. Izazola-Ezquerro et al.
Results
The language acquisition categories were clustered in relevant factors that could be
influenced by the socioeconomic family environment.
Our results indicate that the analytical category that had a greater linkage with
the family’s psychosocial environment was the Social Interaction category.
Moreover, Linguistic Production was the second analytical category that displayed
a high correlative bond. As for the Perception and Communicative Abilities catego-
ries, these presented a lower statistical linkage, but important.
On the other hand, the HOME scales showed a greater degree of association with
the categories of communication and languages were Involvement (40%), Learning
materials (28%), and Responsivity (25%) categories.
Discussion
The relevance of the family’s psychosocial environment in language development was
displayed on this research. From their first month of life, children display visual, hear-
ing and proprioceptive development as the basis for the development of their initial
communicative manifestations and it was possible to show the effects of the socioeco-
nomic environment on significant development delays. Additionally, we traced a high
influence from the socioeconomic environment on children’s perception, whereas the
statistical significance was lower with the Cognition category. Further research needs
to focus on other strategies to explore the latter category in depth.
Conclusion
Even though there are significant ties between the family’s psychosocial environ-
ment with language acquisition, more specific evaluation domains of language
development are required to broaden the scrutiny regarding the impact of the family
environment on language. Some home environment traits and other interactions
were emphasized on this research, but other factors need to be studied further in
order to corroborate our results.
Keywords Psychosocial environment • Language development • Socioeconomic

status • HOME inventory • Language acquisition
1 Introduction
Children’s Language acquisition is only partially based on innate biological

resources. Humans need complex social relationships, a social environment and
interactions to acquire language. This provides infants with experiences, codes and
rules which allow them to exchange social meanings, to interpret the world and to
build knowledge from situations where they participate, and subsequently enable
them to make references by means of language. However, mechanisms of social
interactions that are useful for language learning have yet to be fully specified
(Fenson et al. 1994; Hoff 2013; Kuhl 2009; Tomasello 2009a, b). In order to under-
stand and investigate early language development in infancy, it is necessary to con-
sider the neurobiological mechanisms in infants, such as perception of speech,
Relevance of Family Psychosocial Environment in the Language Development… 131
cognitive conditions and communication abilities, as well as environmental and

social interactions.
One of the goals of language assessment is to investigate children’s receptive and
expressive characteristics and their possible relation with perceptual, cognitive, and
social conditions such as socioeconomic status (SES), home environment, and care-
giver interactions. There are still many questions and unsolved problems regarding
language development that have been explored by other authors, such as processing
speed which is crucial for performance and contribute to children’s later cognitive
development (Alva & Suárez, this volume).
2 Categories
In this chapter, we present and discuss the findings from an investigation designed
to examine the correlation between the family’s psycho-social environment and
early language, as well as communication development. Infants between 0 and 12
months of age were evaluated, according to the following five categories:
A. Perception: although auditory processes are the bases of speech perception, the
linguistic levels are susceptible to visual clues (Moore 2009; Campbell 2009;
Poeppel et al. 2009).
B. Cognition: in Piaget’s classic research regarding sensorimotor intelligence from
the preverbal stage onward in development, language and cognitive abilities are
interwoven (Piaget 1981). On children with normal and abnormal development,
relations among cognitive sensorimotor manifestations have been demonstrated
according to certain stages of language development (Bates et al. 1992; Cipriani
and Bruni 1986). This process accounts for the reaction of newborns and infants
to environmental factors. It also involves the development of schemes linked to the
recognition of objects, people, and observable actions, where the words comes
with the action. Subsequent coordination and organization of action schemes with
increasing complexity in temporal, spatial, and causal structures enable the child
to use and understand elements of language with communication purposes and to
solve specific situations. The deferred imitation and scheme coordination are
among the most relevant domains. (Ontiveros-Mendoza et al. 2011; Piaget 1981).
C. Social interaction: There are close relations between context, environment and
the child’s cognitive and language development. The social context and interac-
tions give shape to language development (Erika Hoff 2013; Hoff and Tian
2005; Tomasello 2009a, b). It does not matter who starts or elicits the interac-
tion, e.g., whether the child imitates the adult or the adult responds to the child’s
initiation (Meltzoff and Brooks 2007; Trevarthen 2005). There are several
aspects of social interaction, including linguistic context, how and who speaks
to the infant (Kuhl 2009), joint attention, synchronization, social engagement,
vocal turn-taking and imitation. In some cases, the child starts creating vocal or
gestural cues, which the adult will try to interpret, confer a meaning, add an
intention, according to the context or the cultural conventions. These attribu-
tions begin with the emergence of the social smile and extend to the adult’s
recognition of communicative interactions. They offer the child a series of expe-

riences displaying the use of conversation for the infant.
These social interactions are related to socio-economic status (SES) and to the home
environment, which, in turn may be related to each other. Evidence suggests that
low SES (low level of parent’s education and income) has several developmental
consequences on language and brain development of children, given that parents
promote fewer experiences in the use of daily conversations (Hart and Risley
1999; Hoff 2006; Hoff 2013). In this chapter, we explore such possible relations
in Mexican children pertaining to low SES. Several studies have documented the
importance of assessing the family’s environment as a potential factor in the rate
of early language development (Burchinal et al. 2008; Olds et al. 2004; Roberts
et al. 2005).
D) Communication abilities: we analyze the process of human communication,
together with actions and elements implying purposes and intentions, which allow
the use of language for achieving desired actions. Thus, language becomes a social
system from its linguistic use in multiple contexts, improving adequacy of commu-
nication activities that, as they combine and coordinate reciprocal outcomes, mod-
ify the dynamics of interactions and yield communication.
E) Linguistic production: Sensorimotor schemas such as oral and facial praxias
are necessary for the emission of sounds. Neonates and infants start producing
sounds such as crying, moaning, cooing, whinning, gooing, sounds of onomato-
poeic nature, different kinds of babbling, pre-canonical and canonical, including
syllables required for speech, vowel-consonant (VC) and consonant-vowel (CV)
combinations, compound syllables, and finally pre-word and early word vocaliza-
tions (Bates, 1992; Jusczyk and Aslin 1995; Jusczyk and Luce 1994; Kuhl
2009; Oller et al. 1976, 1998; Robb and Saxman 1990; Stark 1980; Stark et al.
1993; Schwartz 2009).
Under the hypothesis that low SES has a negative impact on language develop-
ment, the objectives of our research were: (1) to measure the delay by type of out-
comes in relation to the age at which the development is expected in the tests, in a
group of children from low SES; (2) to identify those outcomes showing a greater
delay and (3) to describe the association between children’s language acquisition
and the situations occurring in their home environment expressed in the HOME
instrument scales (Bradley et al. 1989; Caldwell and Bradley 1984).
3 Method
This is a prospective, observational, longitudinal, cohort study. It was carried out

with 4442 language and communication evaluations of 612 children between 0 and
12 months of age, from low socio-economic status living in three communities in
the central area of the country of Mexico. General development tests include areas
of expressive and receptive language development. We typified the processes or
categories of language development in order to establish a potential association with
the characteristics of the family’s environment.
We used the Capute Scales, also known in the literature as CAT/CLAMS

(Clinical Adaptive Test/Clinical Linguistic and Auditory Milestone Scale; Accardo
and Capute 2005; Capute and Accardo 1996; Capute et al. 1986), which consider
two domains: problem solving and communication. We also used the “Perfil
de Conductas del Desarrollo Revisado (PCD-R)” (Revised Behavior Profile
Developmental Scale) designed and validated within the socio-cultural context of
Mexico for early detection of developmental delays and disorders between 0 and 4
years of age (Bolaños et al. 2006). It provides qualitative and quantitative parame-
ters for 11 functional areas of language and cognition.
In order to evaluate the quality of emotional, cognitive, and social stimuli avail-
able for children at home, we used the Infant/Toddler Home Observation for
Measurement of the Environment Inventory “the IT-HOME” (Bradley and Corwyn
2002; Caldwell and Bradley 1984). It combines two methodological field tools:
observation within the everyday family environment and an interview with the main
caregivers. The child must be present and awake during tests in order to directly
observe actions directed towards him/her as well as interactions between the child
and the caregiver. It includes six scales: (1) Responsivity, 11 items; (2) Acceptance,
8 items; (3) Organization, 6 items; (4) Learning materials, 9 items; (5) Involvement,
6 items; and (6) Variety, 5 items. They yield a score and let characterize the levels of
stimulation: high, medium, and low, adjusted by the child’s age (Bradley et al.
1994). Language indicators from both development tests (PDC-R and CLAMS)
were integrated into the analysis.
The age of achievement for each indicator was established using a logistic model,
setting the age when 90% of the population achieved, the outcome of the reference
age (90 percentile). We also estimated the difference between 90 percentile and the
expected age (Difference EA- 90 percentile). This difference indicates the time in
months that 90 percentile is delayed or ahead compared to the expected age.
3.1 Analysis
We describe the level of development achieved for each of the five categories of
language development. These levels of development were estimated from the scores
obtained for each age, and normalized within the population. We also present the
estimated delay compared to the expected age in each test and describe the factors
of the family’s environment; evaluated by means of the IT-HOME that could be
potentially related.
4 Results
4.1 Perceptual Process
Table 1 shows the data regarding the perceptual process. Delays were predominant
in all outcomes, except for “Alert to sound” and “Soothes when being picked up”
that were achieved by almost all of the children since birth. All other outcomes
Table 1 Perceptual process: expected age (EA) in months, age in months at which 90% of the
children first exhibited the outcome (PA) and the difference score in months
Description of the outcome Expected age 90 PA EA-P90%
Halts his activity to sound 1 5.13 −4.13
Alerts to sounda 1 0 1.00
Soothes when picked upa 1 0 1.00
He startles when he hears a sudden noise 1 4.20 −3.20
Facial response when he hears the sound of a bell 3 6.09 −3.09
Orients to voice 4 5.77 −1.77
He turns his head when he listens to a sound 4 4.95 −0.95
Orients to bell laterally 5 5.79 −0.79
Orients to bell indirectly 7 7.59 −0.59
Orients to bell directly 9 10.41 −1.41
It responds to the music with body movements 9 17.07 −8.07
were achieved by most children since birth
a
Table 2 Cognitive process: expected age (EA) in months, age in months at which 90% of the
Expected
Description of the outcome age 90 PA EA-P90%
Makes razzing sounds 5 7.47 −2.47
Repeats sounds that others make 9 15.85 −6.85
Responds to simple commands associated with simple 12 14.72 −2.72
gestures
P90%: Age 90th percentile; EB-P90 The difference between the 90th percentile and the expected
age
showed delays, particularly, “Reacts to music with body movements”, which was
achieved after 6 months. Outcomes from “facial response to bell tinkle” and “the
child startles after a sudden loud sound” could imply a certain level of adaptation
and potential tolerance to environmental noise according to the categories proposed
by Wachs (1989).
4.2 Cognitive Process
Table 2 shows information regarding the cognitive process section. The three out-
comes representing the cognitive process were achieved with clear delays between
2 and 7 months; thereby, the most significant delay was observed for “repeat sounds
that others make”. For most of the children, it required 75% more time to be at par
with the expected development for their age.
Table 3 Social responsiveness: expected age (EA) in months, age in months at which 90% of the
Expected
Description of the outcome age 90 PA EA,-P90%
Produces social smile 2 2.37 −0.37
Gets excited when hears mother in the same room 5 8.88 −3.88
Uses gesture language 9 12.89 −3.89
Tends and responds to a conversation 9 9.27 −0.27
Responds to his own name 9 11.52 −2.52
Table 4 Communicative abilities: expected age (EA) in months, age in months at which 90% of
the children first exhibited the outcome (PA) and the difference score in months
Expected
Demands things through gestures or vocalization 9 12.71 −3.71
Comprehends a warning: “N, do not do that” 10 14.71 −4.71
Understands “no” 10 13.03 −3.03
Nods or shakes head to indicate yes or no 12 12.53 −0.53
4.3 Social Interaction
Table 3 shows the information regarding the social responsiveness of language. All
outcomes showed delays, in particular “He/She gets excited when hearing his
mother in the same room”, requiring 78% more time (3.88 months) to be achieved.
At the same time, the outcome “bye” using gestures, required 43% more time to
develop in comparison to the upper 90th percentile.
4.4 Communication Abilities
The intentional communication data is shown on Table 4. Magnitudes of delays

observed in the first three outcomes were found to be between 30% and 41%. Only
“he/she moves his/her head when saying yes or no” is achieved close to the expected
age with a difference of 0.53 months.
4.5 Linguistic Production
Table 5 shows information regarding development of linguistic production. Uses

“Dada” and “Mama” nonspecifically, babbles using similar intonation that he lis-
tens to, uses “Dada” and “Mama” specifically, and one word other than “Mama” or
Table 5 Linguistic production development: expected age (EA) in months, age in months at
which 90% of the children first exhibited the outcome (PA) and the difference score in months
Expected
Differentiated cry 1 4.60 −3.60
Reproduces simple vowels 2 5.97 −3.97
Reproduces sounds with teeth and lips 3 5.66 −2.66
Makes cooing sounds 3 4.42 −1.42
Vocalizes emotions (happy, sad) 4 7.32 −3.32
Babbles when he is tended 4 7.72 −3.72
Laughs aloud 4 6.16 −2.16
Consonant sounds (p, t, d, b, m) 5 7.47 −2.47
Make ah−goo sounds 5 6.34 −1.34
Syllabic sounds 6 10.94 −4.94
Babbles 6 9.10 −3.10
Uses “dada” nonspecifically 8 13.27 −5.27
Uses “mama” nonspecifically 8 13.22 −5.22
Babbles using similar intonation that he listens to 9 16.50 −7.50
Uses “Dada” specifically 10 15.49 −5.49
Uses “Mama” specifically 10 14.94 −4.94
Uses one word (other than “mama” or “dada”) 11 16.26 −5.26
Says at least three words (e.g., father, mother, water) 12 14.58 −2.58
“Dada” were considered as physical utterances, speech sounds into the continuous
psychoacoustics and motor functions, without considering them as discrete sym-
bolic or cognitive units.
On linguistic production we observed delays in all items. The items from both
tests considered the sequential development from cry to the production of words.
There was no outcome expressed close to the expected age. It is remarkable than
even those expected outcomes appeared at the outset and throughout infancy, such
as differentiated cry, cooing sounds, and babbling were achieved with significant
delays. Word production was also delayed. In spite of these delays, infants follow
the ontogenetic sequence; they gradually begin to discern traits and characteristics
that are typical of their language. Gesture, vocal or relational ways of communica-
tion that infants start to show will still be dependent on how adults understand them.
Even though, the functional aspect of language will start developing when he/she
early identifies the use of breaks, voice’s tone variations and the potential combina-
tions of sounds from their language.
4.6 Language Development and Home Environment
Table 6 shows information regarding the effect of environment on language

development.
Table 6 Language development and home environment: Scales of the HOME-IT used to identify
associations with language development
Area of the home Processes
Social Communication Linguistic
Perception Cognition interaction abilities production
I. Responsivity
Caregiver lets child to NS p < 0.05 p < 0.1 p < 0.05 p < 0.1
engage in “messy” play
Caregiver responds NS NS p < 0.1 p < 0.1 NS
verbally to child’s
vocalizations or
verbalizations
Caregiver tells child p < 0.1 NS NS NS p < 0.1
name of object or person
during visit
Caregiver spontaneously NS NS p < 0.05 p < 0.1 p < 0.05
vocalizes to child at least
twice
Caregiver’s speech is p < 0.05 NS p < 0.1 NS p < 0.05
distinct, clear and audible
Caregiver initiates verbal p < 0.05 NS p < 0.005 p < 0.1 p < 0.05
interchanges with visitor
Caregiver converses p < 0.05 NS p < 0.005 p < 0.1 p < 0.005
freely and easily
Caregiver spontaneously NS NS p < 0.05 p < 0.1 p < 0.05
praises child at least
twice
Caregiver’s voice p < 0.1 NS p < 0.1 NS p < 0.1
conveys positive feelings
toward child
Caregiver caresses or NS NS p < 0.1 NS p < 0.05
kisses child at least once
Caregiver responds p < 0.1 NS p < 0.05 NS p < 0.05
positively to praise of
child offered by visitor
II. Acceptance
Caregiver does not p < 0.005 p < 0.05 NS NS NS
express overt annoyance
with or hostility to child
No more than 1 instance p < 0.1 NS p < 0.1 p < 0.1 p < 0.1
of physical punishment
during past week
Caregiver does not scold p < 0.1 NS p < 0.1 NS NS
or criticize child during
visit
At least 10 books are NS p < 0.05 p < 0.05 NS p < 0.1
present and visible.
(continued)
Table 6 (continued)
III. Organization
Caregiver is one of no p < 0.1 NS NS NS NS
more than three regular
substitutes used for child
Child has a special place p < 0.1 NS p < 0.05 NS p < 0.1
for toys and treasures
Child is taken on an p < 0.1 NS NS NS NS
outing at least once a
week
Child gets out of house at NS p < 0.1 NS NS NS
least 4 times a week
IV. Learning Materials
Muscle activity toys or NS NS p < 0.05 NS NS
equipment
Push or pull toy NS NS p < 0.005 NS NS
Stroller or walker, kiddie NS NS p < 0.1 NS NS
car, scooter, or tricycle
Cuddly toy or role- NS NS p < 0.1 NS NS
playing toys
Learning facilitators-- p < 0.1 NS p < 0.05 NS p < 0.1
mobile, table and chair,
high chair
Simple eye-hand p < 0.005 p < 0.1 p < 0.005 p < 0.05 p < 0.005
coordination toys.
Complex eye-hand p < 0.1 NS p < 0.005 p < 0.05 p < 0.05
coordination toys
V. Involvement
Caregiver talks to child p < 0.1 p < 0.1 p < 0.05 NS p < 0.05
while doing household
work
Caregiver consciously p < 0.05 p < 0.1 p < 0.005 p < 0.05 p < 0.005
encourages
developmental advance
Caregiver invests p < 0.05 NS p < 0.005 p < 0.05 p < 0.005
maturing toys with value
via personal attention
Caregiver structures p < 0.1 NS p < 0.1 NS p < 0.05
child’s play periods
Caregiver provides toys p < 0.05 NS p < 0.1 p < 0.1 p < 0.1
that challenge child to
develop new skills
Caregiver keeps child in NS NS NS NS p < 0.1
visual range, looks at often
(continued)
Table 6 (continued)
VI. Variety
Father provides some p < 0.1 NS NS p < 0.05 p < 0.1
care daily
Caregiver reads stories to NS NS NS NS p < 0.1
child at least 3 times
weekly
Child eats meal with NS NS p < 0.1 NS NS
caregiver and/or other
children
Caregiver and child visit p < 0.1 p < 0.1 p < 0.1 p < 0.05 p < 0.05
or receive visits from
neighbors or friends once
a month or so
Child has 3 or more NS NS NS NS p < 0.1
books of his/her own
An analysis between items and different processes was carried out (rows), while
an analysis by columns shows which items are related within each category and the
strength of such association. We emphasize psychogenetic mechanisms that might
impact on the development of language through the selected processes (perception,
cognition, social interaction, communicative intentions and linguistic production
outcomes).
4.6.1 Perception
For perception, on the areas of the IT-HOME, half of the items were statistically
significant. In the Responsivity scale, six out of 11 items resulted with a significant
association, especially when verbalization was involved. In the Acceptance scale,
three out of four items were statistically significant. The items referring to the
absence of scolding or criticism during the visit; physical punishment had marginal
significance (p < 0.1), while the item referring to the caregiver not expressing hostil-
ity toward the child had the highest statistical significance (p < 0.005). In the
Organization Scale, three items were significant. These items were those related to
child care being provided by one of three regular substitutes, going out at least once
a week, and having a special place for child’s toys and treasures (p < 0.1). As for the
Learning materials scale, simple eye-hand coordination toys were the highest sta-
tistically significant items (p < 0.005), followed by complex eye-hand coordination
toys and learning facilitators (p < 0.1). In the Involvement scale, five out of six items
were statistically significant. The highest statistically significant items were those
referring to “caregiver invest in toys” that promote the development of the child, and
consciously encourages developmental improvement (p < 0.005), or “caregiver pro-

viding the child with toys” to acquire new skills (p < 0.05). Items referring to care-
giver speaking to the child while doing household work, and structured periods of
time for playing were also statistically significant (p < 0.1). As for the Variety
scale, the only statistically significant items were those referring to care journals
provided by one of the parents, and whether he/she visited someone once a month
(p < 0.1).
4.6.2 Cognition
In the category of cognition, only three out of 37 items were statistically significant
(p < 0.05), and five out of 37 had marginal significance (p < 0.1).
4.6.3 Interactive Social Process
The category of interactive social process was mostly influenced by stimulation at

home; 28 out of 37 items were statistically significant between 0.05 and 0.005 for
most of them. In the Responsivity scale, only one out of 11 items was not statisti-
cally significant. The remaining items were statistically significant, i.e., items refer-
ring to caregiver talking easily and freely, and caregiver initiates verbal exchanges
with visitors (p < 0.005); spontaneous vocalizations and spontaneous praise to the
child, as well as responding positively to praises from visitors (p < 0.05); caregiver
allowing the child to play and get dirty without quelling, caregiver responding ver-
bally to child’s vocalizations or verbalizations, distinctively clear and audible
speech from caregiver, caregiver’s voice conveying positive feelings toward the
child, and caregiver kissing the child or caressing during the visit (p < 0.1). In the
Involvement scale, statistically significant items were those referring to “caregiver
investing in toys that promote child’s development” and “caregiver consciously
encouraging developmental advance” (p < 0.005); “caregiver speaking to the child
when performing household chores” (p < 0.05). The items “caregiver structuring
game sessions for the child” and “caregiver providing toys challenging the child to
develop new skills” were also significant (p < 0.1). As for the Learning materials
scale, all items were statistically significant at different levels; for example, items
referring to toys, and simple and complex eye-hand coordination (p < 0.005); toys
or equipment favoring physical activity, and toys facilitating learning such as
mobiles, tables or chairs (p < 0.05); toys related to movement or promoting embrac-
ing, dressing-up or symbolic games (p < 0.1). In the Acceptance scale, three items
were statistically significant, i.e., the presence of at least 10 visible books (p < 0.05);
the absence of physical punishment, and scolding or criticism to the child (p < 0.1).
Scales having the least impact on this process were Variety, two items (p < 0.1), and
Organization, one item (p < 0.05), i.e., when caregiver assigns a special place for
child’s toys and treasures.
4.6.4 Communicative Abilities
In the communicative abilities, seven out of 37 items were statistically significant at

a significance level of 0.05, and seven out of 37 at a significance level of 0.10. In the
Responsivity scale, statistically significant items were those referring to caregiver
allowing the child to engage in messy play (p < 0.05), and the ability to converse
freely and easily, caregiver verbally responds to child’s vocalizations or verbaliza-
tions, caregiver spontaneously praises the child at least twice, and caregiver initiates
verbal exchanges with visitors (p < 0.1). On the Acceptance scale, only the item
referring to the absence of physical punishment was statistically significant (p <
0.1). In the Learning materials scale, items referring to toys that promote simple
and complex eye-hand coordination were statistically significant (p < 0.05). In the
Involvement scale, statistically significant items were those referring to caregiver
invests in toys that promote child’s maturation, and caregiver consciously encour-
ages developmental advance (p < 0.05); and toys challenging the child to develop
new skills (p < 0.1). In the Variety scale, items referring to daily care provided by
the father and child receiving or carrying out visits once a month were statistically
significant (p < 0.05). Finally, the Organization scale was not correlated with com-
municative intention.
4.6.5 Linguistic Production Development
The production of linguistic development and social interaction were also influ-
enced by the characteristics of child’s home, where 26 out of 37 items were statisti-
cally significant at different levels of significance. Most of the statistically significant
items were found in the Involvement and Responsivity scales. In the Involvement
scale, all items were statistically significant, i.e., items referring to caregiver using
toys that promote child’s development and teaching them to roll, to say goodbye and
to say their name (p < 0.005); caregiver speaking to the child when performing
household chores, and caregiver structuring game sessions for the child (p < 0.05);
caregiver keeping the child in visual range, caregiver looking frequently at the child,
and caregiver providing toys challenging the child to develop new skills (p < 0.1).
As for the Responsivity scale, only one item was not statistically significant. Items
that were statistically significant were those referring to caregiver talking easily and
freely (p < 0.005); caregiver vocalizing, praising, caressing or kissing the child
spontaneously during the visit, caregiver responding positively to praises from the
visitor to the child, caregiver speech being distinct, clear and audible, and caregiver
initiates verbal exchanges with the visitor (p < 0.05); caregiver allowing the child to
play and get dirty without quelling, caregiver verbally indicating the name of objects
and people to the child, and caregiver’s voice showing positive feelings to the child
(p < 0.1). In the Learning materials scale, three items were statistically significant,
i.e., those items referring to toys that promote simple eye-hand coordination (p <
0.005); toys that promote complex eye-hand coordination (p < 0.05); and teaching
facilitators (p < 0.1). In the Variety scale, only one item was not statistically
significant. Statistically significant items were those referring to visits received or

carried out by the child (p < 0.05); the father providing child care, caregiver reading
stories to the children at least three times a week, and the child has three or more
books of his/her own (p < 0.1). The Acceptance and Organization scales showed a
low impact on this process. As for the Acceptance scale, items referring to caregiver
not physically punishing the child, and the presence and visibility of at least 10
books, were both statistically significant (p < 0.1). In the Organization scale, the
only statistically significant item was the one referring to the child having a special
place for toys and treasures (p < 0.1).
5 Discussion
The relevance of family psychosocial environment in the language development

was demonstrated on this research. Family environment, as a first step of social
interaction, enables us to understand the role of the first communicative exchanges
(Bruner 1975), as well as the social shape of interaction routines in language devel-
opment. It is in these social actions within the emotional, historical, social and cul-
tural environment, where infants identify the use of gestures, movements, signals,
rules or conventions that are needed for communication and language. Adults’
actions in early stages provide the child with close visual and auditory signals
(proximal point) which progressively become more distal.
This reciprocal social interaction of communicative nature, elicits the child to
focus on adult’s cues, which is a starting point for the construction of social cognition
(Schietecatte et al. 2012) and sets the basis for language. During communicative acts
within a given context, the child discovers and builds the meaning of words due to
relational strategies. The interactive environment is linked to other processes as the
child develops the ability to carry out intentional and significant communication
within a given situational context. The context itself influences the child’s interaction
and provides him/her with pragmatic abilities for language development (Acuña and
Sentis 2004). Moreover, it enables the child to express her needs and intentions.
Our data showed that since the first month of life, children display visual, hearing
and proprioceptive perceptual development as a basis for the genesis of the first
communicative outcomes, e.g., the recognition of the maternal voice and face, the
way that the child is held or rocked, some sound patterns of speech, the observation
of paths or adult motor actions, initial information of symbols or indices, exchange
glances, location of the sound’s source of information that becomes relevant and the
exchange of messages during reciprocities typical of early child communication
(Damían 2007; Enesco 2004; Karmiloff et al. 2009). Even though items on the
social interaction process were scarce, significant delays were observed. Also, the
importance of social characteristics and opportunities investigated through the
IT-HOME was demonstrated. This idea is crucial for this research given that social
interaction and the outcomes that are derived from it are essential for the develop-
ment of language.
Items were scarce for investigating the intentional communication process

through the tests. However, significant delays and the association with environmen-
tal and social-familiar factors were shown. The intentional communication process
comprises all communicative and linguistic functions aimed to call the attention
from adults or to seek assistance from others. Intentional communication is also
crucial for understanding goals and the role that others play to achieve them. It
involves memory and inter-subjectivity, assuming that the meaning of an object or
event is the same for both the speaker and the listener (Serra et al. 2008). Its expres-
sion involves shared language, which starts by using proto-declaratives. Using ges-
tures and vocalizations in order to call the attention of others towards an action or
an event or by pointing to an object, are children’s pre-linguistic communicative
attempts.
Although the tests we used for assessing the cognition process were limited and
items were not enough to account for processes that are needed to infer the develop-
ment of symbols in children. We observed significant delays to achieve imitative
outcomes, which in turn are needed to produce canonic vocalizations. At least,
almost twice the expected time is required to achieve what is indicated by the test.
Other cognitive processes such as development of schemes linked to the manipula-
tion and exploration of objects, interactions with other people and observable
actions, coordination and organization of action schemes of increasing complexity
in temporal, spatial and causal structures, where the word is linked to an action were
not investigated. This condition demands the strengthening of the evidence, in order
to establish the balance between the intrinsic psychogenic processes of the child and
the role of environmental factors.
Even those functions that are supposed to be internal to the children, such as
perception, were sensitive to HOME variables, whereas on the cognition process,
few of the selected variables reached statistical significance. Further research needs
to focus on other strategies to explore cognition in depth. Even if only specific
variables on communicative intentions reached significance, there were no other
conditions with potential influence on these functions. On the linguistic production
development, we demonstrated the strongest association with child’s HOME
variables. As language production was the most affected, one possible explanation
lies on the need for interactions. Our findings showed that Responsivity,
Acceptance and Involvement are all related to language development outcomes.
During child development there are chronotopic fields of organization for some
functions within certain periods of time. The main expressions depend on internal
psycho-genetic mechanisms, for instance, the motor milestones with minimal, if
any, participation of the environmental factors. On the other hand, the early cogni-
tive processes rely on the brain’s function explained by the neuroconstructivism
theories, following since the beginning the sequence encellment, embrainment and
embodiment as internal processes, combined with external factors, in order to form
partial representations (Mareschal et al. 2007), which in the end will constitute the
perception. But for language development, external factors, such as social interac-
tions, play a determinant role. Even though children show how external factors
influence their language early in life, this influence will become stronger as the
child grows up. Our data showed minimal impact of the IT-HOME items on the
cognitive and communicative intentions during the first year of age, whereas per-
ception, interaction and phonological processes reached a statistically significant
association during the second year.
There is evidence supporting how SES influences the communicative and lin-
guistic performance as well as verbal abilities. Although we did not stratify the SES,
all the families pertained to a low SES. Thus, the socio-economic status can account
for the observed delay, but SES is only one possible explanation for the delay.
Different conditions of SES and other factors of interaction need to be explored in
depth in future research. Even though our data is limited for pulling out definite
conclusions in this regard, our results coincide with previous research which has
been carried out on different populations (Hart and Risley 1999; Hoff and Tian
2005).
6 Conclusion
Although the relevance of the family’s psychosocial environment in language devel-

opment was demonstrated, and correlations between The IT-HOME and develop-
ment scales were found, more specific domains on language development are
needed to further investigate the impact of the family’s environment on language.
Some characteristics of the home environment and interactions were emphasized,
but some other factors need to be explored, in order to investigate and validate our
results.
As a complementary conclusion on the relevance of early language development,
we cite a biblical reference: “Through the praise of children and infants you have
established a stronghold …” (Psalm 8:2). Since its signification emphasizes that in
the period of time under study, the infrastructure for future development is founded.
As language starts developing at this age, we need to investigate in detail its compo-
nents and the basis that synthesizes evolutionary achievements expressed early on
life that will build humanity (e.g. cognition and language) with social interactions.
For cases found in a social disadvantage, we showed very significant delays and a
correlation with social and environmental characteristics. From this investigation,
guidelines for further research emerge, for both, tests’ selection and deepening on
SES, in order to obtain a better understanding of language development and possi-
ble directions for intervention.
References
Accardo, P. J., & Capute, A. J. (2005). The capute scales: Cognitive Adaptive Test/Clinical
Linguistic, & Auditory Milestone Scale (CAT/CLAMS). Baltimore: Brookes Pub.
Acuña, X., & Sentis, F. (2004). Desarrollo pragmático en el habla infantil. Revista Onomázein.
Facultad de Letras, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. http://www.onomazein.net/10/
desarrollo.pdf
Bates, E., Thal, D., & Janowsky, J. S. (1992). Early language development and its neural corre-
lates. Handbook of Neuropsychology, 7, 69–69.
Bolaños, M. C., Márquez, A., De la Riva, M., Sánchez, G. C., Gutiérrez, G. O., & Elorza, P. H.
(2006). Validez de correlación del perfil de conductas del desarrollo con la escala de desarrollo
infantil Bayley II. Acta Pediátrica de México, 27(4), 190–199.
Bradley, R. H., & Corwyn, R. F. (2002). Socioeconomic status and child development. Annual
Review of Psychology, 53(1), 371–399.
Bradley, R. H., Caldwell, B. M., Rock, S. L., Ramey, C. T., Barnard, K. E., Gray, C., et al. (1989).
HOME environment and cognitive development in the first 3 years of life: A collaborative
study involving six sites and three ethnic groups in North America. Developmental Psychology,
25(2), 217–235.
Bradley, R. H., Mundfrom, D. J., Whiteside, L., Barrett, K., & Casey, P. H. (1994). A factor ana-
lytic study of the infant-toddler and early childhood versions of the HOME inventory adminis-
tered to white, black and Hispanic American parents of children born preterm. Child
Development, 65(3), 880–888.
Bruner, J. S. (1975). From communication to language—A psychological perspective. Cognition,
3(3), 255–287.
Burchinal, M. R., Roberts, J. E., Zeisel, S. A., & Rowley, S. J. (2008). Social risk and protective
factors for African American children’s academic achievement and adjustment during the tran-
sition to middle school. Developmental Psychology, 44(1), 286–292.
Caldwell, B. M., & Bradley, R. H. (1984). Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment
(HOME). University of Arkansas at little Rock Little Rock.
Campbell, R. (2009). The processing of audiovisual speech: Empirical and neural base. In
B.C. Moore, L. Tyler, & W. Marslen-Wilson. (Eds.), The perception of speech: From sound to
meaning (pp. 133–146). New York: Oxford University Press.
Capute, A. J., & Accardo, P. J. (1996). The infant neurodevelopmental assessment: A clinical inter-
pretive manual for CAT-CLAMS in the first two years of life, part 2. Current Problems in
Pediatrics, 26(8), 279–306.
Capute, A. J., Palmer, F. B., Shapiro, B. K., Wachtel, R. C., Schmidt, S., & Ross, A. (1986). Clinical
linguistic and auditory milestone scale: Prediction of cognition in infancy. Developmental
Medicine and Child Neurology, 28(6), 762–771.
Cipriani, P., & Bruni, G. (1986). Relations between sensorimotor attainments and development of
language comprehension in retarded children. Italian Journal of Neurological Sciences,
5(Suppl), 133–141.
Damían, D. M. (2007). El desarrollo de la comunicación y de la interacción social durante el
primer año de vida. In D. M. Damían (Ed.), Desarrollo del lenguaje y la comunicación en la
primera infancia (p. 214). Mexico: Trillas.
Enesco, I. (2004). El desarrollo del bebé. Cognición, emoción y afectividad. Madrid: Alianza
Editorial.
Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Bates, E., Thal, D. J., Pethick, S. J., et al. (1994). Variability
in early communicative development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child
Development, Serial 242, 59(5), 1–173. discussion 174-85.
Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1999). The social world of children: Learning to talk. Baltimore: Paul
H. Brookes Publishing.
Hoff, E. (2006). How social contexts support and shape language development. Developmental
Review, 26(1), 55–88.
Hoff, E. (2013). Interpreting the early language trajectories of children from low-SES and lan-
guage minority homes: Implications for closing achievement gaps. Developmental Psychology,
49(1), 4–14.
Hoff, E., & Tian, C. (2005). Socioeconomic status and cultural influences on language. Journal of
Jusczyk, P. W., & Aslin, R. N. (1995). Infants’ detection of the sound patterns of words in fluent
speech. Cognitive Psychology, 29(1), 1–23.
Jusczyk, P. W., & Luce, P. A. (1994). Infants’ sensitivity to phonotactic patterns in the native lan-
guage. Journal of Memory and Language, 33(5), 630–645.
Karmiloff, K., Karmiloff-Smith, A., & Karmiloff, K. (2009). Pathways to language: From fetus to
adolescent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kuhl, P. K. (2009). Early language acquisition: Phonetic and word learning, neural substrates and
a theoretical model. In B. Moore, L. Tyler, & W. Marslen-Wilson (Eds.), The perception of
speech from sound to meaning (pp. 103–125). New York: Oxford University Press.
Mareschal, D., Johnson, M. H., Sirois, S., Spratling, M., Thomas, M., & Westermann, G. (2007).
Neuroconstructivism-I: How the brain constructs cognition. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Meltzoff, A. N., & Brooks, R. (2007). Intersubjectivity before language: Three windows on prever-
bal sharing. Advances in Consciousness Research, 68, 149.
Moore, B. (2009). Basic auditory processes involved in the analysis of speech sounds. In B. Moore,
L. Tyler, & W. Marslen-Wilson (Eds.), The perception of speech from sound to meaning.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Olds, D. L., Robinson, J., Pettitt, L., Luckey, D. W., Holmberg, J., Ng, R. K., et al. (2004). Effects
of home visits by paraprofessionals and by nurses: Age 4 follow-up results of a randomized
trial. Pediatrics, 114(6), 1560–1568.
Oller, D. K., Wieman, L. A., Doyle, W. J., & Ross, C. (1976). Infant babbling and speech. Journal
of Child Language, 3(01), 1–11.
Oller, D. K., Eilers, R. E., Neal, A. R., & Cobo-Lewis, A. B. (1998). Late onset canonical babbling:
A possible early marker of abnormal development. American Journal on Mental Retardation,
103(3), 249–263.
Ontiveros-Mendoza, E., Sánchez, C., Corral-Guille, I., & Barragan-Mejia, G. (2011). Desarrollo
del periodo sensorimotriz en lactantes de riesgo bajo. In C. Sánchez & R. Rivera-González
(Eds.), El desarrollo de la inteligencia sensorimotora de lactantes en seguimiento del neurode-
sarrollo (pp. 69–84). México: Universum.
Piaget, J. (1981). El papel de la imitación en la formación de la representación. Infancia y
Aprendizaje, 4(2), 229–236.
Poeppel, D., Idsardi, W. J., & van Wassenhove, V. (2009). Speech perception at the interface of
neurobiology and linguistics. In B. Moore, L. Tyler, & W. Marslen-Wilson (Eds.), The percep-
tion of speech from sound to meaning (pp. 249–274). New York: Oxford University Press.
Robb, M. P., & Saxman, J. H. (1990). Syllable durations of preword and early word vocalizations.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 33(3), 583–593.
Roberts, J., Jurgens, J., & Burchinal, M. (2005). The role of home literacy practices in preschool
children’s language and emergent literacy skills. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing
Research, 48(2), 345–359.
Schietecatte, I., Roeyers, H., & Warreyn, P. (2012). Exploring the nature of joint attention impair-
ments in young children with autism spectrum disorder: Associated social and cognitive skills.
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 42(1), 1–12.
Schwartz, R. G. (2009). Handbook of child language disorders. New York: Psychology Press.
Serra, M., Serrat, E., Solé, R., Bel, A., & Aparici, M. (2008). La adquisición del lenguaje.
Barcelona: Ariel.
Stark, R. E. (1980). Stages of speech development in the first year of life. Child Phonology, 1,
73–90.
Stark, R. E., Bernstein, L. E., & Demorest, M. E. (1993). Vocal communication in the first 18
months of life. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 36(3), 548–558.
Tomasello, M. (2009a). The cultural origins of human cognition. Harvard: Harvard University
Press.
Tomasello, M. (2009b). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition.
Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Trevarthen, C. (2005). First things first: Infants make good use of the sympathetic rhythm of imita-
tion, without reason or language. Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 31(1), 91–113.
Wachs, T. D. (1989). The nature of the physical microenvironment: An expanded classification
system. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly of Behavior and Development, 35(4), 399–419.
Language Delay and Amount of Exposure
to the Language: Two (Un)Related Phenomena
in Early Spanish-Basque Bilingualism
Maria-Jose Ezeizabarrena and Iñaki García Fernández
Abstract This chapter investigates the effect of the amount of exposure to the
Basque language on the expressive vocabulary and grammar size of early bilingual
children exposed to B(asque) and S(panish) in their closest family environment
from a very early age, and with a varying degree of (relative) B/S input. Four groups
are distinguished: (a) Basque monolinguals; (b) Basque-dominant bilinguals; (c)
Balanced bilinguals and (d) Spanish-dominant bilinguals, and three levels of vocab-
ulary knowledge, based on the Percentiles (P) of expressive vocabulary: (a) large
(P> 90); (b) normal (P10–90); and (c) small vocabulary size (P< 10). The chapter focuses
specifically on the effect of the amount of exposure to the language, on bilinguals’
linguistic level, paying special attention to children located at the lowest percentiles
(P< 10) of expressive vocabulary in Basque, the minority language.
The sample of 975 children, gathered using the Basque version of the MacArthur-
Bates Test Communicative Developmental Inventories, the CDI-2 (Barreña et al.
2008), revealed that 16–30-month-old children with a high amount of exposure to
the minority language are not an exception among those with the smallest vocabu-
lary size, and also that some children with a low amount of exposure may belong to
those of P>90. A more in-depth analysis of a set of sociolinguistic and biogenetic
variables, potentially affecting expressive vocabulary, revealed that the weak effect
of the amount of exposure appears as the largest from the 12 independent variables
tested in 16–30-month-old children. The same analysis with a restricted sample of
26–30-month-olds revealed a higher effect of this and other weak sociolinguistic
variables, such as parents’ communicative language and mother’s first language.
Finally, the current study highlights the need to take into account children’s relative
input in order to properly identify bilinguals at risk of linguistic delay, who may be
erroneously considered as such (false positives) in those cases where they are
assessed only in the language to which they have a low(er) degree of exposure.
M.-J. Ezeizabarrena
Letren Fakultatea, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU),
Unibertsitatearen Ibilbidea, 5, Vitoria/Gasteiz 01006, Spain
e-mail: mj.ezeizabarrena@ehu.eus
I.G. Fernández (*)
University of the Basque Country, San Sebastián, Spain
e-mail: inaki.garcia@ehu.eus

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_7
148 M.-J. Ezeizabarrena and I.G. Fernández
Keywords Early bilingualism • Basque • Amount of exposure • Expressive vocab-

ulary • Language delay
1 Introduction
During the first years of linguistic use, children undergo very significant changes in
their linguistic expressive skills, which are visible in the size of their vocabulary, the
morpho-phonological properties of the words produced, as well as in the way they
combine words in their increasingly complex utterances. The typology, variability
and rate of linguistic expressions also increase dramatically during the first 3–4
years of life, and the sequence of developmental steps found shows a surprising
similarity across individuals acquiring the same language, as well as across children
acquiring typologically distant languages. This general homogeneity contrasts with
the high inter-individual variation found in the precise age of adult-like production
of some units, the number of errors, and other details which are typically attributed
to the biogenetic, social, economic and affective circumstances in which a linguistic
variety is acquired, namely, to language external factors that may cause individuals
to have unique linguistic experiences. For that reason, linguistic experience is
becoming a relevant subject of study in language acquisition research, even in the
studies developed in theoretical frames which defend that an important component
of linguistic knowledge is innate. In this paper, we assume that experience is one of
the three factors that form part of the growth of language, together with the genetic
endowment, which interprets parts of the environment as linguistic experience, and
some principles of data analysis and of structural architecture, which are not spe-
cific to the faculty of language (Chomsky 2005).
The current study is based on the data obtained using the Basque adaptation of
the Communicative Development Inventory (CDI), also called the MacArthur-Bates
Test, an instrument originally designed for testing US infants’ (CDI-1, 8–15 months)
and toddlers’ (CDI-2, 16–30 months) English vocabulary and grammar by age
group (in months) (Fenson et al. 1993). This questionnaire, which to date has been
adapted to over 60 languages and standardized in many of them, allows researchers
to establish the normal rates, in statistical terms, of vocabulary and grammar knowl-
edge of children at very young ages, below age 3, based on parental reports. The
utility of this instrument has been shown in many studies, since it is a reference for
establishing the mean values of words, morphological markers, length of utterance,
the frequency rates of different lexical categories at specific ages and their develop-
ment across age periods in numerous languages, as well as for investigating the
relationship between lexical and morphosyntactic development in a specific lan-
guage (Marchman et al. 2004).
One of the many utilities of the instrument is the assessment of inter-individual
variation within age groups, where it allows the researcher to distinguish among
early, typical and late talkers based on the percentiles for each age group (in months)
from large samples of children’s data (Fenson et al. 2000). In fact, the CDI has been
Language Delay and Amount of Exposure to the Language: Two (Un)Related… 149
shown to be an effective instrument in identifying children with low and high lan-
guage skills, especially in toddlers (Fenson et al. 1993). More precisely, it is espe-
cially effective in identifying 30-month-old children with some potential delay up
to the 11th percentile, and also children with normal language skills above the 49th
percentile (Heilmann et al. 2005).
Crossing lexical availability data with sociolinguistic data, this instrument has
been used to compare data from groups of monolinguals and bilinguals reported in
their two languages. Moreover, the CDI is often combined with other kinds of mea-
surements, such as in Hurtado et al. (2014), who showed that processing abilities
tested experimentally and vocabulary size measured with the CDI are strongly
related within each language, but not across the two languages of bilinguals, in line
with Marchman et al.’s (2004) results.
Throughout this chapter we will present and discuss cross-individual data from
the data sample provided by parents of children growing up in a bilingual sociolin-
guistic context in the Basque Country, gathered and analyzed in Barreña et al.
(2008), paying special attention to the subgroup of children at the lowest percentiles
in expressive vocabulary. This is the first attempt to study the effect of a set of 12
(sociolinguistic and biological) variables on the linguistic development (lexicon,
grammar and length of utterance) of a wide sample of bilingual Basque children
acquiring a minority language, Basque, in permanent contact with a majority lan-
guage, Spanish, in most cases. Virtually all these children grew up in regular family
types existing in the Basque community (mostly bi- or mono-parental families, in
which the children’s care is often partially extended to the grandparents) and had a
‘typical’ socio-affective environment.
2 The Study
The current study examined the relationship between the linguistic experience of
young children and the parental report of their linguistic development during their
first years of linguistic production in Basque, a minority language. It also examined
the relationship between low input and delayed language development. The study
provides information regarding children’s socio-linguistic environment, biogenetic
characteristics and expressive vocabulary, grammar and utterance length, to deter-
mine the effect of these variables on language development in Basque.
Basque is a language with over one million speakers, spoken in the Basque
Country, a region of over 8000 square miles in the western Pyrenees that spans the
border between France and Spain on the Atlantic coast. For centuries, this language
has survived as a minority language in permanent contact with one of two Romance
languages, Spanish and French. According to official data, no adult monolingual
speaker of Basque is to be found at the present time (Basque Government 2013).
Though the sample included data of children with Spanish and French citizenship,
the vast majority (97.8%) of the children included in the current study are Basque-
Spanish bilinguals living in either of the two Spanish administrative autonomous
communities in which Basque has (total or partial) official status: La Comunidad

Autónoma Vasca and Navarra (Barreña et al. 2008:39). Sociolinguistic surveys in
the Basque Autonomous Community (the Spanish region with the highest concen-
tration of Basque speakers and where most of our participants live) reported that
50.6% of the population older than 15 are monolingual speakers of Spanish, and
49.4% are bilinguals with greater or lesser active use of the Basque language
(Basque Government 2013). In contrast, most of the youngest members of the com-
munity (ages 5–9 years) have some expressive competence in this minority lan-
guage, high (79.1%) or low (15.78%), while only 5.1% of children in this age group
are monolingual speakers of Spanish (EUSTAT 2015). These data indicate that adult
Basque speakers are exposed to, and are users of Spanish to some extent on an
almost daily basis, which reduces considerably the possibility of children growing
up in Basque monolingual settings. Thus, the categorical distinction traditionally
applied in many speech communities distinguishing monolingual versus bilingual
speakers does not hold for Basque. In fact, researchers of language acquisition in
this bilingual community need to consider the exposure to Basque and Spanish (and
other languages) of each bilingual participant in gradient rather than in categorical
terms. For this reason, the current research cannot avoid including the effect of input
as a pertinent component of the study, as well as other variables such as parents’
profiles, as it is relevant for the linguistic development of all children and crucial for
those at risk of language delay.
The current investigation examined the effects of several sociolinguistic and bioge-
netic factors on the expressive vocabulary and grammar of toddlers aged 16–30 months.
Their data had been previously collected for the normative study of Basque vocabulary
and grammar (Barreña et al. 2008). Several sub-variables related to the children’s soci-
olinguistic environment are included in the study: (a) the relative amount of exposure
to the Basque language in relation to the other language(s)—mostly Spanish—that
these children are exposed to in their closest environment; (b) the language used by the
parents when talking to each other; (c) mother’s and father’s language profile according
to their age of acquisition of Basque; (d) mother’s and father’s educational level. It
didn’t include, however, data from children growing up in atypical socio-affective con-
texts, which has been the case in other studies on early language development, such as
Auza et al. (in press), in which SLI children were compared to children growing up in
social care contexts. Additionally, several other biological factors such as (a) gender,
(b) weight at birth, (c) number of siblings and (d) absence/frequency of ear infections
during the first year(s) of life, are included in the study.
Special attention was paid to the subgroup of children at risk of language delay,
namely those with the smallest size (Percentile 10, henceforth P<10) of productive
vocabulary. A wide literature on bilingualism reports developmental delays of bilin-
gual children as compared to their monolingual peers, what shows that less developed
expressive vocabulary and grammar may not necessarily be related to some deficit at
the cognitive level. Moreover, impaired and unimpaired children showing a similar
pattern of linguistic delay at an early stage frequently reveal a divergent developmen-
tal pattern in later stages. These facts point to the need for disentangling the effect of
hearing difficulties, cognitive disabilities or language impairment (Fenson et al. 1993)
from the effect of the lack of (sufficient) input (Marchman et al. 2004) in the assess-
ment of language delay in early bilinguals. In this paper, we predict that, since both
kinds of factors affect bilingual children’s knowledge and use of vocabulary and
grammar, the fact that many children scored in the lowest percentiles of parent-
reported language abilities in Basque will be indeed the result of having a small
amount of exposure to that language. We expect that the same factors will affect
Basque children’s knowledge and use of Basque vocabulary and grammar; those chil-
dren in the lowest percentiles may be more influenced by those factors than children
in higher percentiles of parent-reported language abilities.
2.1 The Basque CDI-2 Instrument
The Komunikazio-garapena neurtzeko zerrenda (KGNZ) is the Basque version of the

CDI instrument developed by Fenson et al. (1993). The adaptation, piloting and vali-
dation of the instrument lasted from 2000 to 2008 and concluded with the publication
of the manual by Barreña et al. (2008). This includes the two questionnaires, as well
as the results of both questionnaires, the KGNZ-1 First words (data of 445 children
aged between 8 and 15 months) and the KGNZ-2 Words and sentences (data of 975
children aged between 16 and 30 months). The manual follows the general structure
and contents of the original English manual, including the statistical analysis, tables
of percentiles for all the sections and measurements of reliability and validity of the
instruments. Item numbers in KGNZ diverge only slightly from the original in the
lexical section. In contrast, substantial differences can be observed in the grammar
section, due to the typological distance between English and Basque grammar, espe-
cially in the degree of morphological complexity.
The current study is restricted to toddlers’ data and analyzes the parental reports
obtained with the KGNZ-2 instrument, or (henceforth) the Basque CDI-2. This
questionnaire is organized into two main linguistic parts, followed by the final sec-
tion which includes questions regarding the child’s sociolinguistic and biological
data. The first section of vocabulary includes 680 items, divided into different
semantic fields, and the grammar section (111 items), which includes several sub-
sections related to the different kinds of (case and verb) inflection and complexity.
In this chapter we will focus on the total number of reported expressive vocabulary
items, ignoring their distribution along semantic fields, and for grammar we will
report the number of suffixes and verb inflections, disregarding the specificities of
the items. In all three sections parents were asked to tick the items they had heard
their child produce. In the grammar section, the parents were also asked to write
down the three longest sentences produced recently by the child, allowing the Mean
Length of the Longest Utterances produced (henceforth MaxLU) to be calculated.
The last section of the questionnaire includes a set of open and closed questions,
where parents were asked to report on their child’s sociolinguistic and biogenetic
data. The items selected for the current analysis have been labelled and coded accord-
ing to a set of independent (sub)variables representing the children’s biography,
some related to their linguistic input and some to their biogenetic history. The six
indexes (variables) of linguistic input are as follows: (a) the relative amount of expo-
sure to the Basque language was coded and transformed into percentage of the hours
per week of exposure to Basque divided by the total amount of hours of exposure to
any language; (b) parents’ frequency of use of Basque as communication language
between themselves: always, sometimes, never; (c) mother’s; and (d) father’s first
language: Basque as their early (L1), late (L2) or non-acquired language; (e) moth-
er’s educational level: primary, secondary, university studies; and (f) father’s educa-
tional level. The six biogenetic sub-variables are: (a) number of siblings; (b) firstborn
vs. non-firstborn); (c) gender; (d) weight at birth: below 2.5 Kg, between 2.5 and 4
Kg, over 4 Kg; (e) gestation: full-term (9 months); pre-term (8 months); (f) ear infec-
tions during the first year of life (none, one-two) (Table 1).
The sample collected and analyzed in Barreña et al. (2008) consisted of 975
parental questionnaires reporting on the expressive use of lexical and grammatical
items by children of 16–30 months of age. Some children grew up in families in
which all the members addressed them in Basque only, or in Basque together with
other languages (Spanish, in most cases). Noteworthy, 15 pre-term children born in
the 7th month of pregnancy or earlier and 20 children reporting more than 2 ear
infections during their first year were excluded from the normative study and, con-
sequently, were not included in the current sample.
The sample was divided into four input groups according to their relative amount
of exposure to the Basque language: (a) children whose linguistic input in the fam-
ily environment was (quasi-) exclusively in Basque, or >90% of the total input,
were called monolinguals (M); (b) children for whom Basque was not exclusive but
was the most frequently used language, with rates of 60–90%, were grouped as
Table 1 Socio-linguistic and biogenetic variables considered in the study

Dependent variables Independent variables
1. Expressive vocabulary (number of 1. Relative amount of exposure to the Basque
different words) language
2. Expressive verb inflection (number of 2. Parents’ frequency of use of Basque as their
inflected verb forms) communication language
3. Expressive nominal morphology 3. Mother’s first language
(number of suffixes)
4. MaxLU (number of morphemes per 4. Father’s first language
utterance)
5. Mother’s educational level
6. Father’s educational level
7. Number of siblings
8. First- vs. non first-born child
9. Gender
10. Weight at birth
11. Prematurity
12. Ear infections during the first year of life
Table 2 Distribution of children across the four input group (Total n = 975, age = 16–30 months)
Input groups according to the relative INPUT
M > 90% BB 60–90% Bal 40–60% SB <40% Missing Total children
n% 589 211 98 52 25 975
60.4% 21.6% 10.1% 5.3% 2.6% 100%
Note: M monolingual, BB Basque-dominant bilingual, Bal balanced bilingual, SB Spanish-
dominant bilingual
Basque-dominant bilinguals (BB); (c) children for whom Basque was present in
half of their language exposure time, having a Basque input rate of 40–60%, were
considered balanced (Bal); and finally, (d) children for whom Basque was present
in less than 40% of their linguistic input were called Spanish-dominant bilinguals
(SB). Some informants did not include information regarding children’s linguistic
input and, consequently, the original sample was reduced to 950 (see Table 2).
The fact that the questionnaire was written in Basque excluded the possibility of
collecting data from children whose parents did not speak the language (although
those children were exposed to Basque by other family members, family friends or
a day-care teacher). This may explain the low number of participants (5.3%) in the
group with the least input shown in Table 2. The first observation is that the chil-
dren’s distribution is not balanced across the four input groups: the majority (60.4%)
of children in the sample were reported to have grown up in (quasi-) monolingual
families (M), followed by the 21.6% who were classified as Basque dominant bilin-
guals (BB). The rest of the children were once again distributed unequally in the two
input groups with less amount of exposure to the language: Balanced (Bal) and
Spanish dominant bilinguals (SB).
Taking into account the specificities of the child population under study, this
research aims to explore the effect of the amount of exposure and other sociolin-
guistic and biogenetic factors in toddlers’ linguistic development. More specifically,
it analyzes the effect size of 12 factors measured in the Basque CDI-2 on the reported
expressive vocabulary of 16–30-month-old children. Furthermore, this research
aims to discuss the usefulness of the CDI instrument to identify children “at risk of
language delay” in bilingual or communities which use a minority language.
3 Results
The sample was divided into three groups according to their percentiles in reported
expressive vocabulary. There were considerable differences in the reported vocabu-
lary sizes and the grammar of the three groups: (a) children at risk (P<10), (b) children
with normal vocabularies (P10–90), and (c) children with very large expressive vocab-
ularies (P>90). As shown in Table 3, the mean number of words reported for each
vocabulary group differed by over 180 words between the normal and the superior
and between the normal and the inferior vocabulary-size groups. The same is true for
Table 3 Mean values and standard errors in reported expressive vocabulary, morphology and
utterance length by vocabulary-size group (Total n = 950, age = 16–30 months)
Vocabulary Verb inflection Suffixes MaxLU-m
Vocabulary size
groups M SE M SE M SE M SE
P<10 50.83a 3.71 0.37a 0.16 0.47a 0.14 1.48a 0.12
P10–P90 232.45b 3.23 4.44b 0.17 3.24b 0.08 3.52b 0.08
P >90 461.64c 9.37 11.70c 0.50 6.55c 0.23 5.87c 0.26
TOTAL 235.87 178.53 4.73 3.27 3.27 3.27 3.53 3.11
Note: MaxLU-m Mean number of morphemes in the longest three utterances. M mean, SE standard
error. Post hoc analyses were conducted with a Bonferroni correction, and means that do not share
a common alphabetical subscript differ at p < .05 (a > b > c) and are listed vertically.
the mean number of inflected verb forms (mean difference of over 4–7), for suffixes
(mean difference of over 2.5) and for MaxLU (mean difference of over 2).
The normative sample gathered and analyzed by Barreña et al. (2008) revealed a
strong relationship between reported vocabulary size and the other measures pro-
vided by the Basque CDI-2 for measuring the 16–30-month-old’s expressive lan-
guage. Partial positive correlations were significant, after controlling for age, between
toddlers’ reported expressive vocabulary and verb inflection (r = .676, p < .001),
expressive vocabulary and suffixes (r = .751, p < .001) and the length (in morphemes)
of the longest utterances produced (r = .517, p < .001). A significant correlation was
also found between verb inflection and suffixes (r = .715, p < .001), between verb
inflection and length of utterance (r = .557, p < .001), and between suffixes and
length of utterance (r = .557, p < .001). These results indicate the consistency of the
four measures for assessing language development in the whole sample.
The statistical analysis of the data examined here revealed the relationship
between expressive vocabulary and the three linguistic dependent variables also in
the groups at risk of developmental delay (P<10). Significant correlations were found
between expressive vocabulary and verb inflection, after controlling for age (r =
.433, p < .001), expressive vocabulary and suffixes (r = .462, p < .001) and expres-
sive vocabulary and length of utterance (r = .389, p < .001). Significant correlations
were also found between verb inflection and suffixes (r = .701, p < .001), verb
inflection and length of utterance (r = .370, p < .001) and suffixes and length of
utterance (r = .257, p = .010).
3.1 Input, Vocabulary and Grammar (16–30 Months)
According to Barreña et al. (2008), age was the strongest factor of variability in the
Basque CDI-2, as shown by the statistical analysis of reported expressive vocabu-
lary (F(14, 960) = 65.97; p < 0.001; η2 = 0.49) of 16–30-month-olds. But the amount
of exposure to the Basque language also affects young children’s morpho-syntactic
production. As shown in Table 4, mean scores of reported expressive vocabulary in
Table 4 M(ean scores) and S(tandard) E(rror) in the four measures of communicative development,
by input group in the whole sample and in the at risk group (N = 950, age = 16–30 months)
Input groups
M BB Bal SB
n = 589 n = 211 n = 98 n = 52
M (SE) M (SE) M (SE) M (SE) TOTAL
Words 252.42a 229.19ab (8.71) 192.50bc (12.74) 171.89c 236.67
(5.20) (17.50)
Verb inflec. 5.28a (.22) 4.65ab (.37) 3.34bc (.55) 2.19c (.75) 4.78
Suffixes 3.65a (.10) 3.24a (.17) 2.39b (.25) 1.41b (.35) 3.31
MaxLU-m 3.87a (.10) 3.47ab (.18) 2.74bc (.26) 2.13c (.35) 3.57
dominant bilingual. Post hoc analyses were conducted with a Bonferroni correction, and means
that do not share a common alphabetical subscript differ at p < .05 (a > b > c) and are listed hori-
zontally.
the whole sample are lower in input groups with less exposure to the language,
resulting in a difference of 80 words between the groups with the highest input rate
(Monolinguals or M) and those with the lowest (Spanish dominant bilinguals or
SB). Similarly, mean numbers of reported verb inflections, suffixes and morphemes
in the three longest sentences were higher for the groups with more exposure to the
language than for the groups with less exposure (mean differences of over 3 inflected
forms, 2 suffixes and 1.5 morphemes in utterance length between the M and the SB
groups) in the whole sample. Four one-way ANCOVA with age as a covariate
revealed statistically significant input effect on the four measures of communicative
development: vocabulary (F(3,945) = 11.85, p < .001; η2 = .036), verb inflection
(F(3,945) =7.926, p < .001; η2 = .025), suffixes (F(3,945) =17.737, p < .001; η2 =
.053) and length of utterance (F(3,942) =11.41, p < .001; η2 = .035). This effect is
small, however, according to Cohen (1992).
In order to deepen in the relationship between 16–30-month-olds’ amount of
exposure to the language and their distribution according to their vocabulary-size, a
cross-tab analysis was conducted which proved to be significant (χ2(6) = 16.10; p =
.013). As shown in Fig. 1, the most frequent vocabulary percentile size in all the four
input groups was the normal (P10–90) one, as expected. However, high-level and at-
risk groups’ distribution was not homogeneous across input groups. Rates of chil-
dren with large vocabulary size P>90 (11.2%) were 2.7% higher than rates of at-risk
P<10 children (8.5%) in the monolingual group. The opposite pattern of P<10 rates
being higher than P>90 is found in the remnant three input groups, regardless of
whether children’s dominant language is the minority (Basque dominant bilin-
guals), the majority (Spanish dominant bilinguals), or whether they have a balanced
exposure (Bal) to the two languages in their family environment. Interestingly, the
difference in rates between children with the largest and those with the lowest
vocabulary size increased inversely to the amount of exposure to the Basque lan-
guage across the three bilingual groups: Basque dominant (3.7%), balanced (8.2%)
and Spanish dominant (11.5%).
100%
90%
Percentage of participants
80%
70%
60%
50% P<10, at risk
40% P10-P90 normal
30% P>90 high
20%
10%
0%
M BB Bal SB TOTAL
Input groups
Fig. 1 Distribution of vocabulary percentile groups across input groups (Total n = 950, age 16–30
months) (Note: M monolingual, BB Basque-dominant bilingual, Bal balanced bilingual, SB
Spanish-dominant bilingual)
Table 5 Effect sizes of factors affecting variability in expressive vocabulary (Total n = 950, age
16–30 months)
Variable χ2
Amount of exposure χ2(6) = 16.10; p = .013; Cramer’s V = .09
Mother’s first language χ2(4) = 10.14; p = .038; Cramer’s V = .07
Prematurity χ2(2) = 7.79; p = .020; Cramer’s V = .09
Note: large (Cramer’s V > .40), medium (Cramer’s V = .20 –.40) and small (Cramer’s V < .20)
effect size according to Cohen (1988).
The 12 independent variables listed in Table 1 were selected to detect the factors
which better account for the variability found in the sample, especially in reported
vocabulary size. The cross-tab statistical analysis of these 12 independent vari-
ables, which potentially affect language development of children younger than 2;6
years (15–30 months) revealed that only six of the variables have some effect on
the expressive vocabulary. As shown in Table 5, out of the six so-called sociolin-
guistic variables only the amount of exposure and the mother’s first language had
some effect, while neither the parents’ education level, the father’s linguistic pro-
file nor the use of Basque as communicative language between the parents had an
effect on vocabulary size. Among the biogenetic variables only prematurity
appeared as factor in variability, while weight, gender, number of siblings, birth-
order or number of ear infections did not reach significance. Nevertheless, the
effect sizes for all three factors were very small, as none of them reached Cramer’s
V = 0.1 value (Cohen 1988).
Table 6 M(ean scores) and S(tandard) E(rror) in the four measures of communicative development,
by input group in the whole sample and in the at risk group (Total n = 395, age = 26–30 months)
Input groups
M BB Bal SB
n = 234 n = 105 n = 33 n = 23
M (SE) M (SE) M (SE) M (SE) TOTAL
Words 391.47a (9.05) 349.73b (13.51) 299.56c (24.15) 238.22c (28.84) 363.77
Verb inflec 10.08a (0.47) 8.45ab (0.70) 6.53bc (1.26) 3.44c (1.50) 8.96
Suffixes 5.94a (0.19) 5.32a (0.28) 3.84b (0.50) 2.06c (0.60) 5.37
MaxLU-m 5.87a (0.22) 5.06b (0.33) 3.56c (0.59) 2.52c (0.71) 5.27
dominant bilingual. Post hoc analyses were conducted with a Bonferroni correction, and means
that do not share a common alphabetical subscript differ at p < .05 (a > b > c) and are listed hori-
zontally.
3.2 Input, Vocabulary and Grammar (26–30 Months)
It is possible that the effect of some sociolinguistic and biogenetic variables on the
linguistic development emerges later or increases with age, such as is the case of the
amount of exposure. Barreña et al. (2008, 2011) concluded that, contrary to expec-
tations, there were no effects of exposure on infants’ comprehension and production
or on toddlers’ vocabulary and grammar production before 26 months of age. This
change may be related to the developmental change attested across case studies of
monolingual and bilingual Basque children reporting that most children start mak-
ing productive use of case and inflectional morphology and mean length of utter-
ance (MLU) over 2 after age 2 (Barreña 1995, Ezeizabarrena 1996, Zubiri 1997,
Larrañaga 2000, Elosegi 1998).
The Monolingual group, with 234 participants, is by far the largest input group
among the 395 children of the sample aged between 26 and 30 months. Similarly to
what has been observed in the whole sample of 950 children, the size of the remain-
ing input groups decreases with the amount of exposure to the language in this age-
group, where the Spanish dominant appears, again, as the less frequent profile.
Table 6 shows the differences among the four input groups in the four dependent
variables. Mean numbers are higher for the groups with more exposure to the lan-
guage than for the groups with less exposure in the 26–30-month-olds’ sample,
where the differences between the M and the SB groups appear as more salient
(around 150 words, over 6 inflected forms, close to 4 suffixes and over 3.3 mor-
phemes in utterance length of the longest 3 sentences). Four one-way ANCOVA
with age as a covariate revealed statistically significant input effect on the four mea-
sures of communicative development: vocabulary (F(3,390) = 12.12, p < .001; η2 =
.085), verb inflection (F(3,390) = 7.74, p < .001; η2 = .056), suffixes (F(3,390)
=16.08, p < .001; η2 = .110) and length of utterance (F(3,389) = 10.30, p < .001; η2
= .074). Results indicate that, despite being small (Cohen 1992), the effect size of
the input variable increases with age, since its effect is higher in this age range
(26–30 months) than in the whole sample (16–30 months).
90%
80%
Percentage of participants
70%
60%
50%
P<10, at risk
40%
P10-P90 normal
30%
P>90 high
20%
10%
0%
M BB Bal SB TOTAL
Input groups
Fig. 2 Distribution of vocabulary percentile groups across input groups (Total n = 395, age =
26–30 months (Note: M monolingual, BB Basque-dominant bilingual, Bal balanced bilingual, SB
Spanish-dominant bilingual)
Figure 2 presents the distribution of vocabulary percentile groups in each input

group at 26–30 months. The most frequent vocabulary percentile size is the normal
(P10–90) one, with rates of over 70% in all the four input groups and, as expected,
children at risk of delay (P<10) are also found in all the input groups, even among the
monolinguals. In contrast, the frequency of children with large vocabulary percen-
tiles (P>90) decreased across groups with a lower amount of exposure to the lan-
guage. Though the P<10 appear as overrepresented in the groups of balanced
bilinguals and children with the less amount of exposure, the general data suggest
that the P<10 may represent true risk rather than input limitations.
More specifically, in the monolingual group rates of children with large vocabu-
lary size P>90 (11.5%) were 5.5 higher than rates of at-risk P<10 children (6%). The
opposite pattern of P<10 rates being higher than P>90 ones is found in the remnant
three input groups, regardless of whether their dominant language is the minority
(BB), the majority one (SB) or whether they have a balanced exposure (Bal) to the
two languages in their family environment. Interestingly, the difference in rates of
children with the largest vocabulary size and children at risk increased inversely to
the amount of exposure to the Basque language: Basque dominant (0.9%), Balanced
(9.1%) and Spanish dominant (30.4%) bilinguals. These data show that there is a
relationship between the amount of exposure and children’s placement in the at-
risk, normal and high vocabulary size groups, which was confirmed statistically
(χ2(6) = 24.95; p = .004).
In addition to the analysis of the relationship between input and vocabulary size,
the effect size of input and 11 more sociolinguistic and biogenetic independent vari-
ables listed in Table 1 were tested in the oldest subgroup of toddlers (26–30 months).
As shown in Table 7, only three of these factors revealed significance in the cross-
tab statistical analysis. Interestingly, all of them were sociolinguistic factors (amount
of exposure, parental communicative language and mother’s first language) while
Table 7 Effect size of factors affecting variability in expressive vocabulary (Total n = 395, age =
26–30 months)
Variable χ2
Amount of exposure χ2 (6) = 24.95; p = .004;
Cramer’s V = .15
Language of Parental communication χ2 (4) = 15.81; p = .003;
Cramer’s V = .14
Mother’s first language χ2 (4) = 10.35; p = .035;
Cramer’s V = .11
Note: large (Cramer’s V > .40), medium (Cramer’s V = .20–.40) and small (Cramer’s V < .20) effect
size according to Cohen (1988)
the effect of prematurity disappeared at this age. The effect size of the variables is
small, since none of them surpasses the Cramer’s V value of 0.20 (Cohen 1988),
neither in the 16–30- nor in the 26–30-month-olds’ sample. However, their effect
seems to increase with age from the former to the latter sample (amount of exposure
V = .09/.15; mother’s first language V = .07/.11).
4 Discussion
The aim of this study was to test the usefulness of the Basque version of the CDI
instrument for detecting children at risk of language delay in 16–30-month-old chil-
dren with different linguistic backgrounds, including children with a low amount of
exposure to this minority language. Parental reports on the expressive language of
almost 1000 Basque children were examined for expressive vocabulary size, verb
inflections, noun inflections and utterance length. The consistency of the four mea-
surements was confirmed by the positive correlations found among all the partici-
pants across the whole sample (16–30-month-olds), in line with data obtained
across adaptations of the instrument to many different languages, such as US
English (Fenson et al. 1993), Iberian Spanish (Lopez Ornat et al. 2005), Mexican
Spanish (Jackson-Maldonado et al. 2003), Galician (Pérez-Pereira 2008), Catalan
(Serrat et al. 2004), etc.
Positive correlations between the four measurements were also found in the
group with the smallest vocabulary size (P<10). These two results point towards the
validity of the instrument to assess toddlers’ linguistic development and to identify
children at risk of language delay, in line with Fenson et al. (2000) and Heilmann
et al. (2005). Out of the 12 (sociolinguistic and biogenetic) factors analyzed from
those included in the Basque CDI, only three revealed effects on toddlers’ expres-
sive vocabulary, though their nature and effect size varied depending on whether
they were analyzed across the whole sample (16–30 months) or only in the oldest
children subsample (26–30 months).
The cross-tab analyses showed that two sociolinguistic factors (amount of expo-
sure to the target language and mother’s first language) and one biogenetic factor
(prematurity) affect vocabulary development in the whole sample. In contrast, the

effect of any biogenetic factors under study disappeared in the oldest age group
(26–30 months) and one more sociolinguistic factor revealed significance in addi-
tion to the two found in the whole sample. Thus, relative amount of exposure to the
target language, mother’s first language and frequency of use of Basque as parents’
communication language appeared as the most relevant factors in the oldest group.
The relative amount of exposure to the Basque language arose as a factor for
children’s lexical development in the whole sample and in the oldest subsample.
More specifically, rates of children at risk of linguistic delay (P<10) were higher in
the Spanish dominant bilingual group (17.3%), which is the group with the least
amount of exposure, than in the rest of the groups (range < 8.5–13.7.%>), and the
rate increased considerably in the oldest subgroup (30.4%), while it did not in the
rest of the input groups (range < 6–15.2%) where their frequency remained quite
similar. The small effect size of input in the reported expressive vocabulary was
higher in the oldest group than in the whole sample (η2 = .036 in 16–30-month-olds
vs. η2 = .085 in 26–30-month-olds), which indicates that the effect of relative input
increases with age. Furthermore, the medium-size effect (η2 = .16) of the relative
input in the expressive vocabulary of older Basque-Spanish bilingual children
(30–50-month-olds) reported by Garcia et al. (2014) in a sample of 1024 children
tested with the Basque CDI-3, is in line with the current results. A more detailed
analysis of that sample revealed that the highest effect size of this factor appeared
from 48 months onwards (η2 = .35).
All these results point towards the relevance of measuring bilinguals’ relative
amount of exposure to their languages when assessing their communicative skills
using the CDI, especially in children over 25 months of age. The current results
advocate the claim that normative monolingual instruments can not apply directly
to bilingual children (O’Toole 2013), particularly in the detection of children at risk
of language delay, among which a considerable rate of bilingual children located at
the lowest percentiles (P<10) may be children with low exposure to the target lan-
guage, whichever it may be, rather than children with general language delay,
namely false positives (Kwon and Farrell 2000). In the case of our particular com-
munity of Basque–Spanish bilinguals, where Basque was the minority language in
the community but the dominant language for the largest part of the sample, one of
the four input groups, namely the children with least exposure to the target language
(SB group), appeared as susceptible to being erroneously identified as children at
risk of language delay, especially in the oldest age group (26–30 months). Assuming
that at-risk children distribute uniformly, their expected rate is 10% across all four
input groups, but this was not the case in the Spanish dominant bilingual group,
where their rate reached 30% in the 26–30-month-old sample, threefold the expected
rate. Consequently, the Basque CDI norms may not be directly applicable to bilin-
gual children with relative exposure to the target language below 40%. Similarly,
we can predict that if the bilingual children in the current sample were assessed only
in their other language, Spanish, (more than the expected 10% of) the children
belonging to the so-called monolingual or to the Basque dominant bilingual group
would show values corresponding to the P<10 in Spanish, and would consequently be
considered children at risk of language delay, which is not the case for many of
them, according to the assessment done in their other language. As suggested by
Pearson et al. (1997), bilinguals’ expressive capacity should be measured in terms
of the total of lexicalized concepts rather than in terms of the lexical items in one or
both of their languages. Accordingly, a proper use of the CDI should not disregard
children’s relative input in order to avoid the erroneous identification of 25-month-
old or older bilingual participants as being toddlers at risk of general language
delay, as a consequence of their expressive capacity being assessed in the ‘wrong’
language, namely in a language to which they have a low degree of exposure. It
must be noted that data obtained exclusively from the weakest language of a bilin-
gual will rarely be a good indicator of that bilingual’s general expressive capacity or
incapacity.
The mother’s first language (over 70% were native speakers) revealed significant
in the whole and the oldest samples, whilst the father’s first language (over 60%
were natives) did not. This difference is in line with studies reporting that despite
the absence of qualitative differences in the input provided by the two progenitors,
mothers spend more time with their children than fathers do, in many cultures.
Consequently, mothers provide higher input rates (Pancsofar and Vernon-Feagans
2006). Despite the small effect of mother’s first language (Cramer’s V = .09 in the
whole sample and V = .11 in the oldest one), input frequency appears, again, as a
relevant factor in children’s expressive language.
In contrast, the parents’ educational level, considered a relevant factor in other
versions of the CDI instrument (Fenson et al. 1991, Jackson-Maldonado et al. 2003,
López-Ornat et al. 2005) and related to the socio-economic status, did not show any
effect on the reported lexical and grammatical productive language. This result may
be related to the fact that, unlike other adaptations and standardizations of the instru-
ment, the majority of parents participating in the Basque study had at least secondary
education level (46.3% of the fathers and 32.6% of the mothers) or university level
education (32.2% of the fathers and 54.5% of the mothers). That high education level
found among the informants did not match exactly the distribution reported for the
inhabitants of the Basque Country at the time of the data collection in 2001, where,
according to statistical official surveys, 22% of the population over 20 years of age
had middle, upper or high level studies, 28% secondary studies, 45% primary studies
and only 5% of the population did not finish primary school (EUSTAT 2001).
Regarding socio-economic status, Arriaga et al. (1998) who included economic
variables such as children’s parents’ annual salaries, found that English speaking
children from low-income social groups were reported to have strikingly lower
numbers than the rest in the three key indices evaluated: size of expressive vocabu-
lary, age of appearance of word combinations, and complexity of utterances. In
contrast, no item regarding parent’s annual salary was included in the Basque
CDI. Moreover, these last two indices were not measured in the current study and
educational level was the only variable, out of the 12, typically related to the socio-
economic status. Therefore, the Basque data neither confirms or disconfirms the
magnitude of the income/social class effects on toddlers’ vocabulary and grammar
found in studies conducted in other sociolinguistic contexts.
Next, the variable of frequency of use of Basque as the communication language

between the parents appeared as significant for only the oldest group (χ2 (4) = 15.81;
p = .003) and with a small effect size (Cramer’s V = .14), but not for the whole
sample.
Among the biogenetic factors studied, only prematurity was significantly related
to the language scales in the whole sample, in line with studies concluding that
preterm children have smaller vocabulary sizes (Gayraud and Kern 2007), but not in
the older subgroup. The remaining biogenetic factors such as gender, birthweight,
number of siblings, birth order and ear infections did not show significant effects
neither in the whole, nor in the older children’s group. The non-significant effect of
factors such as gender in the Basque sample contrasts with results obtained in other
adaptations of the instrument (see Erikson et al. 2012 for a comparative study show-
ing that girls produce more words than boys across samples obtained using the CDI
adaptations to 10 non-English languages).
According to these data, the effect of the sociolinguistic variables under study
revealed as increasing with age in the current sample, whilst most of the biogenetic
factors studied showed no effect at all or some effect in the whole sample, such as
in the case of prematurity, whose effect disappeared in the oldest group.
The current study was an attempt to measure early bilinguals’ linguistic experi-
ence, one of the three factors that form part of the growth of language, together with
the genetic endowment, and principles of data analysis and of structural architecture
(Chomsky 2005). The results confirmed the consistency of the CDI instrument,
which revealed a high correlation between the four measurements under study, not
only in the whole sample but also in the group with the lowest vocabulary size
(P<10). The distinction of three different vocabulary-size groups proved to be useful
for observing that the relative input, measured in terms of the amount of exposure,
mothers’ first language and parental communicative language, has an effect on
bilingual toddlers’ expressive language, and that it cannot be disregarded when
assessing bilingual children’s communicative and linguistic skills, especially when
identifying children at risk of linguistic delay.
5 Conclusions
The study of the effect of a set of sociolinguistic and biogenetic factors on the early
production of vocabulary and grammar in early Basque based on parental reports
using the Basque CDI-2, led to the conclusion that the amount of exposure to the
language is the most relevant source of variation at the earliest ages of production by
the age of two and a half years, and that its effect increases with age. Among the
biological factors studied, only prematurity revealed a small effect among the
16–30-month-olds, which disappears as children grow, among the 26–30-months-
olds. Further research conducted with older children is needed in order to test the
continuity of the effect size observed in later periods of larger linguistic productivity.
The consistency observed indicates the usefulness of the CDI instrument to detect
children at risk of language delay, but in the case of bilingual children, the relative
input should be taken into account in order to avoid false positives among children
with low exposure to the language.
Acknowledgment This research has been partially supported by several grants from the follow-
ing institutions: The Basque Government (IT-676-13 and IT983-16), The University of the Basque
Country UPV/EHU (UFI11/6), The Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FFI-2015-68589-
C2-1-P (MINECO/FEDER)). The authors would like to thank the parents, children and institutions
participating in the study, colleagues at the KGNZ research group A. Barreña, M. Almgren,
N. Arratibel and J. Barnes, as well as Tania Barberan, the editors and a native English speaker for
their helpful comments.
References
Arriaga, R. I., Fenson, L., Cronan, T., & Pethick, S. (1998). Scores on the MacArthur communica-
tive development inventory of children from low and middle-income families. Applied
PsychoLinguistics, 19(2), 209–223. doi:10.1017/S0142716400010043.
Auza, A., Márquez-Caraveo, M. E., & Murata, C. (in press). Diferencias individuales: Aspectos
psicológicos y lingüísticos de niños que viven en situaciones de deprivación socioambiental. In
C. Rojas (Ed.), Diferencias individuales en la adquisición del lenguaje. México: Universidad
Autónoma de México.
Barreña, A. (1995). Gramatikaren jabekuntza-garapena eta haur euskaldunak [Grammatical
development and Basque children]. Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU).
Barreña, A., García, I., Ezeizabarrena, M.J., Almgren, M., Arratibel, N., Olano, I., Barnes, J.,
Petuya, A., & Colina, A. (2008). MacArthur-Bates komunikazio garapena neurtzeko zerrenda
euskarara egokitua. Erabiltzaileentzako gida eta eskuliburu teknikoa. [The Basque adaptation
of the MacArthur-Bates CDI. User’s guide and technical handbook]. Bilbao: Udako Euskal
Unibertsitatea.
Barreña, A., Ezeizabarrena, M. J., & García, I. (2011). La influencia del grado de exposición a una
o más lenguas en la adquisición del euskera infantil: léxico y gramática. Infancia y aprendizaje,
34(4), 393–408.
Basque Government. (2013). V Sociolinguistic survey. Vitoria/Gasteiz: Eusko Jaurlaritza. Available
online on 10.10.2015: http://www.euskara.euskadi.eus/contenidos/informacion/sociolinguis-
tic_research2011/en_2011/adjuntos/FithSociolingusticSurvey.pdf
Chomsky, N. (2005). Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry, 36(1), 1–22.
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power and analysis for the behavioral sciences. Hillsdale: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Inc..
Cohen, J. (1992). A power primer. Psychological Bulletin, 112, 155–159.
Elosegi, K. (1998). Kasu eta preposizioen jabekuntza-garapena haur elebidunbatengan. [Case and
prepositions in the Linguistic development of a bilingual child]. Bilbao: Universidad del País
Vasco (UPV/EHU).
Eriksson, M., Marschik, P.B., Tulviste, T., Almgren, M., Pérez Pereira, M., Wehberg, S.,
Marjanovič-Umek, L., Gayraud, F., Kovacevic, M., Gallego, C. (2012). Differences between
girls and boys in emerging language skills: Evidence from 10 language communities. Journal
of Developmental Psychology, 30(2), 326–343. http://dx.doi.10.1111/j.2044-835X.2011.02042
EUSTAT. (2001). Population and housing census. http://en.eustat.eus/elementos/ele0008200/
tbl0008260_i.html#axzz42PJHjlD0
EUSTAT. (2015). Population aged 5 and over of the Basque Country by province and age group
according to language skills. 1981–2011. Available online on 10.10.2015 http://en.eustat.eus/
ci_ci/elementos/ele0009500/tbl0009563_i.html#axzz3oAwekX9L
Ezeizabarrena, M. J. (1996). Adquisición de la morfología verbal en euskera y castellano por
niños bilingües. Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU).
Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Thal, D., Bates, E., Hartung, J. P., Pethick, S., & Reilly, J. S.
(1991). Technical manual for the MacArthur communicative development inventories. San
Diego: San Diego State University.
Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Thal, D., Bates, E., Hartung, J. P., Pethick, S., & Reilly, J. S.
(1993). The MacArthur communicative development inventories: Users’ guide and technical
manual. San Diego: Singular Publishing Group.
Fenson, L., Bates, E., Dale, P., Goodman, J., Reznick, S., & Thal, D. (2000). Measuring variability
in early child language: Don’t shoot the messenger. Child Development, 71, 323–328.
Garcia, I., Barreña, A., Ezeizabarrena, M. J., Almgren, M., Arratibel, N., & Barnes, J. (2014). Haur
euskaldunen komunikazio-garapena neurtzen 30-50 hilabete bitarteanMacArthur-Bates CDI-
III tresnaren euskal bertsioa [Assessing the communicative development of 30 to 50 month old
Basque children: The Basque version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI-III]. Uztaro, 88, 33–72.
Gayraud, F., & Kern, S. (2007). Influence of preterm birth on early lexical and grammatical acqui-
sition. First Language, 27(2), 159–173.
Heilmann, J., Weismer, S. E., Evans, J., & Hollar, C. (2005). Utility of the MacArthur–Bates com-
municative development inventory in identifying language abilities of late-talking and typically
developing toddlers. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 14, 40–51.
Hurtado, N., Grüter, T., Marchman, V. A., & Fernald, A. (2014). Relative language exposure, pro-
cessing efficiency and vocabulary in Spanish–English bilingual toddlers. Bilingualism:
Jackson-Maldonado, D., Thal, D., Fenson, L., Marchman, V., Newton, T., & Conboy, B. (2003).
MacArthur inventarios del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas. User’s guide and tech-
nical manual. Baltimore: Paul Brookes.
Kwon, C., & Farrell, P. M. (2000). The magnitude and challenge of false-positive newborn screen-
ing test results. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 154(7), 714–718.
Larrañaga, M. P. (2000). Ergative Sprachen, akkusative Sprachen: Der Erwerb des Kasus bei
bilingualen Kindern. Frankfurt: Vervuert.
López-Ornat, S., Gallego, C., Gallo, P., Karousou, A., Mariscal, S., & Martinez, M. (2005).
MacArthur. Inventario de Desarrollo Comunicativo MacArthur. Madrid: Tesa.
Marchman, V., Martínez-Sussmann, C., & Dale, P. (2004). The language-specific nature of gram-
matical development: Evidence from bilingual language learners. Developmental Science,
7(2), 212–224.
O’Toole, C. (2013). Using parent report to assess bilingual vocabulary acquisition: A model from
Irish. In V. C. Müller Gathercole (Ed.), Solutions for the assessment of bilinguals (pp. 81–102).
Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Pancsofar, N., & Vernon-Feagans, L. (2006). Mother and father language input to young children:
Contributions to later language development. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology,
27(6), 571–587.
Pearson, B. Z., Fernández, S. C., Lewedeg, V., & Oller, K. (1997). The relation of input factors to
lexical learning by bilingual infants. Applied PsychoLinguistics, 18, 41–58.
Pérez-Pereira, M. (2008). Early Galician/Spanish bilingualism: Contrasts with monolingualism. In
C. Pérez-Vidal, M. Juan-Garau, & A. Bel (Eds.), A portrait of the young in the new multilingual
Spain (pp. 39–62). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Serrat, E., Sanz-Torrent, M., & Bel, A. (2004). Aprendizaje léxico y desarrollo de la gramática.
Anuario de Psicología, 35, 221–234.
Zubiri, J. J. (1997). Izen Sintagmaren, Determinazioaren eta Kasuen Jabekuntza eta Garapena
Hiru Urte Arte. [The acquisition of noun phrase, determiners and case up to age three].
Unpublished PhD. Vitoria-Gasteiz: Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU).
Part III
Children with Specific Language
Impairment
Neurocognitive and Psycholinguistic Profile
of Specific Language Impairment: A Research
Study on Comorbidity of SLI With/Without
Reading Disabilities
Dolors Girbau
Abstract This book chapter reviews different approaches that help to identify the
complex pattern of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in monolingual and bilin-
gual native Spanish-speaking children. The brain bases for cognitive functioning
and language processing, as well as some educational and genetic foundations of
SLI are discussed. A new research study on phonological working memory deficits
in children with SLI only, and a comorbid group with SLI and Reading Disabilities
(RD) is presented.
Purpose: To compare the phonological working memory skills in children with
SLI only, with SLI and RD, and children with Typical Language Development
(TLD). To examine whether the Spanish Nonword Repetition Task (NRT) could
discriminate these three groups.
Method: Forty native Spanish-speaking children (age 8;0–10;3), 20 with TLD,
12 with SLI only, and 8 with SLI+RD, received a battery of psycholinguistic tests,
IQ, hearing screening, and the NRT. The children’s repetition accuracy of 20 non-
words was scored.
Results: Children with SLI+RD made significantly more errors in the subset of
3-4-5 syllable non-words of the NRT than either children with TLD or children with
SLI only. The performance for the 3-4-5 composite was also significantly poorer in
children with SLI than children with TLD.
Conclusions: The present study provides evidence that the Spanish NRT may
help to identify, not only children with SLI, but also the comorbid group of children
with SLI+RD (with the poorest performance). Previous MRI findings of unique
neurocognitive markers in children with SLI+RD are discussed.
D. Girbau (*)
Department of Basic, Clinical & Biological Psychology, Universitat Jaume I,
Av. Sos Baynat s/n, 12071 Castelló, Spain
e-mail: girbau@psb.uji.es

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_8
168 D. Girbau
Keywords Language processing • Assessment • Specific language impairment

with reading disabilities • Phonological working memory • Bilingual and monolin-
gual children
1 N
eurocognitive and Psycholinguistic Profile of Spanish-
Speaking Children with SLI
1.1 Introduction
Specific Language Impairment (SLI) has been associated with a complex pattern of
language and related cognitive deficits. Clinicians, researchers, and educational
professionals keep working to design the most efficient approach to identify and
treat SLI. To tackle SLI by using the appropriate strategy is especially challenging
in languages other than English, as for example Spanish, which is the second most
frequent native language worldwide with around 470 million native speakers;
English is the third most frequent (e.g., DeFeo, Instituto Cervantes 2015). In fact,
the worldwide number of native Spanish speakers is increasing, but the percentage
of native speakers is decreasing for English and Chinese languages (Instituto
Cervantes 2015). Officially, there are more than 41.3 million native Spanish speak-
ers in USA, plus a further 11.6 million with lower proficiency in Spanish, with an
eventual estimate of around 138 million Spanish speakers by 2050 (Instituto
Cervantes 2015).
Despite this, there are significantly more resources and studies available for
English-speaking children with SLI or TLD (Typical Language Development), as
compared to those for Spanish speakers (e.g., Girbau 2010). However, the increas-
ing bilingual population in a global world, is progressively leading to the develop-
ment of further universal and reliable protocols that may meet the demands for more
accurate and sophisticated instruments or methods.
The present chapter discusses different approaches that have been successful in
identifying/treating a variety of deficits in native Spanish-speaking children with
SLI, who are either monolingual or bilingual. Understanding the brain bases for
cognitive functioning and language processing, and ultimately the educational/
genetic foundations, are the goals we are still undertaking with our line of interdis-
ciplinary research on SLI.
1.2 S
pecific Language Impairment With/Without Reading
Disabilities
Specific Language Impairment (SLI) has been traditionally defined as a deficit in

language production and/or understanding, in the absence of other significant
developmental or hearing deficits, autism, and severe neurological impairment
Neurocognitive and Psycholinguistic Profile of Specific Language Impairment… 169
(e.g., Bishop and Leonard 2014; Leonard 2014a; Schwartz 2009). Thus, children
with SLI have expressive and/or receptive language scores in their primary lan-
guage that are significantly below the age norms.
In general, SLI is manifested in some different ways depending on the specific
characteristics of a target language (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, or
pragmatics), despite the existence of some common markers across languages. For
example, some evidence suggests a phonological working memory deficit in
SLI. This deficit is usually measured through the Non-word Repetition Task
(Dollaghan and Campbell 1998; Gathercole and Baddeley 1996), which is also
available in Spanish (e.g., NRT; Girbau and Schwartz 2007, 2008a). In these stud-
ies, Spanish-speaking children with SLI from Spain and New York City (NYC) per-
formed significantly more poorly than children with TLD, and also exhibited
significant length effects, especially difficulty repeating 3-4-5 syllable non-words.
Furthermore, Spanish has a more complex morphology than other languages,
including English, but it is a more orthographically transparent language with
almost one-to-one relationship between graphemes and phonemes.
Regardless of the child’s native language, a child with SLI may have difficulties
in phonology, morphosyntax, or syntax when he/she experiences a working mem-
ory or cognitive overload in an age appropriate psycholinguistic task, which their
TLD peers usually would not experience (e.g., Chávez and Auza this volume;
Girbau 2016). Limited neurocognitive processing limitations are behind their lan-
guage deficits (e.g., Girbau-Massana et al. 2014).
Another term, Language Impairment (LI) has been used in research when chil-
dren were not recruited through the standard procedures. For example, when hear-
ing screenings or individual cut-offs for the standardized language tests were not
provided, or participants’ scores fell below the typical range of non-verbal IQ
(Plante 1998; Tomblin et al. 1997).
Recently, the DSM-5 proposed the term ‘Language Disorder’, as a type of neu-
rodevelopmental disorder, which was defined as persistent difficulties in the acqui-
sition and use of language due to deficits in comprehension or production (DSM-5,
2013). Previously, the Manual distinguished between either expressive or mixed
receptive-expressive language disorders (DSM-4-TR, 2000). Thus, in our opinion,
the DSM-5 would need to add this mixed option, since deficits in both comprehen-
sion and production are more frequent. That is, the DSM-5 could have defined SLI
better in terms of deficits in comprehension and/or production. Particularly, Leonard
(2009) cautioned that the diagnostic category of ‘expressive language disorder’ as
distinct from a disorder of both expressive and receptive language could not be
accurate, since the expressive language disorder usually involves also difficulties
processing language input. We would also prefer the use of the term SLI instead, as
other authors have supported. According to Bishop (2014), many of the used labels
(including ‘Language Disorder’) are too general to be useful, and changing a label
can break links with previous knowledge so it should not be undertaken lightly.
Bishop supports the term SLI, which is present in far more instances in the published
literature than alternative terms. However, other authors prefer the use of the term
LI instead of SLI or ‘Language Disorder’ (e.g., Reilly et al. 2014). Leonard (2014b),
170 D. Girbau
in a commentary section to this paper, supported Bishop’s view on using the label
SLI and emphasized that the alternative term LI would create more problems of
boundary confusion than it would solve.
1.3 Psycholinguistic Assessment of Spanish-Speaking

Children
Testing and evaluation materials shall be administered in the child’s native/first lan-
guage, as it was stated in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA,
U.S. Department of Education 2004). Previously, the child will need to pass the
usual hearing screening at 20 dB and 500–4000 Hz (American National Standards
Institute 2009). However, the complex professional licensing requirements in some
states, together with some shortage of licensed bilingual clinicians and the misuse
of tests, leave a significant number of Spanish-speaking children without any
speech-language assessment and/or therapy every year in USA. Further educational
initiatives need to be launched to tackle SLI, even more for Spanish speakers who
struggle learning a second distant language.
Obviously, to diagnose bilingual children as having SLI, the deficit needs to be
identified across the two languages through standardized tests, that is, expressive
and/or receptive language scores in both Spanish and English need to be signifi-
cantly below the age norms. Ideally, the norms would need to come from the same
student’s country and probably from either monolingual or bilingual populations as
to which he/she belongs. More research is needed to prove the benefits of using one
bilingual test versus two parallel monolingual tests from the same version (with
monolingual/bilingual norms). Multilingual cases will need a further approach.
Nowadays, we can use either language tests based on monolingual single-
language items or the more novel bilingual dual language tests, as we explain below
(see Table 1, for a list of some recommended tests for Spanish speakers). The ben-
efit from the dual language tests is that usually credit for a particular item can be
given for a correct answer in either Spanish or English, according to the test guide-
lines. They are normed on a bilingual population, though sometimes unfortunately
with varying levels of proficiency. This saves some time to the examiner, though it
may overestimate the language proficiency for Spanglish speakers who may not be
understood by monolingual listeners when they code-switch. Some dual language
tests are the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (EOWPVT-4-Bilingual;
Martin 2012a), Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (ROWPVT-4-
Bilingual; Martin 2012b), and even somehow the long bilingual Preschool Language
Scales (PLS-5-Spanish; Zimmerman et al. 2012), which unfortunately is not sensi-
tive enough to identify Spanish-speaking children with SLI. For example, in the
EOWPVT-4-Bilingual test, the examiner gives credit if the child says either ‘dog’ or
‘perro’ when the corresponding picture is shown to him/her; in the ROWPVT-4-
Bilingual test, credit is given when the child points to the right picture after listening
to either ‘bed’ or ‘cama’.
Table 1 Selected single/dual language standardized tests for monolingual Spanish-speaking

children and bilinguals (Spanish/English) to identify SLI.
Language tests Assessed areas Aged
EOWPVT-4-Bilinguala Expressive vocabulary 2;0–70+
ROWPVT-4-Bilinguala Receptive vocabulary 2;0–70+
PPVT-IIIb, c Vocabulary comprehension 2;6–90
CDIb, c Expressive and receptive vocabulary 0;8–2;6
Nonverbal communication
CELFb, c Expressive and receptive language 3;0–21;11
TTFC-2b, c Comprehension of auditory orders 3;0–12;11
ITPAb, c/Four subtests: 3–10
Auditory Association Expressive language: Morphosyntax
Grammatical Integration Expressive language: Morphosyntax
Verbal Expression Expressive vocabulary
Auditory Comprehension Oral story comprehension
WISC-IV: Vocabulary subtestb c Expressive vocabulary 6;0–16;11
CEGb, c Sentence comprehension 4–11
PROLEC-Rb Reading: Mechanics and 6–12
comprehension
Note:aDual language tests with items in Spanish and English.bSingle language tests that are avail-
able in Spanish.cSingle language tests that are available in English language. dAge range is given
in years; (months) according to the publisher
EOWPVT-4 = Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test – 4: Spanish-Bilingual Edition.
ROWPVT-4 = Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test – 4: Spanish-Bilingual Edition. PPVT-
III = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. CDI = Communicative Development Inventories. CELF =
Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals. TTFC-2 = Token Test for Children. ITPA = Illinois
Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. WISC-IV = Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. CEG =
Test de Comprensión de Estructuras Gramaticales, which is similar to the Test for Reception of
Grammar (TROG, Bishop 2003). PROLEC-R = Evaluación de los Procesos Lectores Revisada
Alternatively, if we administer the two versions in Spanish and English language

of the same test with monolingual single-language items, we will get some useful
further details for clinical intervention to achieve the high standard language profi-
ciency, since often the norms come from monolinguals. An example would be a
sequential administration of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-
Preschool-2 in English (CELF-Preschool-2; Semel et al. 2004) and Spanish (CELF-
Preschool-2 Spanish; Wiig et al. 2009).
Additional testing is recommended to identify possible comorbidity of SLI with
Reading Disabilities (RD) by using the reading test Evaluación de los Procesos
Lectores Revisada (PROLEC-R; Cuetos et al. 2007). A valid approach to evaluate
the nonverbal intelligence in Spanish-speaking children with SLI is administering
the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (e.g., TONI-2; Brown et al. 2000) with norms
from the own country and language, when available (e.g., USA, Spain).
172 D. Girbau
Usually, we need to administer other non-standardized language measures.

Those measures may include parent/teacher questionnaires (e.g., Bedore et al.
2012), and a Social-Economic Status (SES) Scale (Hollingshead 1975), which has
a well-known impact on language learning. Furthermore, administering the Spanish
Non-word Repetition Task (NRT; Girbau and Schwartz 2007a, 2008a) usually helps
to identify the possible phonological working memory deficit in SLI. Interestingly,
the Spanish-speaking mothers of children with SLI, besides their children, also per-
formed more poorly than those of the children with TLD (Girbau and Schwartz
2008a). The genetic foundation of SLI is still under research, but it could be consid-
ered in the future for early detection of children at-risk.
Another alternative is to collect language samples in both languages, which can
be analyzed through software programs such as: Systematic Analysis of Language
Transcripts (SALT; Miller and Iglesias 2012); or Computerized Language Analysis
(CLAN; MacWhinney 2000/2015). Some baby studies have used Language
Environment Analysis (LENA; Gilkerson and Richards 2009) with good sound
quality, to record continuous daily conversations including turn-taking for around
15 h, despite its limited voice recognition like the wrong labeling of some speakers.
Although these programs usually provide a computerized report with descriptive
statistics, the language samples need to be transcribed and coded for each interlocu-
tor. To study Spanish-speaking children’s language, the bilingual version of SALT
may be the best choice, as it also includes systematic databases from bilingual
Spanish and English-speaking children and provides a detailed report.
In general, Spanish testing resources, and the efficiency in diagnosing native
Spanish-speaking children with SLI, still lag behind the English testing standards.
Currently, digital normed language tests/subtests in English are available to be
administered and scored through IPADs, which may save around 30% of adminis-
tration and scoring time through Q-Interactive apps launched in 2014 from Pearson.
Two examples are the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-4; Dunn and Dunn
2007), and the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF-5; Wiig et al.
2013). However, to date, no digital normed version seems to be available for Spanish
speakers, but only printed versions. Last but not least, usually the first Spanish ver-
sions of the tests are published some years later than the original tests in English,
and the norms/adaptations for linguistic variants are not available for many Spanish-
speaking countries. Even some Spanish test versions have been at some point dis-
continued. For example, the PPVT-4 in English (Dunn and Dunn 2007) and the
Spanish PPVT-III from Spain (Dunn and Dunn 2006) are available, but the Spanish
PPVT/TVIP version in USA has been discontinued (Dunn et al. 1986). These issues
also hinder cross-cultural research pursuing further universal diagnosis criteria and
knowledge of SLI. In the future, additional research-based computerized measures
could be administered, as scientists keep developing psycholinguistic tasks, which
children perform in computer and digital devices that usually measure response
accuracy and speed (see the ‘language processing’ section).
1.4 S
panish-Speaking Students with SLI in the Bilingual/
Monolingual School Setting
A well-known epidemiologic study estimated a prevalence rate of 7.4% for SLI

within monolingual English-speaking kindergarten children, after screening 7,218
students (Tomblin et al. 1997). Only 2.1% of them were Hispanic since the recruit-
ment was based on monolingual English children. According to the study, the clini-
cal identification of SLI remained low among kindergarteners; the parents of only
29% of the children who were identified as having SLI had previously been informed
that their child had a speech/language problem.
Unfortunately, this is still happening, so that better approaches and resources
need to be in place at schools to prevent and treat SLI properly at the earliest time.
To date, there does not seem to be such a broad epidemiologic study of SLI in
Spanish-speaking children. However, we can estimate that SLI can be even more
prevalent and harder to identify/treat among students who come from low Socio-
Economic Status (SES) Spanish-speaking homes and also attend schools with
English only instruction, a language that is typologically distant from Spanish (see
Girbau 2010, for a cross-cultural study). Furthermore, apparently, some educational
professionals are not aware of the relevance of anchoring the native language for
children with SLI, and alternatively they focus on trying to speed up the second
language learning, as we further explain below. Based on my clinical experience,
even if currently incipient bilingual Spanish-speaking children with SLI are identi-
fied earlier, too often they do not receive any recommendation for bilingual speech-
language therapy services, but only in English, their academic language. Too often,
this somehow inefficient monolingual treatment in the second language ends up
with the student not becoming proficient in any language, with an unfortunate
impact on his/her academic success, as it is explained below. Obviously, students
with limited language skills in a bilingual setting need additional time to learn a
second language, and appropriate specific strategies to build up their impaired
native language so they can communicate daily at home and school. Even typically
developing Spanish-speaking children, who were born in USA, struggle to be profi-
cient in English. For example, in California, the new classification ‘long-term
English learners’ stands for the significant increasing number of students who have
not become proficient in English for 6 or more years; the state identified more than
350,000 students in grades 6–12 who were still not fluent in English after more than
6 years at the school (Watanabe 2014).
Despite worldwide changes in educational policies, including the recent univer-
sal free pre-K implementation in NYC, a number of Spanish-speaking students with
SLI still do not benefit from them, per my clinical experience. Probably, other more
crucial educational issues need to be addressed to decrease the unfortunate number
of children from Spanish-speaking homes left behind. For example, many schools
bilingual programs of Spanish/English have been eliminated in USA, despite stud-
ies showing more success in learning English when Spanish speakers are enrolled
in a two-way dual-language program (e.g., Editorial Board/Boston Globe 2015).
174 D. Girbau
Fortunately, this may begin to change as a result of the globalization and especially
the proven benefits of early bilingual education, which improves the cognitive
reserve, metalinguistic skills, divergent thought, cognitive flexibility, executive
functioning, and other areas (e.g., Bialystok et al. 2012; Girbau 2010; Leonard
2014c). In New York City, 40 dual-language programs from elementary through
high school levels may be expanded or created for the 2015–2016 school year, most
of them in Spanish with some support from the government of Spain (Harris 2015).
Other areas, as California and even Boston, are looking forward to bring back bilin-
gual education to their schools (Editorial Board/Boston Globe 2015). In 1998,
California’s Proposition 227 banned bilingual education, i.e., English language
learners were required to receive English only academic instruction (Gracile 2014).
However, some dual immersion programs have gradually emerged only if parents
helped to get a waiver from Proposition 227. A political initiative to repeal
Proposition 227 may be voted on by the end of 2016 based on the academic and
professional benefits of bilingual education in a global economy. The Los Angeles
Unified School District expanded its bilingual language programs to a total number
of 43 dual language programs in Spanish for 2014–2015.
We still need further research on short-/long-term effects of bilingual/monolin-
gual speech-language therapy, especially to find specific efficient treatments, despite
some previous studies on bilingual and monolingual Spanish-speaking children
with LI (Ebert et al. 2014; Perozzi and Chavez-Sanchez 1992; Restrepo et al. 2013).
For example, Perozzi and Chavez Sanchez (1992) studied Spanish native and domi-
nant language students with language delay who were enrolled at a first grade bilin-
gual classroom; each child scored ≤1 Standard Deviation (SD) below the mean in
the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Spanish version (Woodcock 1981).
Half children from the sample, who were instructed first in Spanish and later in
English to learn English prepositions and pronouns, acquired them twice as faster
than the other half children who were trained in English only. Thus, according to
Perozzi and Chavez Sanchez (1992), their results supported the language interven-
tion in a child’s native dominant language (i.e., Spanish in this case). Another study
with a much broader age range group of bilingual children with LI (5–11 years old),
with diverse English exposure at home, showed rather similar improvement effect
in English after treatment in English only or with a bilingual Spanish/English treat-
ment (this group had greater improvement in Spanish as would be expected).
Unfortunately, the individual language skills cut-offs to diagnose LI were not pro-
vided (Ebert et al. 2014). Based on my clinical experience, native Spanish-speaking
children who speak Spanish at home and learn English at the school seem to benefit
more from a sequential bilingual SLP treatment, that is, first in only Spanish and
later in Spanish-English. As Perozzi and Chavez Sanchez (1992) found, it is a more
efficient approach. This usually speeds up their language proficiency and communi-
cation skills with parents/teachers, and even more if they receive a customized indi-
vidual speech-language therapy program.
Another issue to tackle at the USA schools is the curriculum and Common Core
State Standards, which have been criticized for threatening student’s creativity, crit-
ical thinking, and individual differences, especially at early ages as kindergarten
through Grade 3 (e.g., Strauss 2014). Probably, academic settings may be more
efficiently harmonized by the educational professionals, especially when trying to
establish certain inclusive minimum common standards. For Spanish-speaking stu-
dents, and even more for those with SLI, these standards involve a harder challenge,
since they have increased the achievement gap (Strauss 2015). It is well-known that
even typically developing Spanish-speaking children usually need several addi-
tional years to become English proficient and/or balanced bilinguals, since these are
two distant languages and most of schools in USA do not offer any dual language
programs. Students deserve a more flexible and customized educational system to
meet their needs, which may also differ across neighborhoods. Finally, the school
system would benefit from decreasing the classroom noise and reverberation, which
were found to have a significant negative impact in native Spanish-speaking second
graders learning English when compared to English-only-speaking peers (Nelson
et al. 2005).
1.5 L
anguage Processing in Spanish-Speaking Children
with SLI
To date, research on Spanish-speaking children supports the general slowing

hypothesis, claimed in other languages including English (Kail 1994; Leonard et al.
2007; Miller et al. 2006): language processing is often slower in SLI (e.g., Alva and
Suárez this volume; Girbau 2014, 2017). For example, a recent cross-modal prim-
ing study found that 8–10-year-old children with SLI from Spain were significantly
slower in making animacy decisions about pictures (alive vs. not alive) than age
matched children with TLD, while they were listening to sentences with direct
object clitic pronouns (Girbau 2017). The children with SLI also showed significant
poorer comprehension, when answering oral questions about the pronoun sentences,
than the group with TLD. The poor understanding of the pronoun sentences was
significantly correlated with poor phonological working memory (NRT; Girbau and
Schwartz 2007a, 2008a), with expressive vocabulary, and with oral sentence com-
pletion. Spanish-speaking children with SLI of the same age range also showed
significant poorer relative clause comprehension, which also correlated significantly
with poor NRT performance, than age-matched children with TLD, when answer-
ing oral object/subject questions about the relative clauses (Girbau and Schwartz
2007b).
Some auditory semantic priming studies (Girbau 2014; Girbau and Schwartz
2011) revealed that, at 8–10 years of age, a group of native Spanish-speaking chil-
dren with SLI was significantly slower and made significantly more errors in Lexical
Decisions (LDs) than the age-matched children with TLD, and that adults were
significantly faster than any children’s groups. They judged whether an auditory
speech pair contained two words (semantically related/unrelated) or a word-
pseudoword. The PPVT-III and mean response time across all these LD conditions
176 D. Girbau
were significantly negativity correlated for children with SLI. A significant implicit
semantic priming effect was found in children with TLD and adults, but not in the
group with SLI who exhibited more variability, so that those with the poorest lan-
guage scores showed the weakest lexical-semantic association networks. Preliminary
results from an additional phonological priming study revealed a similar pattern of
significant slower LDs in native Spanish-speaking children with SLI than children
with TLD and adults, though with more variability in the timing phonological
effects (priming facilitation vs. priming inhibition vs. neutral) across both children’s
groups (Girbau and Schwartz 2008b). This variability can be further examined
using event-related potentials or fMRI (see next section).
1.6 N
euroscience Studies of Spanish-Speaking Children
with SLI
A number of studies have examined the neuropsychology of language processing in

children with SLI/LI, some of them in Spanish speakers. Not all instruments may be
appropriate for populations that diverge in crucial demographic, language, SES, and
cultural backgrounds; these factors most likely modulate neuropsychological func-
tions (see Llorente 2008, for an overview of neuropsychological assessment in
Hispanics). Neuroscience research may help to further validate a comprehensive
language battery that has been already proved to be sensitive for diagnosing SLI
across studies (e.g., Girbau-Massana et al. 2014). It also may provide additional
neuroanatomical and neurophysiology markers through techniques as fMRI (func-
tional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), MRI, ERP (Event Related Potentials), and
MEG (Magneto-encephalography). There are some studies that have included
Spanish-speaking children with SLI/LI.
Particularly, a recent MRI study found significantly lower gray matter volume at
the right postcentral parietal gyrus and greater cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) volume
that were unique markers for SLI in native Spanish-speaking children when com-
pared to children with TLD (Girbau-Massana et al. 2014). This was found in chil-
dren with SLI from 8 through 10 years of age, who either had or did not have any
Reading Disabilities (RD); both subgroups exhibited a significant lower overall
gray matter volume than children with TLD. Furthermore, only the comorbid group
with SLI and RD exhibited a significantly lower volume of white matter in the right
inferior longitudinal fasciculus (RILF), which interconnects the temporal and
occipital lobes. This reduced volume in the RILF was significantly associated with
both reading comprehension and receptive language composite z-scores, especially
receptive vocabulary (PPVT-III), oral comprehension of stories, and reading com-
prehension of sentences (two subtests from PROLEC-R). All the mentioned Voxel-
Based Morphometry analyses (VBM/MRI) included the following covariates: IQ
(nonverbal intelligence), age, gender, and total intracranial volume.
Each child with SLI scored ≤−1 SD (z-score) in at least two of the 8 Spanish oral
language standardized subtests/tests and ≤50% in the 3-4-5 syllable subset of the
Non-word Repetition Task (NRT; Girbau and Schwartz 2007a). The eight oral lan-
guage standardized subtests/tests were: PPVT-III, TTFC-2, four selected ITPA sub-
tests, the Vocabulary subtest from WISC-IV, and CEG. This VBM/MRI study from
Spain showed the extent to which brain volumetric markers for SLI and SLI+RD
support these two diagnostic categories on the basis of the referred tests. In fact, a
behavioral study on the assessment of SLI found significant positive correlations
between the Spanish NRT accuracy and the scores in any of the mentioned eight
contemporary expressive/receptive language subtests/tests, in a sample of 40 chil-
dren with SLI/TLD from 8 to 10 years of age (Girbau 2016). Girbau-Massana et al.
(2014) noted that these neuroanatomical markers of SLI may be associated with
poorer stimulation or reduced language input, along with limitations in knowledge/
visual representations with slower brain development. This conclusion was reached
in the context with previous research in English speaking adults with RD (Rumsey
et al. 1997), children/adolescents with prelingual profound sensorineural hearing
loss (Li et al. 2012), typical adults (Oliver et al. 2009), and a presumed slower rate
of brain maturation (Locke 1994).
Another VBM/MRI study of Spanish speakers (Soriano-Mas et al. 2009) found
that children with LI in a broad age range (5–10 years old) revealed larger overall
white matter volume (at the right medial frontal cortex and bilateral middle tempo-
ral gyri) and gray matter volume (in the bilateral entorhinal areas, and in left areas
as the temporopolar cortex, caudate nucleus, motor-precentral cortex, and precu-
neus) than control children. These two groups did not differ in CSF volumes.
However, no individual cut-off scores for language/IQ tests or hearing screening
data were reported, and no language/IQ tests or hearing screening were adminis-
tered to the control participants. Moreover, relevant covariates as IQ and total intra-
cranial volume were not included in the analyses. Their less rigorous inclusion
criteria for diagnosing participants, as well as lack of control of these two covari-
ates, may explain the divergent findings. These differences include the greater over-
all volume of both gray and white matter in children with LI (Soriano-Mas et al.
2009), versus the lower overall volume of gray matter which allowed for greater
CSF volume in children with SLI/SLI+RD (Girbau-Massana et al. 2014). Variables
as total intracranial volume and IQ affect significantly several brain measures,
entailing gray matter volume (see Girbau-Massana et al. 2014, for a review).
Another study (Hui et al. 2015) of more than 1,000 Chinese adults revealed that a
specific gene polymorphism may result in lower gray matter volume, which may
contribute to impaired language function in schizophrenia.
Using MEG, Muñoz-Yunta et al. (2006) were able to distinguish individuals with
SLI and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) by analyzing the epileptiform activity.
The study included 11 Spanish-speaking children with SLI (3–9 years old) and 9
participants with ASD (3–14 years old). No control group was included in this
study. The authors did not report any individual/group cut-off scores, or even group
average scores, for language/IQ tests; no hearing screening administration was
reported.
Therefore, despite the promising neuroscience research in Spanish native speak-
ers with SLI/LI from a more complex interdisciplinary field, these studies still need
178 D. Girbau
more scientific rigor, particularly in identifying the participants with SLI/TLD with
a narrower age range. In fact, this is still a shortcoming for neuroscientific studies,
even in individuals with SLI/LI who are native of languages other than Spanish. An
example is a recent MRI study (Hodge et al. 2010) in English-speaking students
with SLI with a broad age range (6–13 years), which did not report the individual
cut-off scores for language or IQ tests in each participant with SLI/TLD, or any
hearing screenings. Another MRI study in English-speaking adults with and without
LI, which did control for age, gender and intracranial volume, did not include IQ as
a covariate despite the significant differences for IQ between their groups with LI/
TLD (Lee et al. 2013). Furthermore, there is still limited systematic evidence in
speakers of any language about the typical developmental trajectory for the matura-
tion of language networks from a cognitive neuroscience approach (see Kuhl 2014;
Weiss-Croft and Baldeweg 2015; for a review). Researchers continue to pursue the
discovery of neural biomarkers, early in life, which may lead to identify SLI and
allow early intervention for children at risk.
We are still far from developing a research based intervention model with neuro-
scientific support (see Bishop 2013, for a critical review). After reviewing six stud-
ies of neuroimaging correlates of language intervention in participants with LI/SLI,
RD, and learning disabilities, none of them in Spanish speakers, Bishop (2013)
found recurring methodological problems. Therefore, she recommended discontin-
uing functional imaging studies of unproven treatments (despite the fact that images
of brain activity are seductive), and instead designing effective behavioral treat-
ments properly. It is true that research based on state-of-the-art technologies require
very high standards at all levels within a multidisciplinary team. If these high stan-
dards would be rigorously followed, we would benefit from these neuroscience
techniques, as they are more sensitive to identify any response changes in even
smaller samples than some behavioral measures, and thereby award credibility to
certain intervention programs.
There are several ERP studies in Spanish-speaking children with SLI/TLD and
adults, which generally showed that neurophysiology techniques are more sensitive
measures to identify SLI than, for example, the traditional behavioral Reaction
Time in milliseconds is (see Schwartz and Shafer 2012, for a review of English
studies). Particularly, a preliminary ERPs’ cross-modal priming study found that
children with TLD exhibited a priming effect (less negativity) when the picture
matched the pronoun (antecedent noun) of auditory Spanish direct object clitic pro-
noun sentences, in comparison with two other conditions in which the picture only
matched either another unrelated noun or no content in the Spanish sentence (Girbau
et al. 2008). This morphosyntactic priming effect was not found in children with
SLI, who showed similar negativity for the three mentioned picture-sentence condi-
tions at the same brain’s left parietal area. The age range for the native Spanish-
English bilingual children’s groups with SLI/TLD from NYC was 7;11–11;1. These
children with SLI also showed significant poorer understanding of the clitic pro-
noun sentences, when answering oral questions about them, and slower RTs in ani-
macy decisions, than the group with TLD, as we found in the behavioral study from
Spain (Girbau 2017). However, in this later study, the behavioral RT measure was
not sensitive enough per se to identify the differential brain’s response across the
three picture-sentence conditions, as the ERPs were. In sum, children with SLI may
not maintain the antecedent noun in working memory or may fail to reactivate it at
the pronoun position. Interestingly, these anaphoric processing deficits emerge as
additional markers of SLI in Spanish speakers.
Finally, native Spanish-speaking adults from Spain showed a significant auditory
implicit semantic and phonological priming responses to semantically/phonologi-
cally related word pairs respectively, as reflected in the N400 component across
central and parietal scalp areas, according to preliminary studies (Girbau et al.
2009a, b). Further analyses of the ERP data from children with SLI/TLD are under-
way, as well as for the semantic priming task using fMRI in adults and children with
SLI or TLD (Girbau-Massana et al. to be submitted).
In sum, high-standard neurocognitive research is needed to identify the overall
complex pattern of SLI and design optimal customized assessment-intervention
programs, so that SLI can be tackled and overcome at the earliest stage, especially
in bilingual Spanish-speaking children. Our previous neuroimaging study revealed
that children with SLI and RD exhibited reduced white matter volume in the RILF,
which was especially associated with receptive vocabulary, oral comprehension of
stories and reading comprehension of sentences. (e.g., Girbau-Massana et al. 2014).
Now we are also interested in exploring whether this comorbidity may be related to
phonological working memory deficits or conversely they are unique in SLI.
2 P
honological Working Memory in Children with SLI
with/without Reading Disabilities: A Research Study
2.1 Purpose of the Study
The present study compared the phonological working memory skills in children
with SLI only, with SLI and RD, and children with TLD. We examined whether the
Spanish NRT could discriminate these three groups. Previous research found that
NRT scores discriminated between groups with SLI or TLD (Girbau 2017; Girbau
and Schwartz 2007, 2008a). The study focused especially on finding out if the
comorbid group of children with SLI and RD had the lowest NRT performance, as
a previous study in English found (Loucas et al. 2016).
2.2 Method
2.2.1 Participant Recruitment and Testing
Forty children (8;0–10;3) were recruited at some few middle/middle-low socio-

economic status(SES) public schools in Spain (Castelló), following ethical approval,
after their parents signed a permission form and all children gave their assent.
School instruction was provided in Spanish language, though the students also
understood Catalan, according to an individually administered parent questionnaire.
180 D. Girbau
Table 2 Language tests percentiles/z-scores: Means and (Standard Deviations) for children with
TLD/SLI/SLI+RD
Children with Children w/
Tests and Age TLDc Children w/ SLId SLI+RDe
Age 9;1 (7.07 months) 9;1 (7.58 months) 8;10 (8.37 months)
TONI-2: IQ 106.65 (10.46) 103.00 (14.92) 100.25 (8.73)
PPVT-IIIa 69.55 (18.98) 12.13 (11.43) 16.02 (17.56)
TTFC-2a 66.15 (23.29) 37.00 (24.88) 25.08 (23.31)
CEGa 65.80 (26.27) 15.12 (14.25) 15.08 (17.73)
WISC-IV: Vocabulary subtestb 0.93 (0.67) −0.50 (0.69) −0.89 (1.15)
ITPAb
Auditory Association 0.37 (0.64) −1.53 (0.63) −1.82 (1.81)
Grammatical Integration 0.70 (0.47) −0.86 (0.91) −1.76 (2.54)
Verbal Expression 0.88 (0.76) −0.77 (0.55) −1.04 (1.27)
Auditory Comprehension 0.21 (0.30) −0.24 (0.44) −1.02 (1.69)
PROLEC-Rb
Letters names 0.46 (0.36) 0.00 (0.50) −0.76 (1.55)
Equal-different 0.43 (0.82) 0.17 (0.52) −0.77 (1.12)
Word reading 0.06 (0.87) −0.19 (1.03) −2.13 (1.81)
Pseudoword reading 0.17 (0.72) 0.16 (0.86) −1.14 (1.25)
Grammar structures 0.34 (0.91) −0.07 (0.67) −0.99 (0.90)
Punctuation markers 0.29 (0.76) −0.23 (0.79) −1.51 (1.80)
Sentence comprehension 0.46 (0.47) 0.49 (0.43) −0.62 (1.65)
Text comprehension 0.78 (0.74) 0.03 (1.02) −1.11 (1.00)
Oral comprehension 0.80 (0.62) −0.69 (0.92) −0.82 (1.05)
Note:aThe scores for PPVT-III, TTFC-2, and CEG tests are given in Percentiles.bThe Vocabulary
subtest from WISC-IV and the ITPA/PROLEC-R subtests scores are given in z-scores or SDs (in
relation to mean scores from the norms). cn = 20. dn = 8 children. en = 12 children
TONI-2 = Test of Nonverbal Intelligence; PPVT-III = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test; TTFC-2 =
Token Test for Children; CEG = Test de Comprensión de Estructuras Gramaticales [Test of
Grammar Structures Comprehension]; WISC-IV = Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children; ITPA
= Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities; PROLEC-R = Evaluación de los Procesos Lectores
Revisada [Revised assessment of reading processes]
Participants came mostly from middle SES homes, and they had a clear preference
for mass media in Spanish, according to the parent questionnaire and a SES Scale
(Hollingshead 1975). None of the participants had any phonological, autistic, or
neurological disorders. All children passed an individual hearing screening in our
sound booth at 20 dB (500, 1000, 2000, 3000, and 4000 Hz), before every testing
session, following the American National Standards Institute (2009). They per-
formed within normal limits on the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI-2, Brown
et al. 2000; Table 2).
We administered the following oral language and reading tests/subtests in
Spanish to each child: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III; Dunn and Dunn
2006); Token Test for Children (TTFC-2; McGhee et al. 2007); Test de Comprensión
de Estructuras Gramaticales (CEG; Mendoza et al. 2005); Vocabulary subtest from
the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV; Wechsler 2007); four sub-
tests from the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA; Kirk et al. 2001);
and Evaluación de los Procesos Lectores Revisada, a reading test with nine subtests
(PROLEC-R; Cuetos et al. 2007). All of these tests have norms from Spain, except
for the Spanish TTFC-2 test (following directions) with norms from the USA. For
most tests, the raw scores were converted into z-scores, except for three tests with
percentile scores.
The four subtests we selected from the ITPA were: (a) Auditory Comprehension,
the child listens to brief stories and responds to questions about them by pointing to
pictures; (b) Auditory Association, the child completes sentences spoken by the
examiner (e.g., “The father is big, the child is… small.”); (c) Verbal Expression, a
lexical fluency task in which the child says as many items in a stated category as
possible in 1 min (e.g., animals); and (d) Grammatical Integration, the child com-
pletes oral sentences spoken by the examiner according to related pictures (e.g.,
“This man is painting. He is a… painter.”).
Children with TLD The group included 11 girls and 9 boys. All children with TLD
scored within normal limits for all the Spanish oral/reading language tests/subtests;
no child with TLD had any language/reading test/subtest score below or close to the
cut-off scores of −1 SD or 16th percentile.
Children with SLI The group included 2 girls and 10 boys. All children with SLI
scored at least < −1 SD (z-score) below the norms mean or< 16th percentile in at
least two out of the eight referred language standardized subtests/tests. No child had
any reading subtest score close/below to the cut-off scores of −1 SD or 16th
percentile.
Children with SLI+RD The group included 3 girls and 5 boys. All children scored
at least <−1 SD (z-score) below the mean or <16th percentile on at least two of the
eight referred language subtests/tests. They also scored below −1 SD on at least
three out of the nine PROLEC-R subtests.
2.2.2 Non-word Repetition Task
The NRT followed Spanish phonotactic patterns (see Girbau and Schwartz 2007a,
for more details). There were 20 pseudowords, four at each of five syllable lengths,
i.e., one, two, three, four, and five syllables, (e.g., /flín/, /múntiɾ/, /konscenbɾál/, /
giɾenflónis/, /kleptasmaθóɾfun/). Sixty different medium-low frequency syllables
were combined in different orders within the 20 non-words. They were selected
from a sample of 1,148 syllables produced by 6–10 year-old children and 1,156 syl-
lables produced by 6- to 13-year-olds, and from a list of more than 2,500 Spanish
syllables. All non-words began with consonants and had no diphthongs; each syl-
lable contained only one vowel. Twelve non-words included at least one cluster,
which were distributed across the five syllable lengths. The stress in the non-words
varied across four different syllable positions; only 1 syllable in each non-word was
stressed. The non-words and the instructions were digitally audio-recorded by
182 D. Girbau
the author, with an interstimulus interval after each item that was increased as the
length of the non-word increased. This allowed the child’s repetition during the task
administration. The average duration of a non-word at each length was: one-syllable
non-words, M = 445 ms (SD = 51 ms); two-syllable, M = 1015 ms (SD = 110 ms);
three-syllable, M = 1332 ms, (SD = 130 ms); four-syllable, M = 1621 ms, (SD = 137
ms); and five-syllable, M = 1890 ms, (SD = 143 ms).
2.2.3 Procedure
The non-words were presented to the children individually via earphones through a
computer. They had to repeat each item immediately after listening to it. Each non-
word was presented only once. The entire task lasted approximately 3 min. Children
were digitally videotaped during the task performance. Children responded to all
items. The 20 repetitions of non-words were transcribed for each participant. The
reliability for segment transcription was 99.2% (percentage of agreement between
two judges), on the basis of 10% of the sample.
2.3 Results
The analysis focused on the accuracy for the NRT or number of correct non-words,
i.e., number of repeated non-words with the same sequence of segments as the audi-
tory model item. Thus, if the child repeated exactly the same non-word that he/she
listened, a score of 1 was given to this particular item. Otherwise, a score of 0 was
given (even if only one sound of the non-word was omitted/substituted or a new
sound was wrongly added).
The three language status groups (TLD/SLI/SLI+RD) did not differ significantly
in their nonverbal IQ, on the basis of the one-way ANOVA, F(2, 37) = 1.31, p > .05
[p = .28]. These language groups (TLD/SLI/SLI+RD) did not differ significantly in
age (months) either, according to the one-way ANOVA, F(2, 37) = 0.90, p > .05 [p
= .42]. Therefore, the IQ and age variables were not considered in any of the subse-
quent analyses.
The overall accuracy of non-word repetition was analyzed. Percentages of over-
all correct non-words were arc-sine transformed prior to ANOVA analyses. A one-
way ANOVA revealed that the language status groups (TLD/SLI/SLI+RD) differed
significantly in the percent of total number of non-words correct [F(2, 37) = 9.33, p
< .001].
A closer look to the data revealed that most of the errors occurred on the subset
of longer non-words, which were three, four, and five syllables in length, for all
children’s groups (see Table 3). Thus, percentages of correct non-words for the sub-
set of 3-4-5 syllable non-words within the Spanish NRT were arcsine transformed
prior to ANOVA analyses. A one-way ANOVA revealed that the three language
Table 3 Mean and (standard deviation) accuracy for the total/subset non-word repetition task:
Percentage of correct non-words for children with TLD/SLI/SLI+RD
TLDa SLIb SLI+RDc
Total non-words 76.50 (9.19) 56.25 (7.91) 46.67 (18.63)
3-4-5 syllable non-words 67.08 (11.30) 36.46 (10.86) 24.99 (20.41)
Note: The percentages for the Total Non-words are based on 20 items. The subset of 3-4-5- Syllable
Non-words included 12 items
a
n = 20 children. bn = 8 children. cn = 12 children
status groups differed significantly in the 3-4-5 composite percent correct [F(2, 37)
= 11.34, p < .0005]. Post hoc independent two-sample Student’s t-test comparisons
were conducted for the three children’s language status groups. Results revealed
that the differences between the three groups in the 3-4-5 composite percent correct
were significant for all group comparisons as follows: (1) TLD vs. SLI+RD, t(30) =
4.32, p < .0005; (2) TLD vs. SLI, t(26) = 6.46, p < .000001; (3) SLI vs. SLI+RD,
t(18) = −2.23, p < .05. Specifically, the children with SLI+RD made more errors in
the subset of 3-4-5 syllable non-words than the children with TLD and SLI only (see
Table 3). The accuracy was also poorer in children with SLI than those with TLD,
as expected.
2.4 Discussion
This study adds to the previous literature about phonological working memory limi-
tations and the neurocognitive profile of 8- to 10-year-old children with
SLI+/-RD. We provide additional data on the NRT in elementary school children,
expanding research on comorbidity of SLI and RD in Spanish-speaking population.
The present study adds evidence that the Spanish NRT may help to identify, not
only children with SLI, but also children with SLI+RD. The comorbid group of
children with SLI+RD obtained a significantly lower percentage of correct non-
words for the subset of 3-4-5 syllable non-words in the Spanish NRT than children
with SLI (24% vs. 36%) and the control group (67%). Thus, the differences among
8–10 year-old children’s groups, including the SLI+RD group, was greater in longer
non-words, beginning with the three-syllable non-words. The significant difference
in accuracy between the group with SLI+RD and children with SLI only, confirms
previous MRI findings of unique neurocognitive markers in children with SLI+RD
(Girbau-Massana et al. 2014). This comorbid group had significant lower volume of
white matter in the RILF, which interconnects the temporal and occipital lobes. This
reduced volume in the RILF was significantly associated to both reading compre-
hension and receptive language composite z-scores. The additional neurocognitive
limitations for these children could be also associated to poorer performance on the
NRT or phonological working memory deficits. Further research is needed on this
issue.
184 D. Girbau
The present study partly supports previous research in English-speaking 5- to

17-year-old children (M = 10.9 years) with SLI +/− RDI (Reading Decoding
Impairment), who performed a normed English NRT, (Loucas et al. 2016). These
authors found that the SLI+RDI group made more errors on both four- and five-
syllable non-words than either the control or SLI only groups, as we also found for
the composite 3-4-5 syllable non-words. However, they did not find any significant
difference between the control group and the SLI only group on these non-words.
Maybe the older and broader age range of their groups is behind this unexpected
result. We did find significant differences between the SLI and TLD groups in
Spanish, as it was previously found (e.g., Girbau 2017; Girbau and Schwartz 2007a,
2008a). Further research on children with comorbid SLI and RD is needed.
As it has been reviewed, research in Spanish speakers with SLI from different
approaches has been contributing to a better understanding of SLI, including the
comorbid group with SLI and RD. However, there is still a need for better instru-
ments and educational support that may help to identify and treat SLI in Spanish-
speaking children worldwide, even more in bilinguals who usually face additional
challenges. In the future, neurocognitive research will hopefully help to design opti-
mal customized assessment-intervention programs, so that SLI can be tackled suc-
cessfully at the earliest stage.
References
American National Standards Institute. (2009). Methods for manual pure-tone threshold audiom-
etry (ANSIS3.21-2004, R2009). New York: American National Standards Institute.
American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders
(4th ed). Text Revision (DSM-4-TR). Washington, DC: Author.
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders
(5th ed). DSM-5. Washington, DC: Author.
Bedore, L. M., et al. (2012). The measure matters: Language dominance profiles across measures
in Spanish–English bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15(3), 616–
629. doi:10.1017/S1366728912000090.
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., & Luk, G. (2012). Bilingualism: Consequences for mind and brain.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(4), 240–250. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2012.03.001.
Bishop, D. V. (2003). Test for reception of grammar (TROG-2). Oxford: Pearson.
Bishop, D. V. (2013). Research review: Emanuel Miller Memorial Lecture 2012 – Neuroscientific
studies of intervention for language impairment in children: Interpretive and methodological
problems. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 54(3), 247–259. doi:10.1111/
jcpp.12034.
Bishop, D. V. (2014). Ten questions about terminology for children with unexplained language
problems. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 49(4), 381–415.
doi:10.1111/1460-6984.12101.
Bishop, D. V., & Leonard, L. (Eds.). (2014). Speech and language impairments in children:
Causes, characteristics, intervention and outcome. New York: Psychology Press.
Brown, L., Sherbenou, R. J., & Johnsen, S. K. (2000). TONI—2. Test de inteligencia no verbal:
apreciación de la habilidad cognitiva sin influencia del lenguaje [Test of Nonverbal
Intelligence]. Madrid: TEA.
Cuetos, F., Rodríguez, B., Ruano, E., & Arribas, D. (2007). PROLEC-R. Batería de evaluación de
los procesos lectores, revisada (Revised assessment of reading processes test). Madrid: TEA.
DeFeo, D. J. (2015). Spanish is foreign: Heritage speakers’ interpretations of the introductory
Spanish language curriculum. International Multilingual Research Journal, 9(2), 108–124. doi
:10.1080/19313152.2015.1016828.
Dollaghan, C. A., & Campbell, T. (1998). Nonword repetition and child language impairment.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 41, 1136–1146. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/
jslhr.4105.1136.
Dunn, L. M., & Dunn, D. M. (2006). PPVT-III, Peabody Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes [Peabody
picture vocabulary test, PPVT-III]. Madrid: TEA.
Dunn, L. M., & Dunn, D. M. (2007). PPVT-IV, Peabody picture vocabulary test. San Antonio:
Pearson.
Dunn, L. M., Lugo, D. E., Padilla, E. R., & Dunn, L. M. (1986). TVIP, Test de Vocabulario en
Imágenes Peabody [Peabody picture vocabulary test]. Circle Pines: American Guidance
Service.
Ebert, K. D., Kohnert, K., Pham, G., Disher, J. R., & Payesteh, B. (2014). Three treatments for
bilingual children with primary language impairment: Examining cross-linguistic and cross-
domain effects. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57(1), 172–186.
doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2013/12-0388).
Editorial Board/Boston Globe. (2015, July 13). Bring back bilingual education for Boston schools.
The Boston Globe. Retrieved from https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editori-
als/2015/07/13/eells/xM7jtgtwgcs1wZ80MewCvL/story.html
Gathercole, S. E., & Baddeley, A. D. (1996). The children’s test of nonword repetition. London:
Psychological Corporation.
Gilkerson, J., & Richards, J. A. (2009). The LENA natural language study, software version V3.1.0.
Boulder: LENA Foundation.
Girbau, D. (2010). Psycholinguistic abilities and phonological working memory in bilingual chil-
dren with specific language impairment: A cross-cultural study. In E. F. Caldwell (Ed.),
Bilinguals: Cognition, education and language processing (pp. 65–80). New York: Nova
Science Publishers, Inc..
Girbau, D. (2014). Auditory implicit semantic priming in Spanish-speaking children with and
without specific language impairment. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 17, 1–14.
doi:10.1017/sjp.2014.33.
Girbau, D. (2016). The non-word repetition task as a clinical marker of specific language impair-
ment in Spanish-speaking children. First Language, 36, 1–20. doi:10.1177/0142723715626069.
Girbau, D. (2017). On-line processing and Comprehension of direct object pronoun sentences in
Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. Clinical Linguistics &
Phonetics, 31(3), 193–211.
Girbau, D., & Schwartz, R. G. (2007a). Non-word repetition in Spanish-speaking children with
Specific Language Impairment (SLI). International Journal of Language & Communication
Disorders, 42(1), 59–75. doi:10.1080/13682820600783210.
Girbau, D., & Schwartz, R. G. (2007b). Relative clauses comprehension in Spanish children with
and without specific language impairment. In Proceedings of the 2007 ASHA annual conven-
tion (p. 164), Boston, MA.
Girbau, D., & Schwartz, R. G. (2008a). Phonological working memory in Spanish-English bilin-
gual children with and without specific language impairment. Journal of Communication
Disorders, 41(2), 124–145. doi:10.1016/j.jcomdis.2007.07.001.
Girbau, D., & Schwartz, R. G. (2008b). Phonological priming in Spanish-Speaking children with/
without specific language impairment and adults. In Proceedings of the 2008 ASHA annual
convention (p. 192), Chicago, IL.
Girbau, D., & Schwartz, R. G. (2011). Implicit semantic priming in Spanish-speaking children and
adults: An auditory lexical decision task. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 14(1), 1–16.
doi:10.5209/rev_SJOP2011.v14.n1.1.
186 D. Girbau
Girbau, D., Schwartz, R. G., & Shafer, V. (2008). Event-related potentials to anaphoric processing
in Spanish-English bilingual children with and without specific language impairment. In
Proceedings of the 29th Annual SRCLD (p. 18). Madison: University of Wisconsin.
Girbau, D., Shafer, V., & Schwartz, R. G. (2009a). Neurophysiological indices of auditory implicit
semantic priming in Spanish-speaking adults through event-related potentials. In Neuroscience
2009 (Society for Neuroscience) (p. 131). Chicago: SfN.
Girbau, D., Shafer, V., & Schwartz, R. G. (2009b). Neurophysiology of auditory phonological
priming in Spanish-speaking adults through ERPs. In Proceedings of the 2009 ASHA annual
convention (p. 83). New Orleans.
Girbau-Massana, D., Garcia-Marti, G., Marti-Bonmati, L., & Schwartz, R. G. (2014). Gray-white
matter and cerebrospinal fluid volume differences in children with specific language impair-
ment and/or reading disability. Neuropsychologia, 56, 90–100. doi:10.1016/j.
neuropsychologia.2014.01.004.
Girbau-Massana, D., García-Marti, G., Sanz-Requena, R., Marti-Bonmati, L., & Schwartz, R. G.
(to be submitted). An fMRI study of auditory implicit semantic priming in children with/without
Specific Language Impairment and adults.
Gracile, Y. (2014, July 9). LA Unified to add more dual language immersion programs. LA School
Report. Retrieved from http://laschoolreport.com/la-unified-adds-more-dual-language-
immersion-programs-lausd/
Harris, E. A. (2015, January 14). New York City Education Department to add or expand 40 dual-
language programs. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/
nyregion/new-york-city-education-department-to-add-or-expand-40-dual-language-programs.
html?_r=0
Hodge, S. M., et al. (2010). Cerebellum, language, and cognition in autism and specific language
impairment. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40(3), 300–316. doi:10.1007/
s10803-009-0872-7.
Hollingshead, A. B. (1975). Four factor index of social status. Unpublished manuscript, Department
of Sociology, Yale University, New Haven.
Hui, L., et al. (2015). TCF4 gene polymorphism is associated with cognition in patients with
schizophrenia and healthy controls. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 69, 95–101. doi:10.1016/j.
jpsychires.2015.07.022.
Instituto Cervantes. (2015). El español: una lengua viva. Informe 2015 [The Spanish: An alive
language. Report 2015]. Retrieved from http://eldiae.es/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/espanol_
lengua-viva_20151.pdf
Kail, R. (1994). A method for studying the generalized slowing hypothesis in children with specific
language impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 37, 418–421.
Kirk, S. A., McCarthy, J. J., & Kirk, W. D. (2001). ITPA: Test Illinois de Aptitudes Psicolingüísticas
[Illinois test of psycholinguistic abilities]. Madrid: TEA.
Kuhl, P. K. (2014). Early language learning and the social brain. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on
Quantitative Biology, 79, 211–220. doi:10.1101/sqb.2014.79.024802.
Lee, J. C., Nopoulos, P. C., & Tomblin, J. B. (2013). Abnormal subcortical components of the
corticostriatal system in young adults with DLI: A combined structural MRI and DTI study.
Neuropsychologia, 51(11), 2154–2161. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.07.011.
Leonard, L. B. (2009). Is expressive language disorder an accurate diagnostic category? American
Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 18(2), 115–123. http://doi.
org/10.1044/1058-0360(2008/08-0064).
Leonard, L. (2014a). Children with specific language impairment (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Leonard, L. (2014b). Replacing one imperfect term with another. International Journal of
Language and Communication Disorders, 49(4), 436–437. Commentary on Reilly, S., et al.
(2014). Specific language impairment: a convenient label for whom? International Journal of
Language & Communication Disorders, 49(4), 416–434. doi: 10.1111/1460-6984.12102
Leonard, L. (2014c). Children with specific language impairment and their contribution to the
study of language development. Journal of Child Language, 41(S1), 38–47. doi:10.1017/
S0305000914000130.
Leonard, L. B., Weismer, S. E., Miller, C. A., Francis, D. J., Tomblin, J. B., & Kail, R. V. (2007).
Speed of processing, working memory, and language impairment in children. Journal of
Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 408–428. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1044/1092-4388(2007/029.
Li, J., et al. (2012). Cortical thickness analysis and optimized voxel-based morphometry in chil-
dren and adolescents with prelingually profound sensorineural hearing loss. Brain Research,
1430, 35–42.
Llorente, A. M. (Ed.). (2008). Principles of neuropsychological assessment with Hispanics:
Theoretical foundations and clinical practice. New York: Springer for Science and Business
Media.
Locke, J. L. (1994). Gradual emergence of developmental language disorders. Journal of Speech
and Hearing Research, 37(3), 608–616.
Loucas, T., Baird, G., Simonoff, E., & Slonims, V. (2016). Phonological processing in children
with specific language impairment with and without reading difficulties. International Journal
of Language & Communication Disorders, 1368–2822.
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk (3rd edn). Mahwah:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Electronic Edition (2015): http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/manuals/
CLAN.pdf
Martin, N. A. (2012a). EOWPVT-4: SBE. Expressive one-word picture vocabulary test – 4:
Spanish-bilingual edition. Novato: Academic Therapy Publications.
Martin, N. A. (2012b). ROWPVT-4: SBE. Receptive one-word picture vocabulary test – 4: Spanish-
bilingual edition. Novato: Academic Therapy Publications.
McGhee, R. L., Ehrler, D. J., & DiSimoni, F. (2007). Test de Token para niños. TTFC-2. [The token
test for children]. Madrid: Psymtec.
Mendoza E., Carballo, G., Muñoz, J., & Fresneda, D. (2005). CEG: Test de comprensión de estruc-
turas gramaticales [Test of gramatical structures understanding]. Madrid: TEA.
Miller, J., & Iglesias, A. (2012). Systematic analysis of language transcripts (SALT), Research
version 2012 [Computer software]. Middleton: SALT Software, LLC.
Miller, C. A., Leonard, L. B., Kail, R. V., Zhang, X., Tomblin, J. B., & Francis, D. J. (2006).
Response time in 14-year-olds with language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and
Hearing Research, 49, 712–728. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2006/052.
Muñoz-Yunta, J. A., et al. (2006). Estudio comparativo mediante magnetoencefalografía de los
trastornos del lenguaje pragmático y los trastornos del espectro autista [A comparative study of
pragmatic language disorders and autism spectrum disorders using magnetoencephalography].
Revista de Neurología, 42(2), 111–115.
Nelson, P., Kohnert, K., Sabur, S., & Shaw, D. (2005). Classroom noise and children learning
through a second language: Double jeopardy? Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in
Schools, 36(3), 219–229. doi:10.1044/0161-1461(2005/022).
Oliver, R. T., Geiger, E. J., Lewandowski, B. C., & Thompson, S. L. (2009). Remembrance of
things touched: How sensorimotor experience affects the neural instantiation of object form.
Neuropsychologia, 47(1), 239–247.
Perozzi, J. A., & Chavez-Sanchez, M. L. (1992). The effect of instruction in L1 on receptive acqui-
sition of L2 for bilingual children with language delay. Language, Speech, and Hearing
Services in Schools, 23(4), 348–352. doi:10.1044/0161-1461.2304.348.
Plante, E. (1998). Criteria for SLI: The Stark and Tallal legacy and beyond. Journal of Speech,
Language, and Hearing Research, 41(4), 951–957. doi:10.1044/jslhr.4104.951.
Reilly, S., et al. (2014). Specific language impairment: A convenient label for whom? International
doi:10.1111/1460-6984.12102.
188 D. Girbau
Restrepo, M. A., Morgan, G. P., & Thompson, M. S. (2013). The efficacy of a vocabulary interven-
tion for dual-language learners with language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and
Hearing Research, 56(2), 748–765. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2012/11-0173)
Rumsey, J. M., et al. (1997). A positron emission tomographic study of impaired word recognition
and phonological processing in dyslexic men. Archives of Neurology, 54(5), 562–573.
Schwartz, R. G. (Ed.). (2009). The handbook of child language disorders. New York: Psychology
Press.
Schwartz, R. G., & Shafer, V. L. (2012). The neurobiology of specific language impairment. In
M. Faust (Ed.), The handbook of the neuropsychology of language. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
doi:10.1002/9781118432501.ch41.
Semel, E., Wiig, E. H., & Secord, W. A. (2004). Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals-
preschool-2 (CELF-Preschool-2). San Antonio: Pearson.
Soriano-Mas, C., et al. (2009). Age-related brain structural alterations in children with Specific
Language Impairment. Human Brain Mapping, 30, 1626–1636.
Strauss, V. (2014, May 2). 6 reasons to reject Common Core K-3 standards – and 6 rules to guide policy.
The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/
wp/2014/05/02/6-reasons-to-reject-common-core-k-3-standards-and-6-axioms-to-guide-policy/
Strauss, V. (2015, March 15). Principal: How common core testing hurts disadvantaged students.
The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/
wp/2015/03/15/principal-how-common-core-testing-hurts-disadvantaged-students/
Tomblin, J. B., Records, N. L., Buckwalter, P., Zhang, X., Smith, E., & O’Brien, M. (1997).
Prevalence of Specific Language Impairment in kindergarten children. Journal of Speech,
Language, and Hearing Research, 40(6), 1245–1260. doi:10.1044/jslhr.4006.1245.
U.S. Department of Education. (2004). Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) law.
http://idea.ed.gov/part-c/downloads/IDEA-Statute.pdf
Watanabe, T. (2014, December 17). California schools step up efforts to help ‘long-term English
learners’. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-
english-learners-20141218-story.html
Wechsler, D. (2007). Wechsler intelligence scale for children, fourth edition-Spanish (WISC-IV
Spanish). San Antonio: Pearson.
Weiss-Croft, L. J., & Baldeweg, T. (2015). Maturation of language networks in children: A system-
atic review of 22 years of functional MRI. Neuroimage, 26. doi:10.1016/j.
neuroimage.2015.07.046.
Wiig, E. H., Secord, W. A., & Semel, E. (2009). Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals-
preschool-2 Spanish (CELF-Preschool-2 Spanish). San Antonio: Pearson.
Wiig, E. H., Semel, E., & Secord, W. A. (2013). Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals (5th
edn). Q-Interactive version. San Antonio: Pearson.
Woodcock, R. W. (1981). Batería Woodcock de proficiencia en el idioma [Woodcock language
proficiency battery-Spanish version]. Allen: DLM Teaching Resources.
Zimmerman, I. L., Steiner, V. G., & Pond, R. E. (2012). Preschool language scales, fifth edition
Spanish (PLS-5 Spanish). San Antonio: Pearson.
Connections Among Language Knowledge,
Language Processing, and Nonlinguistic
Cognitive Processing in Bilingual Children
with Language Impairment
Kerry Danahy Ebert and Giang Pham
Abstract Background and rationale. Children with Primary (or Specific) Language
Impairment (PLI) show subtle weaknesses in cognitive areas such as processing
speed and working memory; such weaknesses appear on both nonlinguistic tasks
such as shape detection and on language processing tasks such as nonword repeti-
tion and rapid automatic naming. The relationship between processing weaknesses
and the impaired linguistic performance that characterizes children with PLI is not
yet clear. Bilingual children with PLI offer additional insight into relations across
domains (cognitive and linguistic) in two different languages while holding within-
learner factors constant. Cross-linguistic relations in this population can also pro-
vide insight into language learning mechanisms.
Aim. The purpose of this chapter is to explore relationships among three con-
structs (nonlinguistic cognitive processing, language processing, and language
knowledge) in both first (L1) and second (L2) languages of school-age Spanish-
English bilingual children with PLI. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal data, we
examine initial cognitive-linguistic associations and how change in one domain
may influence another over time.
Methods. This chapter is based on a sample of 52 school-age bilingual children
with PLI who lived in the Midwestern region of the United States, spoke Spanish as
the primary home language, and received school instruction in English. Children
participated in a treatment study in which they completed one of three conditions
The data described in this chapter were collected with the support of a grant from the National
Institute of Deafness and other Communication Disorders. (NIDCDR21DC010868) awarded to
Kathryn Kohnert, by an NIDCD R21Postdoctoral Research Supplement to Promote Diversity in
Health-Related Research awarded to Giang Pham, and by a University of Minnesota Graduate
School Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship awarded to Kerry Danahy Ebert.
K.D. Ebert (*)
Rush University, Chicago, IL, USA
e-mail: kerry_ebert@rush.edu
G. Pham
San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA
e-mail: gpham@mail.sdsu.edu

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_9
190 K.D. Ebert and G. Pham
targeting nonlinguistic cognitive processing, English language, or both Spanish and

English language skills.
Participants completed testing before and after treatment and three months after
the completion of treatment in three areas: (1) Nonlinguistic cognitive processing:
working memory and processing speed; (2) Language processing in Spanish and
English: nonword repetition and rapid automatic naming; (3) Language knowledge
in Spanish and English: omnibus language skill as measured by standardized
testing.
Results and Discussion. We found significant associations between nonlinguistic
cognitive processing and linguistic skill in the L1 and L2 that are discussed in terms
of the nature of PLI and effective remediation for the disorder. Immediately follow-
ing treatment, we found evidence that treating nonlinguistic cognitive processing
skills could improve language. However, the converse was also true: treating lan-
guage skills appeared to improve nonlinguistic cognitive processing. Longer-term
outcomes suggested that gains were maintained better in children who received
language-based treatment. We also found significant cross-linguistic relations, and
evidence that treatment gains may generalize from the L1 to the L2, but not from the
L2 to the L1. Study findings support general processing mechanisms that influence
both linguistic and nonlinguistic domains in children with PLI.
Keywords Language knowledge • Language processing • Nonlinguistic cognitive

processing • Bilingual children • Specific language impairment
1 Introduction
A substantial evidence base suggests that monolingual children with Primary

Language Impairment (PLI) demonstrate subtle deficits in nonlinguistic cognitive
processing skills. That is, despite demonstrating nonverbal IQ within the average
range, children with PLI tend to score lower than unaffected peers on assessments
of processing speed and working memory, even when such assessments employ
only nonlinguistic stimuli (Leonard et al. 2007; Vugs et al. 2014; Windsor et al.
2008). Whether these nonlinguistic cognitive processing deficits connect directly to
the more obvious language delays in children with PLI remains the source of debate
(cf., Leonard et al. 2007; Van der Lely 2005). Bilingual children affected by PLI
may provide unique insight into the association between nonlinguistic cognitive
processing and language, as connections between nonlinguistic and linguistic skills
would be expected to affect both languages.
In this chapter, we explore the cognitive-linguistic profile of Spanish-English
bilingual children with PLI in terms of three constructs: language knowledge,
language processing, and nonlinguistic cognitive processing. We begin with a
description of the populations, constructs, and relevant past work that frames this
topic. We then provide evidence from a sample of school-age Spanish-English bilin-
gual children with PLI.
Connections Among Language Knowledge, Language Processing, and Nonlinguistic… 191
2 Populations
The population of interest in this chapter represents the intersection of two groups:
sequential Spanish-English bilingual children in the United States and children with
Primary Language Impairment (PLI). Sequential bilinguals learn a first language
(L1) from birth and a second language (L2) in childhood or beyond; here we focus
on Spanish-English bilingual children, who are most commonly born into Spanish-
speaking homes and later acquire English via school and community exposure.
Although Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language in the US (US
Census Bureau 2012), it is still considered a minority language given its relatively
lower prestige in comparison to English, the limited availability of bilingual school-
ing opportunities, and its relatively restricted use in the larger community (Pearson
2007). Sequential bilinguals in the US who speak a minority L1 experience rapid
growth in the L2 (English) following its introduction (Hammer et al. 2007). Long-
term outcomes for the minority L1 vary depending on the availability of educational
and community support for continued L1 development (Cobo-Lewis et al. 2002).
Children who complete bilingual schooling continue to develop skills in their L1
(Pham and Kohnert 2014), while children with less school and community support
are at risk for L1 stagnation or attrition (e.g., Wong Fillmore 1991).
Children with PLI are defined by unexpected deficits in language skill despite
adequate environmental opportunities, unimpaired sensory abilities, and intact cog-
nitive skills (Leonard 2014a; Schwartz 2009). The group has also been called by a
host of other labels, including Specific Language Impairment, mixed receptive-
expressive language disorder, developmental language disorder, and language
learning impairment (e.g., Bishop 2014). Here we use the term Primary Language
Impairment to acknowledge the subtle processing deficits that accompany the clini-
cal language impairment in PLI (as noted in the introductory paragraph). In com-
parison to same-aged peers without the disorder, children with PLI show slower
development across a range of linguistic skills, including vocabulary, morphosyn-
tactic constructions, and narratives; such deficits have been documented across a
range of languages (Leonard 2014b).
Spanish-English bilingual children with PLI would be expected to share charac-
teristics with both of the groups discussed thus far. Bilingual children with PLI will
show impairments in both languages in comparison to typically developing bilin-
gual peers with comparable language-learning experiences. Low language perfor-
mance may manifest differently in each language depending on the type of language
being acquired (Leonard 2014b). Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers with PLI,
for example, may show errors in verb morphology in English (e.g., omission of the
past tense –ed) and article use in Spanish (e.g., l o s mesas instead of l a s mesas:
Restrepo and Gutiérrez-Clellen 2001). To date, a growing literature considers the
profiles of Spanish-English bilingual children with PLI across a range of language
tasks in both Spanish and English (e.g., Gutiérrez-Clellen and Simon-Cereijido
2010; Morgan et al. 2013; Sheng et al. 2012).
Bilingual children with and without PLI need to use two languages to success-
fully communicate in home, school, and community settings (Kohnert et al. 2005).
They have uneven or distributed knowledge across two languages and show mixed
language dominance profiles depending on age, language modality, and task
demands (Ebert et al. 2014b). Similar to their typical peers, school-age bilingual
children with PLI show relatively more growth in English than Spanish, and their
Spanish skills may be even more vulnerable to language loss than bilinguals without
impairments (Restrepo and Kruth 2000).
3 Constructs
This chapter considers cognitive-linguistic profiles among sequential bilinguals

with PLI in terms of three constructs: language knowledge, language processing,
and nonlinguistic cognitive processing. Table 1 summarizes the three constructs,
along with corresponding measures that we have used in the study described later in
the chapter.
Table 1 Key constructs, target skills, and corresponding tasks

Construct Target Skill Tasks used in present study
Language Overall proficiency in Composite score from a standardized test of
knowledge Spanish and English language production and comprehension in
Spanish (CELF-S) and English (CELF-E)
Language processing Lexical retrieval speed Time to name an array of familiar pictures in
in Spanish and English Spanish (RAN-S) and English (RAN-E)
Phonological working Repetition of nonsense words of increasing
memory in Spanish and length that follow the phonotactic properties
English of Spanish (NWR-S) and English (NWR-E)
Nonlinguistic Processing speed Response to the appearance of a colored
cognitive processing circle by pressing the associated button as
quickly as possible (CVD)
Working memory Judgement of whether a pair of tone
sequences of increasing length are the same
or different (APM)
Note: CELF Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, 4th edition, in English (E: Semel
et al. 2003) and Spanish (S: Wiig et al. 2006), NWR Nonword repetition, CVD Choice visual detec-
tion, APM Auditory pattern matching
4 L
anguage Knowledge: General Definition and Key Skills
of Interest
Language knowledge refers to accrued knowledge of the vocabulary and grammati-

cal structures of a specific language, and is commonly assessed through language-
based tests. Specific examples of these assessments include vocabulary tests and
omnibus language assessments that contain tasks such as constructing sentences,
listening to stories, and completing grammatical cloze tasks. Assessments of lan-
guage knowledge have been the traditional means of identifying the language defi-
cits in PLI, though they pose a challenge within diverse populations (such as
bilingual children) because they confound previous exposure to a specific language
with the general ability for language-learning. Vocabulary assessments, for exam-
ple, may be particularly influenced by past experience, with substantial evidence to
indicate that bilingual individuals show lower scores on these assessments than
monolinguals (Bialystok et al. 2010).
5 Language Processing
Language processing refers to the manipulation of linguistic information, such as

sentences, words, and phonemes. Language processing tasks may assess similar
underlying cognitive constructs as nonlinguistic cognitive processing tasks (such as
memory and processing speed), but do so using explicitly linguistic material. In
recent years, a subset of language processing tasks (sometimes termed “processing-
dependent measures”; Laing and Kamhi 2003) has attracted attention for its poten-
tial role in the assessment of PLI; these tasks use either highly familiar or novel
linguistic stimuli for the purpose of reducing the influence of accrued language
knowledge on performance. Thus, these tasks may be viewed as distinct from mea-
sures of language knowledge.
One of the most prominent language processing tasks is nonword repetition
(NWR), which assesses a form of memory. NWR tasks require children to repeat
nonsense words that adhere to the phonotactic properties of a specific language. The
task is typically considered to be a measure of phonological working memory
(Coady and Evans 2008). Task performance is closely associated with language
skill in both typically developing children and those with language disorders
(Gathercole 2006). Among Spanish-English bilinguals with PLI, NWR perfor-
mance falls below that of typically developing peers in both languages (Gutiérrez-
Clellen and Simon-Cereijido 2010; Windsor et al. 2010).
A second language processing task assesses processing speed, rather than mem-
ory, in the linguistic domain. Rapid Automatic Naming (RAN) tasks use highly
familiar linguistic stimuli (such as colors, shapes, letters, or numbers) to reduce the
role of linguistic experience. Children are asked to name items as quickly as possi-
ble, providing a measure of retrieval speed (Sahlén et al. 2000).
6 Nonlinguistic Cognitive Processing
Nonlinguistic cognitive processing is an umbrella term referring to a set of basic

cognitive mechanisms that are used to manipulate incoming material. Several of
these basic mechanisms have been linked to language learning, and particularly to
children with PLI. The present chapter focuses on two specific aspects of nonlin-
guistic cognitive processing: speed of processing and working memory. Speed of
processing refers to a general mental capacity for speeded performance (Kail and
Salthouse 1994); it can be assessed by measuring response time on a wide array of
tasks, though the focus here is on nonlinguistic tasks such as detecting the presence
of a tone, scanning an array of digits for a target, or mentally rotating shapes. In
monolingual children with PLI, speed of processing appears to be impaired in rela-
tion to unaffected peers (Leonard et al. 2007; Windsor et al. 2008).
Working memory has been defined as the capacity to temporarily store informa-
tion while engaging in some form of cognitive processing (e.g., Cowan 2014;
Montgomery et al. 2010). It is traditionally assessed using concurrent storage and
processing tasks (Montgomery et al. 2010), in which children must simultaneously
remember information while completing another task. Traditional models of work-
ing memory drew sharp distinctions between memory for linguistic and non-
linguistic information (e.g. Baddeley 1986), though more recent work has supported
domain-general models of working memory (Cowan 2014). Though many investi-
gations of working memory in children with PLI have focused on memory for lin-
guistic material, there is also evidence of subtle impairments in nonlinguistic
working memory among children with PLI (Vugs et al. 2014). Consistent with
domain-general models, these results suggest the possibility of generally weak
working memory skills in children affected by PLI.
Investigation of nonlinguistic cognitive processing skills among bilingual chil-
dren with PLI is beginning to emerge. A recent study of Portuguese-Luxembourgish
bilingual children (Engel de Abreu et al. 2014) found that children with PLI showed
statistically equivalent performance to typically developing bilingual peers on
working memory assessments; however, the small sample size in this study may
have precluded detection of subtle effects. In a larger sample of Spanish-English
bilingual children in the US (Kohnert et al. 2009), children with PLI scored below
peers with typical language on nonlinguistic measures of working memory and pro-
cessing speed; moreover, these nonlinguistic cognitive processing tasks helped to
differentiate between children with and without PLI, across monolingual and bilin-
gual backgrounds.
There has been little investigation of the nature of associations between nonlin-
guistic cognitive processing deficits and language skills in bilingual children with
PLI. Such work is much needed, as bilingual children form an important test case
for considering links between nonlinguistic and linguistic domains: if nonlinguistic
cognitive processing deficits contribute to language delays, they should be associ-
ated with skills in both languages of bilingual children with PLI.
7 Study
In the remainder of this chapter, we will highlight findings on the relationship

between processing and language within a sample of bilingual children with PLI
(Ebert et al. 2014b) who participated in a treatment study (Ebert et al. 2014a; Pham
et al. 2015).
8 Participants
Our sample consisted of 52 school-age children living in the Midwestern region of

the United States ranging in age from 5;6 (years; months) to 11;2, with a mean age
of 8;6. All spoke Spanish as their primary home language and received school
instruction in English. All children had qualified to receive school-based services
for language disorder. Study testing confirmed the diagnosis of PLI: all participants
demonstrated significant deficits in both languages as well as nonverbal intelligence
within the average range and normal hearing. Participants had no reported history of
neurological disorders.
Each participant was assigned to one of three active treatment conditions target-
ing (a) nonlinguistic cognitive processing, (b) English language skills, or (c) both
Spanish and English language skills. Children in the active treatment groups partici-
pated in four 75-min treatment sessions per week over approximately 6 weeks.
During these sessions, the nonlinguistic cognitive processing treatment group com-
pleted activities targeting processing speed, as well as attention skills, using nonlin-
guistic stimuli (e.g., shapes, colors, or tones). The English language treatment group
completed activities in English targeting vocabulary breadth and depth, comprehen-
sion and production of morphosyntactic forms, and comprehension of auditory
instructions. The Spanish-English bilingual treatment group completed very similar
activities, except that primarily Spanish stimuli were used. The treating clinicians
made explicit connections between the languages (e.g., by recasting statements
from one language to the other) and also incorporated English to clarify instructions
and reinforce positive behavior. The resulting treatment program provided approxi-
mately 80% input in Spanish and 20% in English.
9 Research Questions
This study examined four questions relating to children’s cognitive-linguistic pro-

files prior to treatment as well as treatment-induced change:
1. How do language knowledge, language processing, and nonlinguistic cognitive
processing relate in bilingual children with PLI?
2. Can targeting one language influence the other language in terms of knowledge
or processing?
3. Can targeting nonlinguistic cognitive processing influence language knowledge
or language processing?
4.
Can targeting language knowledge influence nonlinguistic cognitive
processing?
10 Assessment Tasks
Study participants completed a battery of assessments at three time points: before

treatment, immediately following treatment, and three months after the completion
of treatment. Assessments covered all three constructs of interest in this chapter (see
Table 1). To assess nonlinguistic processing speed, we calculated mean response
time on a choice visual detection task (CVD), which required participants to detect,
discriminate, and respond to the appearance of a red or blue colored circle on a com-
puter screen (Kohnert and Windsor 2004). An auditory pattern matching task (APM)
served as the measure of nonlinguistic working memory (Ebert 2014); children lis-
tened to pairs of tone sequences, ranging in length from 2 to 5 tones, and were asked
to determine whether the sequences in each pair matched. Both NWR and RAN tasks
were included as measures of language processing. In the NWR task, children
repeated previously recorded nonwords in Spanish (Ebert et al. 2008) and English
(Dollaghan and Campbell 1998). Accuracy was measured in percent phonemes cor-
rect. In the RAN task, children named stimuli in the Object and Digit arrays from the
Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (Wagner et al. 1999) as quickly as
possible in the target language. Total naming time across the two arrays served as the
dependent variable. Administration of RAN in this format was added to the assess-
ment battery after the study began and RAN data is available for only a subset of the
participants (n = 25); change on RAN following treatment was not calculated.
Language knowledge was assessed in each language using standardized tests of
omnibus language skill: the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF),
4th edition, in English (Semel et al. 2003) and in Spanish (Wiig et al. 2006). The
Core Language score consisted of the total of raw scores from four subtests for two
age ranges (5–8 years; 9 years and older) and measured language production and
comprehension.
11 Results
Our first question considered relations between language (knowledge and process-
ing) and nonlinguistic cognitive processing skills at one time point. That is, we first
examined data from each participant’s initial assessment prior to treatment. We then
considered the influences of treatment-induced change over time, using data from
subsequent study time points.
12 H
ow Do Language Knowledge, Language Processing,
and Nonlinguistic Cognitive Processing Relate
in Bilingual Children with PLI?
To examine relations among the three constructs of interest within this sample of
bilingual children with PLI, we calculated partial correlations among the assess-
ment measures with the effects of age removed. These correlations are displayed in
Table 2.
The first relations we consider are between nonlinguistic cognitive processing
and language knowledge and processing. If nonlinguistic cognitive processing skills
support language learning in children with PLI, we would expect significant asso-
ciations between the nonlinguistic cognitive processing tasks and language mea-
sures in the L1 and the L2. Our measure of nonlinguistic processing speed (CVD)
showed strong correlations with RAN in both Spanish (r = .49, p =.02) and English
(r = .63, p = .001). This result is consistent with a general processing speed con-
struct that influences both the linguistic and nonlinguistic arenas (Leonard et al.
2007). In addition, our measure of auditory working memory (APM) was related to
language knowledge (CELF) in Spanish (r = .36, p = 0.01) and in English (r = .31,
p = 0.03); this task was also previously shown to correlate specifically with the
sentence recall portion of the CELF in both languages (Ebert 2014). These results
support the relevance of a domain-general working memory capacity that contrib-
utes to language learning in both the L1 and the L2 of bilingual children with PLI.
Relations between the language processing measures and language knowledge
were also of interest, as the processing-based measures should assess skills that lead
to language learning (see Table 2). The NWR task did in fact relate to language
skills in both languages. Spanish NWR scores show significant, positive correla-
tions with language knowledge (CELF) scores in both Spanish (r = .36 p = .01) and
English (r = .30, p = .04). English NWR scores relate strongly and positively to
Spanish CELF scores (r = .31, p = .03); correlations with English CELF scores were
Table 2 Partial correlations controlling for age

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
1. CELF-S – .64*** −.12 .01 .36* .31* .13 .36*
2. CELF-E – −.17 −.35 .30* .24 −.08 .31*
3. RAN-S – .66*** .34 .10 .49* .29
4. RAN-E – .01 −.32 .63*** .08
5. NWR-S – .73*** .06 .18
6. NWR-E – .11 .09
7. CVD – .06
8. APM –
Note: CELF Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, 4th edition, in English (E: Semel
et al. 2003) and Spanish (S: Wiig et al. 2006), NWR nonword repetition, RAN rapid automatic nam-
ing, CVD choice visual detection, APM auditory pattern matching
*p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001
positive but did not reach significance (r = .24; p =.10). The presence of these posi-
tive associations suggests that the NWR task did tap into a language processing skill
(presumably phonological working memory) that supports growth across languages.
Correlations between RAN and CELF scores were negative for both languages (i.e.,
faster speed related to higher CELF scores), but did not reach significance. Finally,
the Spanish and English languages were positively associated on the global measure
of language knowledge (CELF: r = .64, p < .001) and on language processing mea-
sures (NWR: r = .78, p < .001; RAN: r = .66, p = .001).
13 Treatment-Induced Change
The remaining research questions focused on treatment-induced change, namely

whether (a) treating one language could induce change in the other, (b) treating
nonlinguistic cognitive processing skills could induce change in language process-
ing or language knowledge (in Spanish, English, or both), and (c) whether language
treatment programs could influence nonlinguistic cognitive processing.
14 C
an Targeting One Language Influence the Other
Language in Terms of Knowledge and Processing?
In this study, the answer to this question was a qualified yes. Gains were made from
the minority L1 to the majority L2, but not necessarily in reverse. Figure 1 displays
effect sizes for all dependent measures (except RAN) divided by treatment group.
This study compared two language-based treatment conditions: English-only and
bilingual.
Children who completed English-only treatment made significant gains on the
English CELF with a moderate effect size of d = .45 (Ebert et al. 2014a). No gains
were made in language processing or in Spanish language skills. When targeting
skills bilingually, change occurred in Spanish and English. Children who completed
the bilingual treatment made small gains on the Spanish CELF (d = 0.19), moderate
gains on the English CELF (d = 0.50), and strong gains in English language pro-
cessing (English NWR, d = 0.76). Findings were highly consistent with the emerg-
ing literature on language treatment with bilingual children. Spanish-English
bilingual preschoolers with PLI showed similar gains in the L2 (English) when
provided monolingual English or bilingual Spanish-English treatment; however,
only children who completed bilingual treatment showed gains in both languages
(Restrepo et al. 2013; Gutiérrez-Clellen et al. 2012). Similar findings have been
found among typical Spanish-English bilingual children in the US who receive
bilingual versus English-only programming (see meta-analysis by Rolstad et al.
2005).
Fig. 1 Pre- to post-treatment change in terms of Cohen’s d effect size across assessment tasks and
treatment groups. Asterisks (*) indicate statistically significant change after multiple comparison
correction. NCP nonlinguistic cognitive processing treatment group, EO English-only language
treatment group, BI bilingual language treatment group
15 C
an Targeting Nonlinguistic Cognitive Processing
Influence Language?
The answer to this question appears to be yes, though with some qualifications. As
shown in Fig. 1, children who completed the nonlinguistic cognitive processing
treatment program (targeting processing speed and attention) made statistically sig-
nificant gains on measures of English language knowledge immediately following
treatment. More specifically, this treatment group made significant gains in the
CELF-English core language score, with a small effect size (Ebert et al. 2014a). The
group also showed significant change on the measure of Spanish language process-
ing, NWR. These changes are consistent with a connection between nonlinguistic
cognitive processing and language skills in children with PLI; children who received
treatment targeting nonlinguistic cognitive processing showed some improvements
in both languages (Ebert et al. 2014a).
However, two important caveats bear mention. First, language gains following
nonlinguistic cognitive processing treatment were more apparent in English than in
Spanish. This was true for all treatment groups in the study, with Cohen’s d effect
sizes for all English assessment tasks across active treatment groups averaging d =
0.37 and effect sizes for Spanish assessment tasks averaging d = 0.14 (see Fig. 1).
The uneven profile of gains across languages suggests that the socio-linguistic envi-
ronment for these school-age children – which promotes rapid growth in English
during this time period for typically developing children – may also be more condu-
cive to English language growth for children with PLI. Thus, while the evidence
supports a connection between nonlinguistic cognitive processing and language
knowledge, it is likely mediated by the language learning environment.
The second caveat is that the language knowledge gains experienced by children
who completed nonlinguistic cognitive processing treatment were generally more
modest than those who completed a direct language treatment program. Immediately
following treatment, children in the nonlinguistic cognitive processing group aver-
aged d = 0.18 on the two language knowledge measures (Spanish and English CELF
scores), whereas those in the language treatment groups showed larger average
gains in language knowledge (d = 0.33 for the English treatment group and d = 0.35
for the bilingual treatment group). Moreover, this difference was magnified at the
3-month follow-up assessment (Pham et al. 2015). Longitudinal trajectories for
English language knowledge measures showed significant growth over time for
children who had received English-only or bilingual treatment, but non-significant
growth for children who received nonlinguistic cognitive processing treatment.
16 Can Targeting Language Influence Cognitive Processing?
Transfer in the opposite direction is also theoretically possible: it is possible that

engaging in language-based treatment may lead to growth in nonlinguistic cognitive
processing (e.g., Gillam et al. 2008; Stevens et al. 2008). Our study found some
evidence of transfer from language to nonlinguistic cognitive processing.

Immediately following treatment, the English-only language treatment group made
significant gains on all measures of nonlinguistic cognitive processing (see Fig. 1).
However, the bilingual treatment group showed slower processing speed after treat-
ment than before (this effect disappeared at the three-month follow-up point: Pham
et al. 2015). Overall, the results of this work suggest that skill transfer between
nonlinguistic cognitive processing and language (and vice versa) is possible for
Spanish-English bilingual children with PLI. However, these cross-domain relation-
ships are complex, and transfer may be mediated by social environment, general
maturational status, or other (as yet unknown) factors.
17 Conclusions
This chapter has considered relationships among three domains – nonlinguistic cog-
nitive processing, language processing, and language knowledge – in Spanish-
English sequential bilingual children with PLI. Several key themes have emerged
from our review. First, the existing literature suggests that there may be general
processing abilities that manifest in both the nonlinguistic and linguistic domains
for children with PLI, and would be expected to influence both L1 and L2 skill in
bilingual children. Our sample provides further support for this idea: our nonlin-
guistic measures of processing speed and working memory are related to processing
skills in both languages, which in turn correlate with measures of language knowl-
edge. Furthermore, we found cross-domain change following treatment from non-
linguistic cognitive processing to language and vice versa. Clearly targeting
language contributed to the largest gains in language knowledge and processing.
However, incorporating nonlinguistic cognitive processing into language treatment
could add value, particularly in cases where the clinician does not speak a child’s
two languages (e.g., Ebert et al. 2012).
A second important theme is positive cross-linguistic relationships in language
knowledge as well as language processing. Strong, positive correlations between
Spanish and English CELF (r = .64) suggest that at least at the global level, skills of
language production and comprehension are connected across languages. Strong,
positive cross-language correlations in language processing (NWR, r = .78; RAN,
r = .66) further underscore a common underlying language learning ability that
depends on basic cognitive processing skills such as working memory and process-
ing speed. In terms of treatment-induced change, we found that bilingual treatment
was superior to English-only treatment in promoting gains in both the L1 and L2.
Future studies are needed to measure the efficacy of various treatment combinations
of processing (language and nonlinguistic) and language knowledge (L1 and L2);
such work will not only maximize outcomes for bilingual children with PLI but also
shed light on the nature of processing in the disorder.
References
Baddeley, A. D. (1986). Working memory, Oxford Psychology Series #11. Oxford: Clarendon.
Bialystok, E., Luk, G., Peets, K. F., & Yang, S. (2010). Receptive vocabulary differences in mono-
lingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, 525–531.
Bishop, D. V. M. (2014). Ten questions about terminology for children with unexplained language
problems. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 49, 381–415.
Coady, J. A., & Evans, J. L. (2008). Uses and interpretations of non-word repetition tasks in chil-
dren with and without specific language impairments (SLI). International Journal of Language
and Communication Disorders, 43, 1–40.
Cobo-Lewis, A. B., Pearson, B. Z., Eilers, R. E., & Umbel, V. C. (2002). Effects of bilingualism
and bilingual education on oral and written Spanish skills: A multifactor study of standardized
test outcomes. In Oller & Eilers (pp. 98–117).
Cowan, N. (2014). Working memory underpins cognitive development, learning, and education.
Educational Psychology Review, 26, 197–223.
Dollaghan, C., & Campbell, T. (1998). Nonword repetition and child language impairment.
Ebert, K. D. (2014). The role of auditory nonverbal working memory in sentence repetition for
bilingual children with primary language impairment. International Journal of Language &
Ebert, K. D., Kalanek, J., Cordero, K. N., & Kohnert, K. (2008). Spanish nonword repetition:
Stimuli development and preliminary results. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 29, 67–74.
Ebert, K. D., Rentmeester-Disher, J., & Kohnert, K. (2012). Nonlinguistic cognitive treatment for
bilingual children with primary language impairment. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 26,
485–501.
Ebert, K. D., Kohnert, K., Pham, G., Rentmeester Disher, J., & Payesteh, B. (2014a). Three treat-
ments for bilingual children with primary language impairment: Examining cross-linguistic
and cross-domain effects. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57, 172–186.
Ebert, K. D., Pham, G., & Kohnert, K. (2014b). Lexical profiles of bilingual children with primary
language impairment. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17, 766–783.
Engel de Abreu, P. M., Cruz-Santos, A., & Puglisi, M. L. (2014). Specific language impairment in
language-minority children from low-income families. International Journal of Language &
Gathercole, S. E. (2006). Nonword repetition and word learning: The nature of the relationship.
Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 513–543.
Gillam, R. B., Loeb, D. F., Hoffman, L. M., Bohman, T., Champlin, C. A., Thibodeau, L., et al.
(2008). The efficacy of Fast For Word Language intervention in school-age children with lan-
guage impairment: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing
Research, 51, 97–119.
Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. F., & Simon-Cereijido, G. (2010). Using nonword repetition tasks for the
identification of language impairment in Spanish-English-speaking children: Does the lan-
guage of assessment matter? Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 25, 48–58.
Gutiérrez-Clellen, V., Simon-Cereijido, G., & Sweet, M. (2012). Predictors of second language
acquisition in Latino children with specific language impairment. American Journal of Speech-
Language Pathology, 21, 64–77.
Hammer, C. S., Lawrence, F. R., & Miccio, A. W. (2007). Bilingual children’s language abilities
and early reading outcomes in Head Start and kindergarten. Language, Speech, and Hearing
Services in Schools, 38, 237–248.
Kail, R., & Salthouse, T. A. (1994). Processing speed as a mental capacity. Acta Psychologica, 86,
199–225.
Kohnert, K., & Windsor, J. (2004). The search for common ground part II: Nonlinguistic perfor-
mance by linguistically diverse learners. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research,
47, 891–903.
Kohnert, K., Yim, D., Nett, K., Kan, P. F., & Duran, L. (2005). Intervention with linguistically
diverse preschool children: A focus on developing home language(s). Language, Speech, and
Hearing Services in Schools, 36, 251–263.
Kohnert, K., Windsor, J., & Pham, G. (2009, June). Separating differences from disorders using
processing-dependent measures. Poster presentation at the Symposium on Research in Child
Language Disorders, Madison, WI.
Laing, S., & Kamhi, A. (2003). Alternative assessment of language and literacy in culturally and
linguistically diverse populations. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 34,
44–55.
Leonard, L. (2014a). Children with specific language impairment (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: A
Bradford Book.
Leonard, L. (2014b). Specific Language Impairment across languages. Child Development
Perspectives, 8, 1–5.
Leonard, L., Ellis Weismer, S., Miller, C. A., Francis, D. J., Tomblin, J. B., & Kail, R. V. (2007).
Speed of processing, working memory and language impairment in children. Journal of
Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 408–428.
Montgomery, J. W., Magimairaj, B. M., & Finney, M. C. (2010). Working memory and specific
language impairment: An update on the relation and perspectives on assessment and treatment.
American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 19, 78–94.
Morgan, G. P., Restrepo, M. A., & Auza, A. (2013). Comparison of Spanish morphology in mono-
lingual and Spanish-English bilingual children with and without language impairment.
Bilingualism, 16, 578–596.
Pearson, B. Z. (2007). Social factors in childhood bilingualism in the United States. Applied
Psycholinguistics, 28, 399–410.
Pham, G., & Kohnert, K. (2014). A longitudinal study of lexical development in children learning
Vietnamese and English. Child Development, 85, 767–782.
Pham, G., Ebert, K. D., & Kohnert, K. (2015). Bilingual children with primary language impair-
ment: Three months after treatment. International Journal of Language and Communication
Disorders, 50, 94–105.
Restrepo, M. A., & Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. F. (2001). Article use in Spanish-speaking children with
specific language impairment. Journal of Child Language, 28, 433–452.
Restrepo, M. A., & Kruth, K. (2000). Grammatical characteristics of a Spanish-English bilingual
child with specific language impairment. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 21, 66–76.
Restrepo, M. A., Morgan, G., & Thompson, M. (2013). The efficacy of vocabulary intervention for
dual language learners with language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing
Research, 56, 748–765.
Rolstad, K., Mahoney, K., & Glass, G. V. (2005). The big picture: A meta-analysis of program
effectiveness research on English language learners. Educational Policy, 19, 572–594.
Sahlén, B., Radeborg, K., Wagner, C. R., Friberg, C., & Rydahl, L. (2000). A preliminary version
of a computerized naming test for preschool children with language impairment. Logopedics,
Phoniatrics, Vocology, 25, 115–121.
Schwartz, R. G. (2009). Specific language impairment. In R. G. Schwartz (Ed.), Handbook of child
language disorders (pp. 3–43). New York: Psychology Press.
Semel, E., Wiig, E. H., & Secord, W. A. (2003). Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals (4th
ed.). San Antonio: The Psychological Corporation.
Sheng, L., Peña, E. D., Bedore, L. M., & Fiestas, C. E. (2012). Semantic deficits in Spanish-
English bilingual children with language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and
Hearing Research, 55, 1–15.
Stevens, C., Fanning, J., Coch, D., Sanders, L., & Neville, H. (2008). Neural mechanisms of selec-
tive auditory attention are enhanced by computerized training: Electrophysiological evidence
from language-impaired and typically developing children. Brain Research, 1205, 55–69.
United States Census Bureau. (2012). American community survey: Languages spoken at home.
Retrieved from http://factfinder.census.gov
Van der Lely, H. J. K. (2005). Domain-specific cognitive systems: Insights from Grammatical-SLI.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 53–59.
Vugs, B., Hendriks, M., Cuperus, J., & Verhoeven, L. (2014). Working memory performance and
executive function behaviors in young children with SLI. Research in Developmental
Disabilities, 35, 62–74.
Wagner, R. K., Torgesen, J., & Rashotte, C. (1999). Comprehensive test of phonological process-
ing. Austin: Pro-Ed.
Wiig, E. H., Secord, W. A., & Semel, E. (2006). Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals (4th
ed., Spanish). San Antonio: The Psychological Corporation.
Windsor, J., Kohnert, K., Loxtercamp, A. L., & Kan, P. F. (2008). Performance on nonlinguistic
visual tasks by children with language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29, 237–268.
Windsor, J., Kohnert, K., Lobitz, K., & Pham, G. (2010). Cross-language nonword repetition by
bilingual and monolingual children. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 19,
298–310.
Wong Fillmore, L. (1991). When learning a second language means losing the first. Early
Childhood Research Quarterly, 6, 323–346.
Sentence Repetition in Typical and Atypical
Spanish-Speaking Preschoolers Who Are
English Language Learners
Gabriela Simón-Cereijido
Abstract Limitations in phonological working memory are frequent in children

with primary language impairment (PLI) across several languages. Nonword repeti-
tion and sentence repetition have been evaluated in bilingual children exposed to a
variety of language pairs. Nonword repetition tasks assist in the identification of
bilingual Spanish-English children with language disorders when both languages
are considered. This study investigates the clinical diagnostic accuracy of Spanish
and English sentence repetition tasks for Latino Spanish-speaking preschoolers
who are English language learners. Associations between language ability and pho-
nological working memory measures are also explored.
There were 40 Latino preschoolers with PLI and 40 age-matched peers with typi-
cal language development. Parent questionnaires and class observations were used
to establish language use and proficiency. Affected children met criteria based on
parent and/or teacher concern, and performance on the semantics and morphosyn-
tax subtests of the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (BESA) and a Spanish
nonword repetition task. Spanish and English vocabulary was also measured. All
children had nonverbal cognitive development within the normal range and no evi-
dence of other special needs.
Both Spanish and English sentence repetition tasks (SSRT and ESRT) had 21
target sentences of equal syllable length. Children repeated sentences immediately
after the evaluator’s presentation. Performance was quantified using a target verb
and argument use score (TVAS) and a word recall score (WMEM). The children
with PLI had significantly lower scores than the control group in the two languages.
Discriminant function analyses were run to determine the accuracy of the measures
in identifying ELLs with PLI from typical age-matched ELLs. For Spanish, SSRT
TVAS had poor sensitivity (67.5%) and good specificity (92.5%). The SSRT
WMEM had fair sensitivity (80%) and good specificity (92.7%). In contrast, for the
English SRT, TVAS had fair sensitivity (83.3%) but poor specificity (59%). The
ESRT WMEM had fair sensitivity (89.2%) and poor specificity (59%).
G. Simón-Cereijido (*)
Department of Communication Disorders, College of Health and Human Services,
California State University, Los Angeles, CA, USA
e-mail: gsimonc@calstatela.edu

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_10
206 G. Simón-Cereijido
There were significant and positive correlations between measures of language

ability (e.g., BESA morphosyntax and semantics scores) and the sentence repetition
scores in both languages. Spanish nonword repetition scores were also significantly
and positively correlated to Spanish and English sentence repetition scores. General
linguistic knowledge and phonological working memory appear to contribute to the
children’s sentence repetition performance in their strong and weak languages.
English vocabulary scores, on the other hand, were significantly correlated to
English sentence repetition scores but not to Spanish sentence repetition scores,
indicating that language-specific lexical skills play an important role in sentence
repetition.
In conclusion, the Spanish sentence repetition task appears to be an accurate
identification measure for PLI in Latino ELLs when the word recall scoring is used.
The task in English presented increased difficulty to both typical and atypical pre-
schoolers. A minimal level of vocabulary may be necessary for English language
learners to be successful in sentence repetition tasks in the weak language. These
results underscore the need to consider English language proficiency level when
assessing ELLs with or without language disorders.
Keywords Sentence repetition task • Primary language impairment • English lan-

guage learners • Spanish • Bilinguals
1 Introduction
In the United States, the identification of language disorders in young Spanish-

speaking children who are English language learners (ELLs) continues to be chal-
lenging due to the population’s characteristic heterogeneity, and the limited, yet
growing, availability of normative data and valid assessment tools for children
exposed to the different English and Spanish dialects spoken in Latino communi-
ties. Practical considerations, such as inconsistent clinical education, low numbers
of bilingual clinicians, and workload and time pressures, prod clinical researchers to
find concise, valid and efficient assessment tools.
Many Latino children who are exposed to Spanish at home begin to be con-
sistently exposed to English in preschools. This group of early sequential bilinguals
is rather large among ELLs (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family
Statistics 2013) and among them, the children who present limited language skills
are likely to be referred for a bilingual language evaluation. Currently, clinicians
have access to a small number of valid and reliable tests. For example, the Bilingual
English Spanish Assessment (BESA, Peña et al. 2014) is a valid instrument for the
identification of primary language disorders for bilingual children ages 4–6. Other
available tools, however, do not have comparable psychometric properties (Barrueco
et al. 2012). Although the scope of the BESA makes it an excellent instrument for
comprehensive bilingual evaluations, its length does not make it suitable as a suc-
cinct initial assessment test.
Sentence Repetition in Typical and Atypical Spanish-Speaking Preschoolers Who Are… 207
Besides limitations in receptive and expressive language skills, children with

primary language impairment (PLI) have shown sub-average performance on lan-
guage processing tasks, such as phonological short-term memory measures, in sev-
eral languages (e.g., Casalini et al. 2007; Dollaghan and Campbell 1998; Gathercole
and Baddeley 1989; Girbau and Schwartz 2007; Sahlén et al. 1999). Nonword rep-
etition tasks were also evaluated with bilingual children exposed to English and
Spanish. Studies showed that these tasks assist in the identification of bilingual
children with language disorders when both languages are considered (Guiberson
and Rodriguez 2013; Gutiérrez-Clellen and Simon-Cereijido 2010; Summers et al.
2010; Windsor et al. 2010).
Sentence repetition tasks have also been postulated as measures of language pro-
cessing (e.g., Alloway and Gathercole 2005; Poll et al. 2013). From this perspective,
sentence repetition tasks tap into the memory system component that supports lan-
guage skills. Sentence repetition tasks are included in many English language bat-
teries for the identification of language impairment (e.g., the Clinical Evaluation of
Language Fundamentals-Fifth Edition, CELF–5: Wiig et al. 2013, and the Test of
Language Development-Primary, TOLD–P: Newcomer and Hammill 1997). In
other languages, children with PLI perform poorer than their typically developing
peers (e.g., Cantonese: Stokes et al. 2006, Italian: Vicari et al. 2002; Czech: Smolík
and Vávrů 2014; German: Ziethe et al. 2013; Vietnamese: VânHoàng et al. 2014;
and Spanish: Ebert 2014). The clinical accuracy of sentence repetition tasks has
been investigated in studies of monolingual English-speaking children and authors
confirmed their utility as clinical markers (Conti-Ramsden et al. 2001; Briscoe et al.
2001; Seeff-Gabriel et al. 2010). The current study investigated the clinical diagnos-
tic accuracy of Spanish and English sentence repetition tasks for Latino Spanish-
speaking preschoolers who are English language learners.
In addition, there continues to be some controversy regarding the underlying
construct measured by SRT. Rather than being a measure of memory, SRT may
actually assess language ability in general. Several authors pointed out to the role of
language knowledge in recalling and imitating sentences (Conti-Ramsden et al.
2001; Mac Whinney et al. 2000; Polišenská et al. 2015; Willis and Gathercole
2001). A recent study looked at whether vocabulary, grammatical skills, and sen-
tence repetition performance are part of a single latent variable or whether sentence
repetition performance is a surrogate for memory or processing, or if it is a distinct
factor from vocabulary and grammar (Klem et al. 2015). In this longitudinal study,
216 typically developing Norwegian-speaking children were administered a sen-
tence repetition task, and vocabulary and grammatical skills tests, three times at
yearly intervals. Testing began when children were age 4. Compared to a two factor
model consisting of memory/processing and language, the unitary model appeared
to be a better fit to the study’s data. That is, sentence repetition performance in
association with vocabulary and grammar explained the longitudinal growth of the
children’s language skills.
Sentence repetition tasks were also included in other studies exploring the
dimensionality of language in children. The CELF Recalling Sentences task was
included in a longitudinal study of a large sample of monolingual English-speaking
children (Tomblin and Zhang 2006). Sentence repetition loaded onto a unidimen-
sional model of language and onto the grammar factor of a two-factor (vocabulary
and grammar) model from kindergarten to fourth grade. A recent study investigated
the dimensionality of language in Spanish-speaking preschool children who are
English language learners (Language and Reading Research Consortium 2015). In
this study, the CELF Recalling Sentences Subtest in Spanish loaded onto the unidi-
mensional language model and onto the grammar or integrative language knowl-
edge factors in models that distinguished word knowledge from integrative language
knowledge. The task significantly and positively correlated to all other measures
including receptive and expressive vocabulary measures and comprehension mea-
sures such as inference tasks and narrative comprehension tasks (Language and
Reading Research Consortium 2015). Thus, previous research across children
exposed to English, Norwegian, and Spanish indicated that sentence repetition per-
formance reflects linguistic ability in addition to short-term memory. The current
study explores associations between sentence repetition scores, language ability and
phonological working memory measures within and across the two languages of
Latino preschoolers.
1. What is the clinical diagnostic accuracy of a Spanish sentence repetition task for
Latino Spanish-speaking preschoolers who are English language learners?
2. What is the clinical diagnostic accuracy of an English sentence repetition task
for the same children?
3. Are the children’s sentence repetition scores associated to language ability scores
and nonword repetition scores within and across languages?
3 Participants
There were 40 Latino preschoolers with PLI and 40 age-matched peers with typical
language development (TLD). The mean age of the PLI group was 50.3 (3.3) months
and the mean age of the TLD group was 51.3 (3.6) months, t(78) = 1.329, p = .188.
Parent questionnaires and class observations (Gutiérrez-Clellen and Kreiter 2003)
were used to establish language use and proficiency. Children met the following
criteria: (a) spoke Spanish as their first language as reported by parents and teachers
and (b) spoke no English or limited English, verified by parent interview, teacher
report, and child conversational sample. Children attended Head Start centers in
Southern California, and were mostly living in low income family households.
The children with PLI met criteria based on performance below a pre-determined
cutoff score on the Spanish Morphosyntax (S-MS) and Semantics (S-Sem) subtests
of the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (BESA; Peña et al. 2014) and on a
Table 1 Mean and standard deviations of the identification of primary language impairment
measures by group
TLD PLI
Mean SD Mean SD
BESA S-MS 66.09 14.93 24.91 16.46
BESA S-Sem 9.70 2.34 5.50 2.61
SNWRT 69.75 15.36 45.69 13.42
Nonverbal cognitive 100.6 16.17 94.36 13.72
Note: TLD typical language development, PLI primary language impairment, BESA S-MS BESA
Spanish morphosyntax, BESA S-Sem BESA Spanish semantics, SNWRT Spanish nonword repeti-
tion task
Spanish Nonword Repetition Task (SNWRT; Gutiérrez-Clellen and Simon-

Cereijido 2010). The S-MS and S-Sem cut-off scores were pre-determined based on
validity studies of these measures included in the BESA manual. Table 1 lists the
scores on the language ability tests by group. The children with TLD had signifi-
cantly higher scores for the BESA S-MS (t(78) = 11.722, p < .001), the BESA
S-Sem (t(78) = 7.569, p < .001), and the SNWRT(t(77) = 7.409, p < .001). There
was no evidence of other special needs based on parent, teacher, and school report.
Children passed a bilateral hearing screening that consisted of a pure-tone hearing
screening at 25 dB (HL) at 1000, 2000, 3000, and 4000 Hz administered by the
schools. They also demonstrated nonverbal cognitive development within the nor-
mal range based on scores obtained with the Kaufman Assessment Battery for
Children, Second Edition (KABC-II) (Kaufman and Kaufman 2004) (see Table 1).
Cognitive ability was not significantly different across the groups (t(78) = 1.900, p
= .061). The language ability and classification of the children were kept unknown
to research assistants to prevent bias in the data collection and scoring.
4 Procedures
Children were tested in their preschools, in quiet environments, by trained bilingual

research assistants. The language of testing was counterbalanced across children.
Both Spanish and English sentence repetition tasks (SSRT and ESRT) had 21 target
sentences (seven intransitive, seven transitive and seven ditransitive sentences) of
equal syllable length (see Appendix A). Length was measured in syllables because
syllable length affects memory for words and nonwords (Miranda and Valencia
1997). Every sentence had Subject Verb (Object) order. Subjects and indirect objects
were animate noun phrases while direct objects were always inanimate objects.
Children were asked to repeat exactly what the evaluator said and repeated sen-
tences immediately after the evaluator’s presentation. Responses were written
online and recorded. Independent evaluators listened to the recorded responses and
transcribed what the child said. The children’s responses were scored based on the
number of correct imitated words, divided by the total number of words in the task.
Group differences on the scores in each language were compared using univariate
analysis of variance (ANOVA) with an alpha error set at <.05. Effect sizes for these
comparisons were calculated using Cohen’s d.
To evaluate the extent to which the sentence repetition tasks could be used to rule
in or rule out language impairment, linear discriminant analyses evaluating group
classifications (i.e., children with TLD; children with PLI) were performed on the
Spanish and English SRT scores separately. Sensitivity (i.e., the proportion of chil-
dren with PLI that scored below a cutoff score) and specificity (i.e., the proportion
of children with TLD that scored above a cutoff score) for each score and in each
language were examined. In addition, likelihood ratio (LR) analyses were calcu-
lated based on the cutoff scores generated by the discriminant analyses. A positive
LR (i.e., LR+ > 1) indicates the likelihood that a child has a language impairment.
The likelihood that children with TLD fail the measure should be below 1 (i.e.,
negative LR or LR− < 1). The LR for a given test score is calculated based on sen-
sitivity and specificity rates.
Pearson correlations were used to explore relationships among Spanish and
English sentence repetition scores, phonological working memory, and Spanish
morphosyntax and semantic ability using the identification measures (i.e., SNWRT,
BESA S-MS, and BESA S-Sem tasks).
Correlations between the sentence repetition scores and English language ability
measures were also investigated. English vocabulary was measured with the English
Picture Vocabulary subtest of the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised
(Woodcock 1991). Given the fact that this test was normed on a large sample of
monolingual English-speaking subjects in the U.S., each participant was tested
from the first test item and raw scores (as opposed to standard scores) were used in
the analysis. Validity and reliability of this battery meet basic technical require-
ments (Woodcock 1991). English morphosyntax was evaluated by calculating mean
length of utterance in words based on a narrative sample of the wordless picture
book Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer 1969). Children were encouraged to produce at
least one utterance per picture. Only spontaneous utterances were included in the
narrative samples. The spontaneous narrative sample was digitally recorded and
trained bilingual assistants transcribed the narratives. Transcription reliability was
calculated on 25% of the samples across transcribers and exceeded 90%. The mean
length of utterance in words (MLU-w) for English was generated by the Systematic
Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) program (Miller and Iglesias 2006).
5 Results
Children with PLI had significantly lower scores than the typical peer group for the
Spanish SRT, F(1, 78) = 59.296, p < .001, d = 1.97, and for the English SRT, F(1, 74)
= 19.536, p < .001, d = 1.09. For Spanish, SRT had fair sensitivity (80%) and good
specificity (92.7%), (canonical correlation = .715, Wilks’ lambda = .488, p < .001).
LR+ was 10.66 and LR− was 0.216. In contrast, the English SRT had
Table 2 Means and standard deviations for the Spanish and English sentence repetition tasks by
group
TLD PLI
Mean SD Mean SD d CI
SSRT 0.81 0.14 0.41 0.21 1.97 1.52–2.42
ESRT 0.31 0.21 0.14 0.09 1.09 0.68–1.49
Note: TLD typical language development, PLI primary language impairment, SSRT Spanish sen-
tence repetition task, ESRT English sentence repetition task
Table 3 Sensitivity and specificity of the Spanish and English sentence repetition tasks
TLD PLI
Spanish SRT TLD 92.5% (37/40) 7.5% (3/40)
PLI 20% (8/40) 80% (32/40)
English SRT TLD 59% (23/39) 41% (16/39)
PLI 10.8% (4/37) 89.2% (33/37)
Table 4 Bivariate Spanish SRT English SRT

correlations between Spanish
SNWRT .629* .623*
and English sentence
repetition scores, nonword BESA S-MS .801* .445*
repetition scores, and Spanish BESA S-Sem .672* .426*
and English language English vocabulary .173 .613*
measures English MLUw .494* .658*
Note: * Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level
(2-tailed)
fair sensitivity (89.2%) and poor specificity (59%), (canonical correlation = .457,
Wilks’ lambda = .791, p < .001). LR+ was 1.95 and LR− was 0.183 (Tables 2 and 3).
There were significant and positive correlations between the sentence repetition
tasks and the nonword repetition task (see Table 4). Spanish measures of language
ability (e.g., BESA morphosyntax and semantics scores) were significantly and
positively correlated to Spanish sentence repetition (SSRT – BESA morphosyntax r
= .801, p < .001; SSRT – BESA semantics r = .672, p < .001). Across languages,
Spanish language ability was also positively correlated to the English sentence rep-
etition task, but with lower correlation coefficients (ESRT – BESA morphosyntax r
= .445, p < .001; ESRT – BESA semantics r = .426, p < .001). Within language
positive associations were also found between English sentence repetition and
English vocabulary, r = .613, p < .001, and English mean length of utterance, r =
.658, p <.001. Across languages, Spanish sentence repetition was significantly asso-
ciated to English MLUw (r = .494, p < .001) but there was no association with
English vocabulary (Table 4).
6 Discussion
The Spanish sentence repetition task appears to be an accurate identification mea-

sure for primary language impairment in Latino Spanish-speaking preschoolers
who are ELLs. Sensitivity was fair and specificity was good. This measure appears
to be a useful tool to be used as a first instrument to identify language impairment
in Spanish-speaking children who are learning English.
In contrast, the English SRT had good sensitivity but its specificity was poor. The
task was difficult for both groups of children, even though typically developing
children had significantly higher scores than the group of children with PLI. These
results underscore the need to consider English language proficiency level when
assessing ELLs with or without language disorders. Information about the child’s
use and proficiency in the two languages at home and at school will be needed to
interpret English results and to establish the need for further assessment.
Sentence repetition tasks were significantly associated to the measure of phono-
logical working memory. This seems to indicate that memory skills are tapped by
both measures. Within languages, both sentence repetition tasks were significantly
and positively correlated to the language ability measures. The correlation coeffi-
cients were larger for the morphosyntax measures than for the semantic or lexical
measures. In particular, the association between Spanish sentence repetition and
morphosyntax was strong. This finding corroborates the interpretation that Spanish
sentence repetition represents a latent variable of grammar as described in the
Spanish dimensionality study (Language and Reading Research Consortium 2015).
The observed strong association may also be explained by the fact that the BESA
morphosyntax task includes cloze items and sentence imitation items. In the BESA,
the scoring of the sentence imitation section, however, is based on specific imitated
words tapping into morphosyntax markers of Spanish primary language impairment
rather than the current study’s straight ratio of correct words. The error types
observed during the sentence repetition task included omissions and substitutions of
both content and function words. In English, the within-language associations were
significant but the correlation coefficients were smaller than in Spanish. This may
be partly due to the heterogeneity observed in the children’s English responses, as
indicated by the large standard deviations of the English sentence repetition task.
Across languages, sentence repetition was positively and significantly corre-
lated with the morphosyntactic measures: Spanish SRT with English MLUw, and
English SRT with BESA S-MS. These correlation coefficients were smaller than
the within-language coefficients. English SRT was also significantly associated to
Spanish semantics scores that reflected a combination of comprehension and
expression of category generation, linguistic concepts, and analogies. In contrast,
Spanish SRT was not significantly correlated with English vocabulary comprehen-
sion and expression. This lack of association may indicate that, in bilingual children,
the underlying construct of sentence repetition does not fully overlap with every
language domain if proficiency is not taken into account. In a previous study, Farsi-
English bilingual school-aged children performed poorer than their monolingual
English peers on a sentence repetition task (Komeili and Marshall 2013). However,
the difference vanished once receptive English vocabulary skills were taken into
account.
The lack of association between Spanish sentence repetition and English vocabu-
lary in these young children may also suggest that the reportedly late separation of
vocabulary and grammar in the dimensionality of language (Tomblin and Zhang
2006; Klem et al. 2015) reflect linguistic proficiency or experience rather than a
strictly developmental factor. In addition, these findings emphasize the importance
of studying bilingual children across their languages in order to explore the univer-
sal nature of language development.
7 Conclusions
The Spanish sentence repetition task appears to be an accurate identification mea-

sure for PLI in Latino ELLs. The task in English presented increased difficulty to
both typical and atypical preschoolers. A minimal level of vocabulary may be nec-
essary for English language learners to be successful in sentence repetition tasks in
the weak language. These results underscore the need to consider English language
proficiency level when assessing ELLs with or without language disorders.
General linguistic knowledge and phonological working memory appear to con-
tribute to the children’s sentence repetition performance in their strong and weak
languages. English vocabulary scores, on the other hand, were significantly corre-
lated to English sentence repetition scores but not to Spanish sentence repetition
scores, indicating that language-specific lexical skills play an important role in sen-
tence repetition. Future studies exploring the nature of the errors produced by Latino
Spanish-speaking preschoolers during sentence repetition in both the strong and
weak languages will additionally shed light on the knowledge and strategies used by
these young learners.
Appendix A
Examples of the sentence repetition task target sentences
Spanish
El pájaro vuela sobre los árboles. [The bird flies over the trees.]
La señora come pan con mantequilla. [The woman eats bread with butter.]
La mamá le da un carro al hijito. [The mom gives a car to his little son.]
English
The boy walks to school with his friend every day.
The child watches a long movie on TV.
The father sends a note to his family.
References
Alloway, T. P., & Gathercole, S. E. (2005). The role of sentence recall in reading and language
skills of children with learning difficulties. Learning and Individual Differences, 15,
271–282.
Barrueco, S., López, M. L., Ong, C. A., & Lozano, P. (2012). Assessing Spanish-English bilingual
preschoolers: A guide to best measures and approaches. Baltimore: Brookes Publishing.
Briscoe, J., Bishop, D. V. M., & Norbury, C. F. (2001). Phonological processing, language and
literacy: A comparison of children with mild to moderate sensori-neural hearing loss and those
with specific language impairment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 42,
329–340.
Casalini, C., Brizzolara, D., Chilosi, A., Cipriani, P., Marcolini, S., Pecini, C., Roncoli, S., &
Burani, C. (2007). Nonword repetition in children with specific language impairment: A deficit
in phonological working memory or in long-term verbal knowledge? Cortex, 43, 769–776.
language impairment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 6, 741–748.
Dollaghan, C., & Campbell, T. F. (1998). Nonword repetition and child language impairment.
Ebert, K. D. (2014). Role of auditory non-verbal working memory in sentence repetition for bilin-
gual children with primary language impairment. International Journal of Language &
Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. (2013). America’s children: Key
national indicators of well-being, 2013. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Gathercole, S. E., & Baddeley, A. D. (1989). Evaluation of the role of phonological STM in the
development of vocabulary in children: A longitudinal study. Journal of Memory and Language,
28, 200–213.
Specific Language Impairment (SLI). International Journal of Language and Communication
Disorders, 42, 59–75.
Guiberson, M., & Rodriguez, B. L. (2013). Classification accuracy of nonword repetition when
used with preschool-age Spanish-speaking children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services
in Schools, 44(2), 121–132.
Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. F., & Kreiter, J. (2003). Understanding child bilingual acquisition using par-
ent and teacher reports. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 267–288.
Gutiérrez-Clellen, V., & Simon-Cereijido, G. (2010). Using nonword repetition tasks for the iden-
tification of language impairment in Spanish-English speaking children: Does the language of
assessment matter? Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 25(1), 48–58.
Kaufman, A. S., & Kaufman, N. L. (2004). Kaufman assessment battery for children (2nd ed.).
Circle Pines: AGS Publishing.
Klem, M., Melvig-Lervag, M., Hagtvet, B., Halaas Lyster, S.-A., Gustafsson, J.-E., & Hulme, C.
(2015). Sentence repetition is a measure of children’s language skills rather than working
memory limitations. Development Science, 18(1), 146–154.
Language and Reading Research Consortium. (2015). The dimensionality of Spanish in young
Spanish-English dual language learners. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research,
58, 754–766.
Mac Whinney, B., Feldman, H., Sacco, K., & Valdes-Perez, R. (2000). Online measures of basic
language skills in children with early focal brain lesions. Brain and Language, 71(3),
400–431.
Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, where are you? New York: Dial Books for Young Readers.
Miller, J., & Iglesias, A. (2006). Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT), English &
Spanish (Version 9). Madison: Language Analysis Lab, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Miranda, J. P., & Valencia, R. R. (1997). English and Spanish versions of a memory test: Word-
length effects versus spoken-duration effects. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 19(2),
171–181.
Newcomer, P. L., & Hammill, D. D. (1997). Test of language development. Primary (3rd edn)
(TOLD-P:3). Austin: Pro-Ed.
Peña, E. D., Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. F., Iglesias, A., Goldstein, B., & Bedore, L. M. (2014). Bilingual
English Spanish Assessment (BESA). San Rafael: AR-Clinical Publications.
Polišenská, K., Chiat, S., & Roy, P. (2015). Sentence repetition: What does the task measure?
doi:10.1111/1460-6984.12126.
Poll, G. H., Miller, C. A., Mainela-Arnold, E., Adams, K. D., Misra, M., & Park, J. S. (2013).
Effects of children’s working memory capacity and processing speed on their sentence imita-
tion performance. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 48(3),
329–342.
Sahlén, B., Reuterskiöld-Wagner, C., Nettelbladt, U., & Radeborg, K. (1999). Nonword repetition
in children with language impairment – Pitfalls and possibilities. International Journal of
Language and Communication Disorders, 34, 337–352.
Seeff-Gabriel, B., Chiat, S., & Dodd, B. (2010). Sentence imitation as a tool in identifying expres-
sive morphosyntactic difficulties in children with severe speech difficulties. International
Smolík, F., & Vávrů, P. (2014). Sentence imitation as a marker of SLI in Czech: Disproportionate
impairment of verbs and clitics. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57(3),
837–849.
Stokes, S. F., Wong, A., Fletcher, P., & Leonard, L. B. (2006). Nonword repetition and sentence
repetition as clinical markers of specific language impairment: The case of Cantonese. Journal
of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49, 219–236.
Summers, C., Bohman, T. M., Gillam, R. B., Peña, E. D., & Bedore, L. M. (2010). Bilingual per-
formance on nonword repetition in Spanish and English. International Journal of Language &
Tomblin, J. B., & Zhang, X. (2006). The dimensionality of language ability in school-age children.
Journal of Speech, Language, & Hearing Research, 49(6), 1193–1208.
doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2006/086).
VânHoàng, T., Schelstraete, M. A., Trần, Q. D., & Bragard, A. (2014). La répétition de phrases en
vietnamien–un marqueur des troubles du langage oral et des troubles du comportement.
Sentence repetition in Vietnamese-a marker of oral language and behavioral difficulties.
Canadian Journal of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, 37(4), 280–297.
Vicari, S., Caselli, M. C., Gagliardi, C., Tonucci, F., & Volterra, V. (2002). Language acquisition in
special populations: A comparison between Down and Williams syndromes. Neuropsychologia,
40(13), 2461–2470.
Wiig, E.H., Semel, E., & Secord, W.A. (2013). Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals (5th
edn). Pearson.
Willis, C. S., & Gathercole, S. E. (2001). Phonological short-term memory contributions to sen-
tence processing in young children. Memory, 9, 349–364.
Windsor, J., Kohnert, K., Lobitz, K. F., & Pham, G. T. (2010). Cross-language nonword repetition
by bilingual and monolingual children. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology,
19(4), 298–310.
Woodcock, R. W. (1991). Woodcock language proficiency battery – Revised. Itasca: Riverside
Publishing.
Ziethe, A., Eysholdt, U., & Doellinger, M. (2013). Sentence repetition and digit span: Potential
markers of bilingual children with suspected SLI? Logopedics Phoniatrics Vocology, 38(1),
1–10.
The Role of Verb Semantic Representation
in Sentence Processing in Children with SLI
Llorenç Andreu and Mònica Sanz-Torrent
Abstract Background and rationale. Different lexical processing theories assume

that the recognition of a word leads to the automatic activation of a range of syntac-
tic and semantic knowledge that are relevant to the interpretation of language. In
this respect, the verb is a key word in language processing and in verbal representa-
tion. The activation of a verb includes various types of information (subcategoriza-
tion frame, argument structure, information on thematic roles and lexical-conceptual
information), which are activated in real time when a verb is retrieved in processes
of comprehension and language production. In specific terms, this information
plays an important role in the anticipation of information in processes of under-
standing and in the degree of correction in production tasks.
This chapter reviews various studies exploring the role of verb semantics and
argument structure in language comprehension and production tasks. We studied if
there are differences between receptive and expressive in children with SLI using
different methodologies. Moreover, we analyzed if verb semantics is impaired in
children with SLI and if we can found that the problems are due to impoverished
verb semantic representations or limitations in language processing.
Results and Discussion. The amount of information represented in verbs, and
their use in language comprehension and production tasks was analyzed in various
studies. Children with SLI showed more difficulties in language production than in
language comprehension. In receptive language, although the results vary depend-
ing on the task, it can be said that children with SLI have incomplete semantic rep-
resentations for verbs which affect processing times, correct naming and the
omission of arguments. Furthermore, the results show that lexical-semantic repre-
sentations by children with SLI are similar to those among younger children, and as
such it would be more accurate to describe it in terms of a pattern of delay rather
than a disorder.
L. Andreu (*)
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: landreu@uoc.edu
M. Sanz-Torrent
Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: mariomandujano@gmail.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_11
218 L. Andreu and M. Sanz-Torrent
Results show that children with SLI present longer processing times, lower lev-
els of correction in naming and larger percentages of omission of verbal arguments
compared to the control children. These results suggest that children with SLI have
incomplete semantic representations of verbs.
Keywords Specific language impairment • Verb representation • Language com-

prehension • Language production • Eye tracking
1 Introduction
1.1 Verb Semantic Representation
As individuals, we represent the world based on our experiences. Although there are
various theories about how we encode, store and retrieve this information, there is a
broad consensus that the more experience we have of a phenomenon, the more
information we have about it. Concepts play a key role in the representation that we
have about the world. Concepts are constructs or mental images which we use to
understand the experiences that emerge from our interaction with our surroundings.
For example, if we think about the concept of “dog”, various associated pieces of
information come to mind, such as images, experiences and encyclopedic informa-
tion about their characteristics, food, habits, etc.
Most lexical processing theories assume that the recognition of a word leads to
the automatic activation of a series of syntactic and semantic items of knowledge
which are relevant to the interpretation of language and reference (Carlson and
Tanenhaus 1988; Marslen-Wilson 2007; Moss et al. 2007; Seidenberg 2007). This
lexical knowledge includes information about the syntactic category (e.g. noun,
verb, adjective), syntactic combinatorial information (the number and types of syn-
tactic complements that a word requires) and non-combinatorial semantic informa-
tion (animate-inanimate, concrete-abstract, etc.) and combinatorial semantic
information (the number and types of thematic roles it requires).
Verbs differ from nouns in this respect. While nouns refer to objects that remain
constant in time and space, verbs refer to states, actions or processes which may
vary in time and space. Verbs not only specify the type of action, but also the exis-
tence of other elements in a phrase (Bishop 1997). For example, the verb to kill
implies someone who performs the execution (the agent) and a recipient of the
action (the patient). Conversely, verbs such as to run only require an agent.
Various theories have tried to explain how the lexical information of verbs is
organized. Most argue that there are four types of information which characterize
the lexical representation of the verb in one way or another: subcategorization
frames, argument structure, thematic roles and lexical-conceptual information
(Shapiro and Nagel 1995):
A. Subcategorization frames: This is the information that determines which of the particular
participants in a verb should be expressed syntactically. Let us consider, for example, the
The Role of Verb Semantic Representation in Sentence Processing in Children with SLI 219
Fig. 1 Verbs with one (fly), two (catch) and three arguments (tie)
verb to give in the following phrases: (1a) John gave his brother a present / (1b) John gave
a present to his brother. This verb must syntactically specify two entities, which can be
expressed in two ways. These syntactic requirements are specified in two subcategorization
frames:
give [_ NP PP]:John gave a present to his brother
give [_ PP NP]:John gave his brother a present
B. Argument structure: This specifies the number of participants requiring the “action” that
the verb describes. For example, if we take the verbs “to fly”, “to catch” and “to tie” (see
Fig. 1) we can see that while the verb to fly only needs to specify one participant (the entity
that flies), the verb to catch needs two (the entity that catches and the entity that is caught)
and the verb to tie needs three (the entity that ties, the entity that is tied and the entity that
receives the action of tying). For this reason, we talk in terms of verbs with one, two or three
arguments and intransitive, transitive and ditransitive verbs, respectively. Arguments can
also be obligatory or adjunct. If we consider the sentence (1c) the chef cooks the chicken in
a pot in the garden we can see that while the chef and the chicken are obligatory arguments
pot and in the garden are optional elements that may or may not be mentioned without the
phrase losing its complete meaning.
C. Thematic roles: These specify the semantic role that each participant plays in the action
described by the verb. Each argument has a semantic function in the statement (agent,
theme, patient, goal, experience, etc.). For example, in the phrase 1c (the chef cooks the
chicken in a pot in the garden), the chef assumes the thematic role of agent as he performs
the action, and the chicken is the patient as it undergoes the action. Furthermore, the pot
adopts the role of an instrument as it is the tool used to perform the action and the garden
is the location because it specifies where the action takes place (see Fig. 2). Each verb
selects different thematic roles that are assigned to its arguments. A verb’s thematic roles
are called a thematic network. In this situation, the verb “to cook” involves the following
thematic network:
[NP <Agent>] cook [NP <Patient>][NP <Instrument>] [NP <Location>]
D. Lexical-conceptual information: In addition to the number of arguments, their thematic
roles and the syntactic structure with which they can be specified, the activation of the verb
includes lexical-conceptual information about the semantic restrictions or features that the
arguments of the verb must comply with. This information reflects real-world knowledge about
the events, entities and objects involved in these events. In our everyday experience, we learn
that certain entities and objects can play roles in certain events. For example, we can drink
water or beer, but we cannot drink wood. However, in a context like the child drinks... our
experience tells us that the most appropriate theme is water, although beer is also drinkable.
All this information, represented in the semantics of the verb, plays a crucial role
in the processes of language comprehension and production. In the comprehension
Fig. 2 Thematic network of the verb “to cook”
of language, the semantics of the verb enables anticipation of subsequent informa-

tion, facilitating processing time. An example is when we hear the phrase the dog
chases... When we hear the verb “to chase,” we activate all the associated informa-
tion which tells us that it is followed by a prepositional syntagma (subcategorization
frame), which necessarily requires one argument more (argument structure), that
this argument will have the thematic role of patient, and that this argument must
comply with various lexical-semantic restrictions, such as being a living being,
being able to run away, etc. Our experience will even allow us to conclude that a
good candidate can be a cat (e.g. Shapiro 2003).
Meanwhile, in language production, the verb’s representation plays a crucial role
in specifying both the number of arguments that accompany the verb, their thematic
roles, their syntactic expression and the lexical selection of the specific words. For
example, if a speaker wants to say a phrase containing the verb “to catch”, the rep-
resentation must specify two arguments (argument structure) that will have the the-
matic roles of agent and theme, and will be specified by the following
subcategorization frame: [NP] catches [NP]. In addition, both the agent and the
theme must be animate entities in most of the situations. Good candidates to fulfill
these functions are “fisherman” and “fish”. We can therefore produce the following
sentence: The fisherman catches the fish.
2 Verb Semantic Representation in Children with SLI
Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is characterized by developmental delays in

verbal abilities that can affect both expressive and receptive language (Bishop 1997;
Leonard 2014). SLI is a developmental language disorder in the absence of clear
neurological, sensori-motor, non-verbal cognitive or social emotional deficits. Verbs
are an area of particular difficulty for children with SLI (Bishop 1997; Conti-
Ramsden and Jones 1997; Verhoeven and Van Balkom 2004). They show a substan-
tial delay in the use and understanding of verbs and functional morphology among
other deficits. The language of SLI children is characterized by having greater than
normal misuse and dropping of inflectional morphology (−s, −ed) and closed class
function words (the, a, etc.) (Leonard 1998; Leonard et al. 1997; Rice and Bode
1993; Rice and Wexler 1996, 1997; Rice et al. 1995).
Despite these problems related to verbs, there are as yet few studies on semantic
representation in verbs in children with SLI. Some studies have found that these
children present a deficit or immaturity in semantic representations (Dockrell et al.
2003; Thordardottir and Weismer 2002; Sheng and McGregor 2010). This interpre-
tation is based on the observation that children with SLI have more naming prob-
lems with pictures, as they are slower and make more errors (e.g., Lahey and
Edwards 1996; Leonard et al. 1983; Royle et al. 2002). Bjorklund (1987) argued
that the content and organization of semantic memory influence the ease with which
information can be retrieved. He postulated that lexical items that are strongly coded
in terms of their semantic features and semantic relationships have lower activation
thresholds during retrieval. Based on this idea, Kail and Leonard (1986) proposed
the storage hypothesis as an explanation for naming problems in children with
SLI. McGregor et al. (2002) found deficiencies in children with SLI when perform-
ing three tasks (naming, drawing and definition). They attributed these deficits to
limited semantics, taking into account that the most common mistakes that arose in
naming tasks were semantic errors (McGregor and Appel 2002). Moreover, a study
of ERP in children with SLI showed that they have weaker semantic-lexical repre-
sentations of verbs and selection restrictions than their age-matched controls
(Sabisch et al. 2006).
There are few studies on the processing of verb semantics in children with SLI
and most of them focus on language production. Most of these studies were carried
out in English and their results are often contradictory. While some studies find that
children with SLI make similar omissions and errors in the production of arguments
compared to age controls (Lee 1976; Rice and Bode 1993) other studies have sug-
gested that children with SLI have particular problems with verb argument struc-
ture. These studies showed that children with SLI use significantly fewer argument
types (i.e., thematic roles), argument structure types (i.e. verbs with different
argument structure: intransitive, transitive and ditransitive verbs) and verb alterna-
tions than age-matched children (Thordardottir and Weismer 2002); they have more
omission of obligatory arguments compared to age-matched controls (Fletcher
1991; Grela 2003; Grela and Leonard 1997) and errors in a much wider variety of
verbs compared to MLU controls (King and Fletcher 1993). Moreover, de Jong
(1999) showed that children with SLI produced fewer verbs and that the comple-
ments they used were not very diverse or complex.
On the other hand, only a small number of studies have analyzed the use of
adjuncts is children with SLI. Fletcher and Garman (1988) examined the use of
adjuncts expressing time, location or manner of action in the spontaneous speech of
typically developing children and those with SLI. The SLI group used temporal
adverbials less than typically developing children when the context did not provide
cues that specified reference time. Wren (1982) found adverbials (in addition to
inflections) to be one of the major elements that distinguished a group of children
with SLI from age controls. Johnston and Kamhi (1984) found adverbials to be used
less frequently by a group of children with SLI than by a group of MLU controls.
These findings do not clearly point to a single source of verb-related problems.
Some of the problems could be due to strictly lexical limitations such as incomplete
information in the verb’s lemma or lexical concept, but the adjunct difficulties sug-
gest that limitations could not have been caused by the verb.
Although there is a general consensus on the linguistic profile of SLI, there is
considerable debate regarding the argument structure or thematic difficulties in chil-
dren with SLI. Broadly speaking, two classes of explanations exist in current litera-
ture. On the one hand, some investigations attribute these difficulties to deficits or
immaturities in semantic representations (e.g. Thordardottir and Weismer 2002).
This interpretation is based on the idea that the degree of knowledge represented in
children’s verb lexicon generates that children with SLI exhibit more argument
omissions, fewer thematic relations, argument structure types and verb alternatives
compared with their peers (e.g. Thordardottir and Weismer 2002). Thordardottir and
Weismer (2002) analyzed speech samples from 50 children with SLI. They found
that children with SLI used significantly fewer argument types, argument structure
types, and verb alternations than age-matched children with normal language (NL).
They suggested that these differences were not merely attributable to production
limitations such as utterance length but can be due to an incomplete verb
representation.
In contrast, other accounts of the difficulties in argument structure in children
with SLI attribute these deficits to processing limitations (Weismer et al. 1999,
Leonard 1998; Miller et al. 2001; Montgomery 2000). In support of this account,
several studies have emphasized that children with SLI are slower in the amount of
work that can be accomplished in a given unit of time. Consequently, the more the
linguistic complexity of the sentences increased, the more difficulties children with
SLI exhibit. From this perspective, Grela (2003) analyzed the omission of subject
arguments in English-speaking children with SLI. Participants were asked to pro-
duce sentences of varied argument structure complexity using a story completion
task. The results indicated that both children with SLI and MLU controls omitted
more grammatical subject arguments in ditransitive sentences than in sentences
with intransitive and transitive verbs. In addition, more children with SLI omitted
subjects as the linguistic complexity of the sentence increased. This effect was not
found for the control children who never omitted subjects, regardless of increases in
argument structure complexity. Grela argued that these results support the notion
that grammatical errors in both children with SLI and their younger, typical coun-
terparts may be due to problems with processing complex linguistic information
rather than with limitations in linguistic knowledge. Pizzioli and Schelstraete (2008)
studied the effect of argument-structure complexity in French children with
SLI. They showed that more complex argument structures elicited the highest num-
ber of grammatical morpheme omissions and that this effect was independent of
sentence length. The authors suggested that this data supports the hypothesis that
grammatical-morpheme deficit in children with SLI depends at least in part on lim-
ited processing capacities.
3 The Present Studies
This chapter reviews various studies conducted by our research group to explore the
role of verb semantics and the argument structure in language comprehension and
production tasks. We studied if there are differences between receptive and expres-
sive language. Moreover, we analyzed if verb semantics is impaired in children with
SLI and if we can found that the problems are due to impoverished verb semantic
representations or limitations in language processing.
For language comprehension, in Andreu et al. (2012a) we analyzed auditory rec-
ognition of nouns and verbs in children with and without specific language impair-
Fig. 3 Example of stimulus from Andreu et al. (2012a)

ment. In this study 25 children with SLI (5;3–8;2 years) and 50 children with typical
development (3;3–8;2 years), distributed in two groups (age-matched controls and
MLU-w controls) participated in an eye-tracking experiment of spoken language
comprehension to compare the dynamics of spoken word recognition for nouns and
verbs in Spanish. The participants heard a word (noun or verb) while looking at an
image with four pictures, representing two nouns and two verbs (see Fig. 3).
Listeners’ eye movements were recorded as they searched an array of pictures in
response to hearing a noun or verb.
With their gaze, they had to find the picture that represented the word they heard
as quickly as possible. In an unpublished study with adults the results showed that
the recognition time increased as the argument structure increased. Figure 4 shows
the proportion of gazes at the target reference over time. As we can see, the partici-
pants recognized nouns (n0) more quickly than verbs with one argument (v1) and
verbs with two (v2) and three arguments (v3). Also, there were differences among
verb types.
However, the children with SLI showed a pattern that was different (see Fig. 5)
to the adults and the age-matched controls, but similar to their MLU-w controls
(who are younger children). Concretely, children with SLI and the MLU-w control
group didn’t show that the proportion of looks increased as the number of argu-
ments also increased. These results were interpreted as evidence that children with
SLI have poorer semantic representations than their age-matched controls, and sim-
ilar semantic representations to those of younger children.
Based on this observation, we attempted to analyze which aspect of verb seman-
tics was poorly represented among children with SLI. In another study of receptive
language (Andreu et al. 2016), in the context of phrases, we analyzed if children use
verbs to predict arguments and adjuncts in sentence comprehension. To that end, 25
children with SLI and fifty children with typical development were selected and
divided into two groups (age-matched controls and MLU-w controls), together with
31 adults. The participants listened to 24 phrases, such as the man carefully read a
book in bed, in the presence of an image with four drawings, one of which was the
1
0.9
0.8
Proporon of gazes
0.7 n0
0.6 v1
0.5 v2
0.4 v3
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
114
133
152
171
190
209
228
247
266
285
304
323
342
361
380
399
418
437
456
475
0
19
38
57
76
95
Samples (120 samples/second)
Fig. 4 Adult’s recognition times for nouns and verbs with different argument structure
1
0.9
0.8
Proporon of gazes
0.7 n0
0.6 v1
0.5 v2
0.4 v3
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
100
120
140
160
180
200
220
240
260
280
300
320
340
360
380
400
420
440
460
480
0
20
40
60
80
Samples (1 20 samples/second)
Fig. 5 Results for children with SLI in Andreu et al. (2012a)
target the book), another was the competitor (the bed) and two distractors (a ball and
a grape). There were four conditions used in the study:
–– Transitive verb/Theme: La niña come despacio la tarta con la cuchara (Pictures:
Target: tarta; Competitor: cuchara; Distractors: sombrero, dinosaurio). [The girl
slowly eats the cake with the spoon. Pictures: T: cake; C: spoon, D: hat,
dinosaur].
In this condition, the verb requires a theme (argument) and the natural position
in Spanish for the theme is after the verb. We put two adjuncts in the sentence: a
locative or an instrument.
–– Verb of motion/Source-Goal: El hombre entra despacio en casa con la maleta
(Pictures: Target: casa; Competitor: maleta; Distractor: luna, tractor). [The man
slowly enters the house with the suitcase. Pictures: T: house; C: suitcase; D:
moon, tractor].
Verbs of motion require a location after the verb to express the source of a goal
(arguments) of the event. In this condition, we also included a locative or comitative
(adjuncts) as a competitor.
–– Verb of action/Instrument: La mujer esquía deprisa con el trineo por la montaña
(Pictures: Target: trineo; Competitor: montaña; Distractor: vaso, playa). [The
woman skis down the mountain fast with the sled. Pictures: T: sled; C: mountain;
D: cup, beach].
In the verb of action condition, the verb requires an instrument (argument). We
did not select verbs of action or instruments that had the same root (serrar-sierra [to
saw-saw]). Moreover, we introduced a locative (adjunct).
–– Intransitive verb/Locative: La niña duerme siempre en la cama con el osito
(Pictures: Target: cama; Competitor: osito; Distractor: árbol, bombilla). [The
girl always sleeps in bed with a teddy bear. Pictures: T: bed; C: teddy bear; D:
tree, bulb].
In this condition, we selected intransitive verbs and locatives (adjuncts) that had
strong semantic relationships amongst each other. These locatives were then typical
locatives for the verb. Moreover, we chose instruments and comitatives as
competitors.
Eye movements were recorded in order to compare the real-time allocation of
these thematic roles. The results (see Fig. 6) showed that all groups had greater
anticipation of “Themes”, “Sources/Goals” and “Instruments” than of “Locations”.
In addition, children with SLI did not differ from their controls.
For this reason, we believe that the representation of thematic roles does not
appear to be affected in children with SLI in sentence comprehension. We then
focused on analyzing whether the lexical-conceptual information associated with
the verb’s semantics was poorly represented compared to children of the same age.
0.5
Adults Control Age
MLU SLI
0.4
0.3
Mean proportion
0.2
0.1
0
Locative
Locative
Themes
Instruments
Themes
Instruments
Source/Goal
Source/Goal
Verb window Adverb window
Fig. 6 Mean proportion of looks at Theme (te), Instrument (it), Locative (la) and Source/Goal
(lm) referents binned into the verb and adverb window by group
In Andreu et al. (2013) we analyzed the use of typicality (i.e., knowledge of the
world to anticipate post-verbal arguments). To that end, 25 children with SLI and 50
children with typical development were selected and divided into two groups (age-
matched controls and MLU-p controls), together with 31 adults. The participants
took part in three experiments, in which they heard phrases like the girl quickly
scares the cat in the presence of an image with four drawings. In some of the experi-
ments, typical and atypical arguments were presented either in different visual stim-
uli, or in the same visual stimuli; in other words, participants appeared as arguments
of the verb with a high frequency or low frequency locatives (for example, the
woman climbs slowly the stairs is more frequent that the woman climbs slowly the
mountain).
The results showed that children with SLI were sensitive to typicality, as they
anticipated the typical post-verbal arguments to a greater extent than the atypical
arguments (see Fig. 7). However, they presented lower gaze anticipation values than
their age-matched controls but similar to those of their MLU-p controls. Thus, we
can deduce that they have lexical-conceptual information associated with verbs
similar to that of younger children.
We have also examined language production (Andreu et al. 2012b) in picture
naming, focusing on accuracy and latency for nouns and for verbs with different
argument structures. The participants in this study were 24 children with SLI
Fig. 7 The proportion of looks to the target and distractor objects over time from sentence onset
for adults (a), age-matched control children (b), mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched control
children (c), and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) (d) from experiment 2 in
Andreu et al. (2013)
Fig. 8 Latency time results
Fig. 9 Results of percentage of correct answers
(5;3–8;2 years) and 48 children with typical development (3;3–8;2 years), distributed
in two groups (age-matched controls and MLU-p controls), as well as 31 adults. The
participants were shown 36 images depicting 18 nouns and 18 verbs (six of one, six
of two and six of three arguments). The results are shown in Figs. 8 and 9.
In all groups, latency times increased as the semantic load of the words
increased. Nouns were thus named faster than verbs, and verbs required more time
as their argument structure increased. However, children with SLI exhibited a dif-
ferent pattern. Unlike the other groups, the latency time was no longer for verbs
with three arguments than for those with two. The percentage of correct answers
was higher for nouns and verbs in all groups. In addition, all the groups produced
fewer correct answers in verbs with two and three arguments than in verbs with one
argument. However, no differences were found between verbs with two and three
arguments in any group. Regarding the differences between groups, children with
SLI had longer latencies overall and fewer correct answers than the age-matched
controls, but similar accuracy and latency compared to the MLU-p controls. We
conclude that children with SLI have delayed naming of verbs and this may be due
to reduced semantic representation, similar to that found in younger children.
In three studies (Sanz-Torrent et al. 2011) we analyzed verb production and argu-
ment structure in children with SLI using different methodologies. The first was an
observational study that uses samples of spontaneous speech. The second was an
experimental task involving the naming of sentences as a result of watching videos
of actions. Finally, the third involved a naming task with static images of events
with different argument complexities. Although the specific data varied according to
the methodology used, there is clear evidence that children with SLI have particular
difficulties in producing highly complex verbs in relation to argument structure, and
that they make mistakes when specifying obligatory arguments.
Finally, we have investigated the formulation of verb argument structure in
Catalan- and Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI)
and typically developing age-matched controls (Andreu et al. 2013). Eleven chil-
dren with SLI (aged 3;8 to 6;6) and eleven control children participated in an eye-
tracking experiment in which participants had to describe events with different
argument structure in the presence of visual scenes. Picture descriptions, latency
time and eye movements were recorded and analyzed. The picture description
results showed that the percentage of responses in which children with SLI
substituted a non-target verb for the target verb was significantly different from that
of the control group. Children with SLI made more omissions of obligatory argu-
ments, especially of themes, as the verb argument complexity increased (Fig. 10).
In addition, children with SLI showed more omissions in the thematic role of the
theme (see Fig. 11).
When the number of arguments of the verb increased, the children took more
time to begin their descriptions, but no differences were found between the groups.
For verb types, all children were significantly faster to start describing one-argument
events than two- and three-argument events. No differences were found in latency
between two- and three-argument events. There were no significant differences
between the groups. The children with SLI looked less at the event zone than the
age-matched controls during the first two seconds. These differences between the
groups were significant for three-argument verbs, and only marginally significant
for one- and two-argument verbs. Children with SLI also spent significantly less
time looking at the theme zones than their age-matched controls. We suggested that
both processing limitations and deficits in the semantic representation of verbs may
play a role in these difficulties.
Argument omissions
100
80
Percentage (%)
60 SLI
Control Age
40
20
0
One argument Two arguments Three arguments
Verb argument structure
Fig. 10 Percentage of arguments omitted (asterisk: p < 0.05)
Argument omissions
100
80
Percentage (%)
60 SLI
40 Control Age
20
0
Agent Theme Recipient
Thematic roles
Fig. 11 Percentage of thematic roles omitted (asterisk: p < 0.05)
4 Conclusions
This chapter analyzed the verb semantic representation by children with SLI and
their role in language processing. The amount of information represented in verbs,
and their use in language comprehension and production tasks was analyzed in vari-
ous studies. Children with SLI showed more difficulties in language production
than in language comprehension. In receptive language, although the results vary
depending on the task, it can be said that children with SLI have incomplete seman-
tic representations for verbs which affect processing times, correct naming and the
omission of arguments. Furthermore, the results show that lexical-semantic repre-
sentations by children with SLI are similar to those among younger children, and as
such it would be more accurate to describe them in terms of a pattern of delay rather
than a disorder.
Future research should focus on exploring verbs’ semantics and their influence
in sentence comprehension and production. Children with SLI seem to have more
problems in language production than in language comprehension. Further studies
should examine the underlying causes of these differences.
References
Andreu, L., Sanz-Torrent, M., & Guàrdia, J. (2012a). Auditory word recognition of nouns and
verbs in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Journal of Communication
Disorders, 45(1), 20–34.
Andreu, L., Sanz-Torrent, M., Buil, L., & MacWhinney, B. (2012b). Effect of verb argument struc-
ture on picture naming in children with and without specific language impairment (SLI).
International Journal of Communication Disorders, 47(6), 637–653.
Andreu, L., Sanz-Torrent, M., & Trueswell, J. (2013). Anticipatory sentence processing in children
with SLI: Evidence from eye movements during listening. Applied PsychoLinguistics, 34,
5–44.
Andreu, L., Sanz-Torrent, M., & Rodríguez-Ferreiro, J. (2016). Do children with SLI use verbs to
predict arguments and adjuncts: Evidence from eye movements during listening. Frontiers in
Psychology, 6, 1917. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01917.
Bishop, D. (1997). Uncommon understanding. London: Psychology Press.
Bjorklund, D. F. (1987). How age changes in knowledge base contribute to the development of
children's memory: An interpretive review. Developmental Review, 7, 93–130.
Carlson, G., & Tanenhaus, M. (1988). Thematic roles and language comprehension. In W. Wilkins
(Ed.), Thematic relations. New York: Academic Press.
Conti-Ramsden, G., & Jones, M. (1997). Verb use in specific language impairment. Journal of
Speech and Hearing Research, 40, 1298–1313.
de Jong, J. (1999). Specific language impairment in Dutch: Inflectional morphology and argument
structure. Enxchede: Print Partners Ipskamp.
Dockrell, J. E., Messer, D., George, R., & Ralli, A. (2003). Beyond naming patterns in children
with WFDs–definitions for nouns and verbs. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 16, 191–211.
Fletcher, P. (1991). Evidence from syntax for language impairment. In Miller (Ed.), Research on
child language disorders (pp. 167–187). Austin: Pro-Ed.
Fletcher, P., & Garman, M. (1988). Normal language development and language impairment:
Syntax and beyond. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 2, 97–114.
Grela, B. G. (2003). The omission of subject arguments in children with Specific Language
Impairment. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 17(2), 153–169.
Grela, B. G., & Leonard, L. B. (1997). The use of subject arguments by children with specific
language impairment. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 11, 443–453.
Johnston, J., & Kamhi, A. (1984). Syntactic and semantic aspects of the utterances of language-
impaired children: The same can be less. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 30, 65–85.
Kail, R., & Leonard, L. B. (1986). Word-finding abilities in language-impaired children, ASHA
Monographs, No. 25. Rockville: American Speech-Language Hearing Association.
King, G., & Fletcher, P. (1993). Grammatical problems in school-age children with specific lan-
guage impairment. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 7, 339–352.
Lahey, M., & Edwards, J. (1996). Why do children with specific language impairment name pic-
tures more slowly than their peers? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 39,
1081–1098.
Law, J., Boyle, J., Harris, F., Harkness, A., & Nye, C. (2000). Prevalence and neutral story of pri-
mary speech and language delay: Findings from a systematic review of the literature.
International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders, 35, 165–188.
Lee, L. (1976). Normal and atypical semantic development. Unpublished manuscript, Northwestern
University.
Leonard, L. (1998). Specific language impairment. London: The MIT Press.
Leonard, L. (2014). Specific language impairment. Second edition. London: The MIT Press.
Leonard, L. B., Nippold, M. A., Kail, R., & Hale, C. A. (1983). Picture naming in language-
impaired children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 26, 609–615.
Leonard, L., Eyer, J., Bedore, L., & Grela, B. (1997). Three accounts of the grammatical mor-
pheme difficulties of English-speaking children with specific language impairment. Journal of
Speech and Hearing Research, 40, 741–753.
Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2007). Morphological processes in language comprehension. In G. Gaskell
(Ed.), Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 175–193). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McGregor, K. K., & Appel, A. (2002). On the relation between mental representation and naming
in a child with specific language impairment. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 16, 1–20.
McGregor, K. K., Newman, R. M., Reilly, R. M., & Capone, N. (2002). Semantic representation
and naming in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and
Miller, C., Kail, R., Leonard, L., & Tomblin, B. (2001). Speed of processing in children with spe-
cific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44(2),
416–433.
Montgomery, J. (2000). Verbal working memory and sentence comprehension in children with
specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 43(2),
293–308.
Moss, H. E., Tyler, L. K., & Taylor, K. I. (2007). Conceptual structure. In G. Gaskell (Ed.), Oxford
handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 217–234). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pizzioli, F., & Schelstraete, M. A. (2008). The argument-structure complexity effect in children
with specific language impairment: Evidence from the use of grammatical morphemes in
French. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 51, 706–721.
Rice, M., & Bode, J. (1993). GAPS in the verb lexicons of children with specific language impair-
ment. First Language, 13, 113–131.
Rice, M., & Wexler, K. (1996). Toward tense as a clinical marker of a Specific Language Impairment
in English speaking children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 39,
1239–1257.
Rice, M., & Wexler, K. (1997). Highly specified and long-term grammatical deficits appear in
children with language impairments. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT.
Rice, M., Wexler, K., & Cleave, P. (1995). Specific language impairment as a period of extended
optional infinitives. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 38(850–863), 1995.
Royle, P., Jarema, G., & Kehayia, E. (2002). Frequency effects on visual word access in develop-
mental language impairment. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 15, 11–41.
Sabish, B., Hahne, A., Glass, E., von Suchodoletz, W., & Friederici, A. (2006). Lexical-semantic
processes in children with specific language impairment. Neuroreport, 17, 1511–1514.
Sanz-Torrent, M., Andreu, L., Badia, I., & Sidera, F. (2011). Argument omissions in preschool
Catalan and Spanish speaking children with SLI. Infancia y Aprendizaje, 34(1), 49–66.
Seidenberg, M. S. (2007). Connectionist models of reading. In G. Gaskell (Ed.), Oxford handbook
of psycholinguistics (pp. 235–250). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shapiro, L. P. (2003). Argument structure: Representation and processing. In R. Kent (Ed.), The
encyclopedia of communication sciences and disorders. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Shapiro, L. P., & Nagel, H. N. (1995). Lexical properties, prosody, and syntax: Implications for
normal and disordered language. Brain and Language, 50, 240–257.
Sheng, L., & McGregor, K. (2010). Object and action naming in children with specific language
impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 1704–1719.
Thordardottir, E., & Weismer, S. E. (2002). Verb argument structure weakness in specific language
impairment in relation to age and utterance length. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 16(4),
233–250.
Verhoeven, A. L., & Van Balkom, J. (2004). Classification of developmental language disorders.
Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Weismer, S. E., Evans, J., & Hesketh, L. (1999). An examination of verbal working memory capac-
ity in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing
Research, 42, 1249–1260.
Wren, C. (1982). Identifying patterns of processing disorder in six-year-old children with syntax
problems. British Journal of Disorders of Communication, 17(3), 83–92.
Self-Repair Timing of Lexical Problem
Sources: A Window into Primary Language
Impairment Online Processing
Wendy Fabiola Lara Galindo and Cecilia Rojas-Nieto
Abstract Primary Language Impairment (PLI) is a disorder involving both cognitive

and linguistic aspects. Indexes of this impairment emerge along conversation when
PLI children experience lexical access and production problems, and display succes-
sive attempts to solve them by self-repair processes. This chapter focuses on the prob-
lem sources, repair strategies, delay markers, and time PLI children take in giving a
repair solution at a lexical level compared to Typical Language Development (TLD)
control pairs. PLI and TLD children’s repair solution time (RST) may be affected by
the complexity of problem-sources being repaired (nominal, verbal or functional tar-
gets), repair strategy (lexical searches, replacements or lexical reformulations), and
number and types of delay markers used. Analysis was realized on 12 h of conversa-
tions of six monolingual, Spanish-speaking Mexican children (ages 6;2 to 6;6, three
PLI and three age-matched TLD children). As expected, lexical searches were longer
in children with PLI (Mdn = 1910 ms, IQR = 970) than in TLD children (Mdn = 1195
ms, IQR = 3020). In addition, PLI group took longer to achieve a lexical target through
elaboration (Mdn = 540 ms, IQR = 670) than children with TLD (Mdn = 380, IQR =
910). These results suggest that both groups do monitoring activities of the same focal
aspects of language, but PLI children confine themselves to a more restricted dimen-
sion as syllable sequences. About lexical searches, PLI children do not conduct latent
searches and abruptly interrupt their discourse to insert the item they had previously
been unable to find. TLD group relied more on overt markers (isolated or joined), in
contrast to the more frequent pauses and immediate elaboration repairs in PLI chil-
dren. As for the differences in RST, although we did not find statistically significant
differences between the groups, (PLI: Mdn = 453 ms, IQR = 717; TLD: Mdn = 400
ms, IQR = 957.5); (U = 1410.50, p = 0.779), PLI children took longer time intervals
in preparing a repair solution in every grammatical category. This data could be related
to the evidence of unsettled lexical-semantic representations in PLI scholars.
Keywords Primary language impairment • Self-repairs • Repair solution time •

Problem source • Repair strategies • Repair markers
W.F. Lara Galindo (*) • C. Rojas-Nieto

e-mail: tatichoan@hotmail.com; crojas@servidor.unam.mx

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_12
236 W.F. Lara Galindo and C. Rojas-Nieto
1 Introduction
Recent studies on Primary Language Impairment (PLI), or Specific Language

Impairment (SLI), point out that in this type of disorder both language and cognitive
processing are disturbed. Research provide evidence that memory and speed pro-
cessing deficits are involved in diverse comprehension and production difficulties
found in this population. Lexical production in children with PLI has been a topic
of interest for psycholinguistic and neurolinguistics research, but also for less
experimental sciences like linguistics. From a linguistic perspective, we may count
with varied theoretical tools to approach granular qualitative analysis of disturbed
verbal productions of children with atypical language development. Along with this
line, this chapter assumes a view to the lexical problems, children with PLI experi-
ence in the course of spontaneous language interaction. Adopting an important topic
in conversation analysis, we focus on and discuss the importance of the time taken
to perform lexical self-repairs during a single turn in conversation to describe groups
with linguistic and language processing differences in general. We ask: (a) which
language-level factors are involved in the time taken to effect a self-repair?; (b)
is there or not a difference in the time taken to perform self-repairs between a group
of children with Primary Language Impairment (PLI) and their controls with Typical
Language Development (TLD); and (c) what can self-repair time tell us about gen-
eral cognitive processing?
2 The Problem
2.1 PLI and Lexical Processing
Children with Primary Language Impairment (PLI), or Specific Language

Impairment (SLI, a commonly used term), have atypical language development
reflected in both expression and understanding. This impairment, initially attributed
to specific syntactic problems has been proved to have a broad spectrum of difficul-
ties. Convincing evidence exists in order to show that children with PLI have pho-
nological, morpho-syntactic, lexico-syntactic and pragmatic difficulties (Bishop
2004), which have been attributed to deficits in working memory, processing speed
and attention (Bishop 2004; Finneran et al. 2009; Leonard et al. 2007; Lum et al.
2012; Montgomery et al. 2010). As for lexical deficits in particular, the language of
these children is characterized by displaying difficulties in word learning, lexical
access, item recovery, and also in establishing semantic relations between terms and
their use in specific contexts (Sheng and McGregor 2010).
Lexical processing involves a complex set of linguistic operations characterized
from different approaches including speech production and word recognition mod-
els. Based on the data obtained from experimental studies testing those models, it
has been possible to characterize lexical processing in a more detailed manner.
Self-Repair Timing of Lexical Problem Sources: A Window into Primary Language… 237
Typically, lexical processing has been described as automatic, comprising different

stages with varying modularity but a high degree of interaction, and input driven
(Montgomery 2002). For example, focusing on the production side, Levelt et al.
(1999) conceived the production of words as a set of stages, each one producing its
own representation as output. It begins with conceptual preparation, followed in
order by lexical selection, morpho-phonological encoding, syllabification, phonetic
encoding, and it ends with articulation. On the comprehension side, Marslen-
Wilson’s influential cohort model (1987, 1993), and the more recent distributed
model of speech perception (Gaskell and Marslen-Wilson 1997), have proposed that
word recognition begins at an autonomous, pre-lexical stage called acoustic-phonetic
analysis. This stage concludes with the activation of the stored lexical items that
coincide with perceived sensory representations (in about 150 milliseconds). In the
cohort model, once initial cohort has been obtained, lexical access occurs where
linguistic properties (e.g. syntactic, semantic) interact with the set of active lexical
items that have begun to compete, facilitating the inhibition of those that are incon-
sistent with context requirements. This process of facilitation, known as lexical
selection, ends with recognition of the item that best complies with the contextual
constraints. However, although acoustic-phonetic processing initiates the recogni-
tion process, subsequent stages may influence to the point where word recognition
may occur before this analysis is completed. This is acknowledged in the more
recent model of Gaskell and Marslen-Wilson (1997) due to the distributed nature of
lexical representations. Now it is assumed that perceived speech is continuously
mapped directly onto distributed representations of lexical knowledge (where pho-
nology or semantic knowledge is processed in parallel and accessed simultane-
ously). This implies that multiple lexical candidates can only be evaluated by their
influence on this level of representation, rather than at some independent stage of
competition (as formerly assumed in cohort). Since different lexical candidates will
generally have different lexical representations, it is suggested that they will inter-
fere with each other producing a lexical “blend” of the various candidates. During
processing, the network’s output tries to end as close as possible to all the matching
candidates. As the number of candidates is reduced, the output moves to the mid-
point of the remaining options and the distance from these representations decreases.
Finally, at the uniqueness point of the word, the output can move onto the fixed
representation of the word, remaining there until the onset of a new word is received.
Children with PLI have been frequently reported to process spoken language less
quickly than their peers with typical development (McMurray et al. 2010;
Montgomery 2000; Leonard 2014). Although syndromic descriptions of PLI have
focused on morphosyntactic deficits and a high level of grammatical errors, difficulty
in learning words and delayed vocabulary acquisition have been identified as char-
acteristics of children with PLI (Estis and Beverly 2015). In particular, these chil-
dren show a decrease in the rate at which they perform lexical processing
(Montgomery 2002; Velez and Schwartz 2010). In this regard, at least two explana-
tions have been proposed. The first one claims that it is due to a deficit in temporary
processing (in other words, in the recognition, discrimination, remembrance or
sequencing of speech with very short segments, as happens in the transitions of CV
formants with non-occlusive ones) (Stark and Tallal 1988). The second explanation
suggests that children with PLI have fewer cognitive resources to use in solving a
task and when the demand for resources exceeds this limited capacity, poor perfor-
mance occurs (Bishop 1994; Montgomery 2000). In an attempt to test these hypoth-
eses, Montgomery (2002) conducted a study comparing children with PLI and two
control groups, one matched for age and another for syntactic knowledge, in two
different tasks. In the first task, participants detected a certain word in two types of
sentences (with a high number of occlusive consonants or non-occlusive conso-
nants). In the second task, the aim was to replicate the findings of Tallal and Stark
(1981) in the identification task, in which children were trained to associate a
syllable (e.g. [ba]) with the push of a button, while a second syllable (e.g. [da])
should lead them to press a different button. The results confirmed that children
with PLI took longer to respond than their peers regardless of the type of sentence,
and their performance contained more errors than that of the age-matched controls.
Based on this, the authors suggested that children with PLI have limited processing
abilities that explain their poor performance in identification tasks and their s lowness
in lexical processing.
Evidence of difficulties in organization and activation of lexical representations
for children with PLI has been reported by Velez and Schwartz (2010). Thirteen
children with PLI (7;0–11;3) and 13 age-matched with TLD were evaluated. Three
different prime-target pairs (semantic, phonological and repetition) were embedded
within a running list of words so that actual pairs were imperceptible. Half prime-
target pairs were presented with 500 ms interstimulus interval, and the other half
were presented with a 1000 ms interstimulus. Children were asked to make an ani-
macy judgment (animals versus not animals) measuring reaction time. Results
showed PLI kids had slower reaction times with both interstimulus intervals (500
ms and 100 ms). Although children with PLI presented priming effects in the repeti-
tion condition at both interstimulus, phonological and semantic effects were absent.
Typical language development children also presented facilitation effects in repeti-
tion at both intervals; however, semantic and phonological effects were present with
the 1000 ms interstimulus interval. The findings of this study suggest that for chil-
dren with PLI, deficits in auditory word recognition may result from the combina-
tion of slowed activation and weaker phonological and semantic connections along
the lexical networks.
In another study, Estis and Beverly (2015) addressed lexical processing through
word learning in school-age children and preschoolers with PLI and their controls.
In a disambiguation task (Merriman and Schuster 1991), children were given two
small objects, one familiar (e.g. a flower), and one unfamiliar (e.g. a printer
cartridge), while listening to a statement such as “Pick the…” or “Get the…” fol-
lowed by: (a) the name of one of the objects, (b) a phonologically similar word (PS
condition, e.g. “gove” instead of “glove”), (c) a phonologically dissimilar non-word
item (e.g. “tull” instead of “glove”), or (d) an instruction without naming the object
(“Pick one”). Although it has been reported that there are deficiencies in mapping
between words-references to learn new words in children with PLI, it was not
known whether these children were able to use strategies such as lexical restriction
and mutual exclusivity (Beverly and Estis 2003). In a task such as this, TLD chil-
dren show a tendency to decide that the new word refers to an object that is unfamil-
iar to them, thereby revealing the use of mutual exclusivity. This was not found in
children with PLI; the youngest ones were unable to use the strategy of mutual
exclusivity and responded randomly to familiar and unfamiliar objects. This diffi-
culty in resolving ambiguous references provides evidence for the hypothesis of
cognitive limitations in children with PLI. The PLI school-age group behaved simi-
larly to the controls in the phonologically dissimilar non-word condition. However,
they consistently selected familiar objects in the phonologically similar word condi-
tion. Thus, while TLD children maintained the principle of mutual exclusivity
despite phonological similarity, children with PLI showed a lower phonological
specificity (and its associated lexical representation) for familiar objects, so that in
the phonologically similar word condition, the lexical activation of familiar objects
took precedence over precise phonological representation.
Further evidence of difficulties in the lexical processing of children with PLI
can be found in the work of Sabisch et al. (2006), Friedrich and Friederici
(2006), and more recently, Kornilov et al. (2015). Sabisch et al. (2006) found in
a lexical-semantic processing task, where school-age children with PLI had to
judge the acceptability of correctly formulated passive sentences in German
(e.g. Das Brotwurdegegessen, “The bread was eaten”) or passives with semantic
violation (e.g. Der Vulkanwurdegegesssen, “The volcano was eaten”), the chil-
dren with PLI made more mistakes deeming semantically incorrect sentences to
be correct. Moreover, a comparison of their electrical brain activity during per-
formance of the task showed that children with PLI failed to display the N400
wave, evidence of lexical access and semantic integration processes. Its absence
in children with PLI suggests less well established lexical-semantic representa-
tions, and lower sensitivity to violations. The authors also found a direct correla-
tion between the amplitude of the N400 and performance in short-term memory
and vocabulary tests.
Friedrich and Friederici (2006) investigated the N400 effect at 19 months of age
in children with typical development and children at risk of language disorder
detected from behavioral indicators of language development. Consistent with the
previous study, children at risk of PLI failed to show the N400 effect in response to
the auditory presentation of words that did not fit to simultaneously presented
images in a picture-word task. However, both groups showed a lexical-phonological
priming effect expressed in an early negative wave. Since this early wave involves
the initial activation of lexical items during the task, the reduction of the N400 wave
in children at risk of PLI could not be attributed to insufficient lexical knowledge
per se, but would point to an inability to continue lexical processing until an N400
was generated (lexical access phase) due to the existence of unstable or weak
semantic representations.
Likewise, Kornilov et al. (2015) evaluated Russian speakers between the ages of 7
and 15 years, from a sample obtained from a particular population in Russia character-
ized by an unusually high prevalence (between 23–40%) of language problems, meet-
ing the criteria to be diagnosed as children with PLI. They found, with the word-picture
paradigm, no difference in response times between children with PLI and their con-
trols. However, they did report a marked reduction in N400 in children with language
impairment. They also found a direct link between the amplitude of N400 and MLU,
the number of lexical items (obtained from the narrative text “Frog, where are you?”)
and verbal memory. These findings suggest the hypothesis that lexical activation
occurs more slowly in children with language disorders. In response to the initial pho-
nological activation, the expected word does not achieve sufficient activation for selec-
tion and lexical access to occur, disrupting the word-picture “mismatch” that enhances
the N400. This slow activation may be attributable to less specific phonological char-
acteristics at the prelexical level of analysis or to an alteration in the dynamics of lexi-
cal activation on the basis of weak or unstable lexical representations.
2.2 O
pening a Window into Exploring PLI Lexical Processing
in Spontaneous Interaction
The numerous studies focusing on lexical processing in children with PLI and the
dissolution of former suppositions on the syntactic specificity of this impairment
leave still an enormous amount of unanswered questions that invite to continue this
line of research. Evidence of spontaneous language use and the lexical problems
that children with PLI may experience is as yet unavailable, since processing studies
have mainly relied on experimental situations in which variables such as response
time, electrical activity, performance of lexical decision task, memory span, the
percentage of errors in production and detection have been studied.
This paper is designed to open a window into the lexical problems that children
with PLI experience in the course of spontaneous language interaction. Indeed,
among other problems, children with PLI often experience lexical problems along
conversation, which they may address through a self-repair process. Self-repairs in
children’s conversations provide a natural, ecological window into the lexical prob-
lems that children face, making it possible to analyze the time taken to provide a
solution to the problem, and explore operations such as self-monitoring, planning
and speech evaluation (Levelt 1989) required to control and prevent errors, make
lexical searches and plan subsequent discourse. On the assumption that self-repair
time is an index of the use of cognitive resources, self-repairs are expected to pro-
vide evidence of the differences between children with PLI and TLD individuals
who might have a dissimilar cognitive and linguistic profile.
2.2.1 Background Information on Timing in Spontaneous Interaction
Recent studies guided by the interactional language perspective (Tomasello 2010)

have provided important data on the relevance of timing in language interaction.
The most significant data are obtained from a single aspect: turn-taking. The issue
addressed from the early beginnings of conversation analysis is how interlocutors

manage to coordinate their dialogical participations in an organized, mainly non-
overlapping way (Sacks et al. 1974).
As is well known, since the founding studies of Sacks et al. (1974), conversation
is organized on the basis of participants’ turn-taking. During the exchange of turns,
which are usually smooth and well-coordinated, there tend to be slight gaps, over-
laps and brief pauses that typically occupy a short interval of time. However, recent
research suggests that this interval may reveal a range of variation due to different
factors, such as the speed of the speaker in making the turn transition (Levinson and
Torreira 2015); individual differences in cognitive processing (Levinson 2016); the
complexity of the task to be performed in the next turn (Casillas 2014; ten Bosch
et al. 2005); agreement or disagreement with what was said in the preceding turn
and what is subsequently expressed (Stivers et al. 2009).
Various studies of adult speech based on the theory of conversation analysis have
reported values above the time intervals that occur in the transition between turns.
In an analysis of three different languages (Dutch, Swedish and Scottish English)
taken from three different corpora, Heldner and Edlund (2010) found a distribution
in which the largest number of gaps is accumulated in 200 milliseconds (ms
onwards). For English, Schegloff (2000) considers these regular intervals, the nor-
mal value of transition space and finds a value of 150–250 ms, roughly equivalent
to the production time of a syllable. Data on the duration of syllable production
vary, since they depend on various factors (structure, accentuation, position, sonor-
ity). For Spanish, Arias and Lléo (2009) found that in general, syllables with coda
have a longer duration. For example, an accentuated rhyme with coda last 135 ms,
as opposed to an accentuated rhyme without coda, which takes 94 ms. The same
difference applies to children’s speech. As for timing of turn transitions, in a Dutch
corpus, Bosch et al. (2005) found in spontaneous conversations that the mean for
turn transition points is 380 ms; whereas within a conversational movement, the
mean for silent pauses within utterances is 300 ms, and the mean between utter-
ances is 520 ms. In another study, Stivers et al. (2009) reported time measurements
of the floor transfer offset (time in the transition between adjacent turns) in 10 lan-
guages and observed that the largest number of transitions is below 200 ms. They
pointed out that certain cultural differences are related not to the rules governing the
turn taking system but to the calibration of delay; that is, the time that speakers wait
to take a turn. In a recent paper, Levinson and Torreira (2015) provided results that
coincide with those of the research described. They stated that most of the gaps and
overlaps in turn taking accumulate in the distribution around a mean of 275 ms.
Other studies have argued that there are deep implications for language and cogni-
tive processing in the turn-taking system. They showed through electroencephalog-
raphy that speech act recognition of interlocutor occurs about the first 400 ms at the
beginning of the turn. In production, preparation before the output begins takes 600
ms for a single word if primed, or approximately 1000 ms if not, and around 1500
ms for a short clause (Levinson 2016).
As for comparable data on language development some information can be

found in Garvey (1984), who noted that in children of ages 3–5, pauses between
turns last from 900 to 1500 ms, depending on the complexity involved in changing
turns.
The general argument is that children’s response time is slower than that of adults
(Snow 1977). This assumption is supported by recent studies such as those by
Casillas (2014), which indicated that children’s turn taking takes longer than adults’.
For instance, in answering a yes-no question, children may take up to nine times
longer than adults to give an answer.
So far, data for adults and children have been obtained from studies describing
the estimated time in turn-taking in what can be considered a standard conversation
(Kendrick 2015; Levinson and Torreira 2015; Stivers et al. 2009). The timing of
turn-taking in conversation depends on the analysis of untroubled, normal conversa-
tions: when questions receive an answer, assertions receive an acknowledgement or
requests are followed by a granting or refusal response. A different situation may
correspond to the timing of self-repairs when a problem is detected and the target is
a solution. This different task probably diverges from the normal values found in the
variable time of untroubled turn-taking sequences in conversation. To our knowl-
edge, there are very few studies that describe the timing of self-repairs, so we con-
sider it useful to take as a baseline the normal values of turn transitions to gauge the
time taken to make a self-repair.
2.2.2 Timing and Repair
Within the framework of the theory of conversation analysis, a repair corresponds to

a turn that deals with problems found in speaking, hearing and understanding in the
same turn, or in a prior conversational move (Schegloff et al. 1977). Three movement-
components can be distinguished within repair organization: (i) the production or
indication of a Problem-Source (PS) or a problematic production in speech that is
detected, (ii) a cut off, a pause indexing the trouble or an explicit mark that a repair
is being prepared (Repair Marker) or (RM), and (iii) the offer of a solution or repair
as it is properly said. Depending on how these movements are distributed among the
speakers in a conversation, it is possible to distinguish between self-repairs, when all
movements are in charge of the same speaker, and other-repairs, where both inter-
locutors take a part in the repair sequence. As opposed to the turn-taking involved in
the production of other-repairs, in self-repair processes the problem-source, the
detection of the problem, and the offer of a potential solution or repair are expressed
through the voice of a single speaker and usually take place in the same turn: They
are identified as “self-initiated same turn constructed” repairs (Kitzinger 2013;
Schegloff et al. 1977). Although there are other possible distributions of self-repair
components, “self-initiated same turn constructed” repairs are more frequent. This
type of self-repairs does not show the time intervals characteristic of turn-taking
(Roberts et al. 2015). However, the components –or more technically movements–
in these self-repair sequences may have time gaps between them; they may form
various intonational units and have intertwined time intervals. It is therefore possible
to measure the time taken to detect a problem-source, or the time taken to produce a
construction that may provide a repair solution (RST = Repair Solution Time). As it
has already been set for normal turn-taking transitions, the timing of error detection
and repair solution (Roberts et al. 2015) are expected to depend on the cognitive
processing demands, the frequency of the words to be repaired and the syntactic
complexity of the construction involved in the repair.
The time taken for the repair is also affected by the presence or absence of delay
markers (in Spanish mmm, eee, este, etc.). In normal conversation, delay markers
serve as support in planning the next turn or the successive turn constructional units
and take different forms and time depending on the complexity of the production
being planned (Casillas 2014). Levinson and Torreira (2015) think that a delay
marker in conversational sequences reflects the processing that is required to under-
stand the previous turn and plan the next one. In the case of self-repairs, the delay
markers occur between the constructional movements of self-repair sequence and
may also reflect the processing demands children face after detecting a problem in
providing a solution.
The available data on timing between the movement-components of a repair
basically refer to the case of other-repairs, hence to the time between speakers’ turns
in this particular conversational sequence. The time between the turn in which a
problem source occurs and the turn offering a repair is longer (700 ms) than the time
transitions between other types of turns (0–500 ms) (Kendrick 2015). Despite the
fact that most studies on time are concerned with other-repairs, there is some evi-
dence of the time taken in self-repairs by adults. Levelt (1983) found that the time
between the production of a problem and the cut-off point, i.e. the interruption of
speech to solve it, tends to last 200 ms. Blackmer and Mitton (1991) found a mean
of 321 ms for the same period measured by Levelt, although they also found some
lags of 0 ms. In a study of second language acquisition proficiency and self-repair,
Kormos (1999) noted that the time span for self-repair depends on the type of repair
and identified a cut-off point of less than 150 ms. The times measured in those stud-
ies correspond to the methodology used in the present study to what we call
Detection Time (DT): The time the child takes to stop his speech once a problem
source has been produced, starting at 0 ms. We keep another term, Repair Solution
Time (RST), to refer to the whole time children take to produce a solution.
To date, we have data of typical turn transition on children’s conversations,
where there are pauses ranging from 900 to 1500 ms (Garvey 1984), which coin-
cides with the 1500 ms reported in Casillas (2014). But there are no reported timing
measures for self-initiated repairs solved along the same turn repairs produced for
any child population. No information is available on the time they require to pro-
duce a self-repair; from the moment in which a problem source is produced and
detected (hence the need for a self-repair), to the moment when the problem is
solved; let alone on how this time might reflect their processing. Therefore, in order
to make a comparative analysis on the timing of self-repair component-movements
in children with typical development and children with PLI we need to acknowledge
as an antecedent the evidence that timing of child speech has higher values than that
of adult speech, and then adopt as a background other time indicators, like the tim-
ing of turn-taking obtained in non-repair conditions. The current discussion on the
importance of timing in turn-taking in normal conversation and the few studies on
the timing of self-repairs will guide our search for the time values associated with
the timing of self-repairs when comparing two different populations.
3 Methodology
This study analyses the timing in self-repair productions, guided by linguistic and
conversational analysis and by adopting a mixed methodology. Data come from
video-recordings of conversational interactions of children with their usual inter-
locutors (mother, father or a close relative) in the course of their daily activities, in
ecological-spontaneous conditions (Rojas-Nieto 1998). Parents gave informed con-
sent to use of the recordings for academic studies. Oral speech was first analyzed
individually and later self-repairs were identified and grouped in terms of linguistic
criteria deemed to be relevant. Statistical analysis was additionally performed in
order to test the qualitative tendencies from a quantitative perspective.
3.1 Participants
Six monolingual, Spanish-speaking Mexican children, ages 6;2 to 6;6 (M = 6.3, SD

= 0.18, range = 0.4). Three children with PLI and three children with TLD, as a
control group established on the basis of chronological age (Gathercole et al. 1999).
Participants were paired by gender, socioeconomic status and age. Participants from
each group will be identified hereafter with the acronym PLI or TLD plus an indi-
vidual number. For example, PLI1, PLI2, TLD1, etc.
The inclusion criteria for children with PLI were: (i) monolingualism in Spanish,
(ii) ages 6;0–6;6, (iii) history of language problems, (iv) parental concern and/or
suspicion of language disorder by a specialist, (v) non-verbal IQ of at least 80
(WPPSI Spanish Intelligence Scale- Wechsler 1981) (vi) Mean Length Utterances
in Words (MLU-w) lower than that of their control, (vii) ungrammaticality in 20%
of a narrative task, and (viii) 1.25 to 2 SD below the mean on at least two language
evaluation scales (CELF-4-Semel et al. 2006). The criteria for the control group
were: (i) IQ over 80 (WPPSI-Wechsler 1981) and (ii) typical language
development.
Children came from different public education institutions. They were
assessed using the following instruments: clinical interview, WPPSI-Spanish
Intelligence Scale (Wechsler 1981), Melgar Articulation Inventory (2002), Clinical
Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, Spanish edition, or CELF-4 (Semel et al.
2006) and the Woodcock-Muñoz Battery III (Muñoz-Sandoval et al. 2005) as well
as MLU-w and ungrammaticality index (grammatically unacceptable statements)
(Restrepo 1998) of a narrative sample obtained from the story Frog, where are you?
(Mayer 1969).
3.2 Data Collection and Transcription
The corpus was obtained from spontaneous conversations in a familiar context. A

total of 12 hours were videotaped. Each child was videotaped at home for two,
one-hour sessions. All the family members were allowed to interact with the child
during the recording. Transcriptions were made using the Eudico Language
Annotator (ELAN, version 4.6) (Lausberg and Sloetjes 2009) program. This pro-
gram allows working with video and audio files simultaneously; it also has a tool for
visualizing production time. Subsequently, the transcript was divided into intona-
tion units (Chafe 1994), characterized by various features. The most important
aspect adopted in this study was the time limit of a pause of 300 ms. Once the tran-
scription was completed, self-repairs dealing with a lexical PS were identified.
Transcription reliability and repair identification were assessed by a second expert
in language analysis. Repair Time was measured with the support of the ELAN
(version 4.6) program.
4 Analysis
4.1 Qualitative
In the qualitative analysis we identified all the lexical problems that children
attempted to repair. We considered the different types of words that caused a prob-
lem either in production or in access. Self-repairs addressed to solve those lexical
problems were identified. In order to evaluate the time children invest in doing self-
repairs we carefully considered their sequential components. As we said before,
according to the theory of conversation analysis, self-repairs consist of three
movement-components: (i) the overt production of a PS, or lexical problem the
speaker presents; (ii) the production of a behavioral index or explicit verbal mark
(repetitions, sound prolongations, pauses, repair-particles, etc.) giving evidence that
the problem has been detected and a repair is being prepared (Repair Marker or
RM); (iii) the offering of a solution or repair (R) properly said. Two intervals can be
identified along the transition of the component-movements. (i) The first interval
corresponds to the DT, equivalent to the time children take between producing an
error or resenting a lexical access trouble and the cut off point of the PS. This cut off
point usually occurs at the end, but also at the midst or the eve of the Problem
Source production (abortions according to conversation analysis) and it is succes-
sively followed by the beginnings of a Repair Marker (RM). (ii) The second interval
i. Problem Source (PS) ii. Repair Marker (RM) iii. Repair (R)
-Repair Strategy-
DT RST
Fig. 1 The structure of self-repairs (Detection Time (DT): the interval between the presence of a
trouble or error, and the beginning of the repair Marker (RM). Repair Solution Time (RST): the
interval between the cut-off point associated with the Problem Source (PS) and the Repair Solution
movement (R). Repair solution component (R): verbal construction that children offer as solution
to the problem source they have had)
corresponds to is the Repair Solution Time (RST); that is, the time between the cut-
off point of the PS and the offering of a Repair Solution (R), which may include the
pauses, repair markers and fragments repetition, that may go on a pair with the
complexity of the task for the child (Fig. 1). This chapter will exclusively focus in
the RST.
In the qualitative analysis, we identified all lexical Problem Sources that have
been repaired; in other words, any kind of word that constitutes a problem of pro-
duction or access in the speaker’s discourse. We coded into nominal, verbal, or
functional categories; we analyzed the presence of repair markers (sound prolonga-
tions, pauses, repetitions, repair particles, etc.), and the strategy applied in providing
the repair. These analyses provide a set of variables in every case. Being the repair
solution time the focus of this paper, we looked for the relations between these vari-
ables and their influence on this repair time.
4.2 Quantitative Analysis
In the quantitative phase, we identified the frequency of self-repairs, and in each of

them, we measured the RST with the ELAN program (version 4.6) in milliseconds.
Once we obtained interval values, we compared the RST for three factors (type of
PSe, repair strategy and repair marker), which we coded in the qualitative analysis.
Despite the reduced number of cases not suitable for statistical analysis, we applied
different models to detect tendencies.
We analyzed the distribution of RSTs per group with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov
test. Subsequently, the RSTs per group were submitted to a test of homogeneity of
variances using Levene’s test. Comparisons between the groups were made using
the U of Man-Whitney with Bonferroni correction, considering the results of the
tests for normality and homogeneity of variances. The significance level for all the
tests was set at 0.05.
5 Results
5.1 S
elf-Repair Characteristics That Influence Repair
Solution Time
The lexical PS that receive self-repairs fall into various categories. Most repairs
attend nominal categories or verbs. They include common nouns, kin terms, proper
names, free and clitic pronouns, and different verb classes. Those self-repairs are
mainly focused in getting right lexical designation for an entity or a specific event.
Calling the cat a cat, not a rabbit, or talking of a ‘coming’ event not of a ‘going’ one.
Other lexical items (adjectives, adverbs) and functional words (determinants, prepo-
sitions) are seldom or ever repaired, despite the presence of PSs that include those
(Lara et al. 2015). Children also frequently repair the internal organization of the
components of a lexical form, or templates (Vihman and Croft 2007) that are prob-
lematic for them. Therefore, they attempt to obtain the conventional configuration
of a word (e.g. /kataxuates/, /katablades/, seeking the target /kakawates/ cacahuates
‘peanuts’; /kótero/, /eli/, /elikotero/, targeting /elikoptero/ helicóptero ‘helicopter’).
These PS can be situated at the interphase between phonological and lexical levels.
The word production model of Levelt et al. (1999) explains that once the speaker
has selected the word, the next task is to retrieve the word’s phonological shape,
which means activation of three kinds of information: the word’s morphological
makeup, its metrical shape and its segmental makeup. As for the strategy children
use in offering a solution in a self-repair sequence we also found different configu-
rations supported by various cognitive resources. In our data, we distinguished three
main types of self-repair strategies (although the inventory of procedures is wider)
(Kitzinger 2013; Schegloff 2013): (i) lexical elaborations; (ii) lexical replacements;
and (iii) lexical searches.
A self-repair is an elaboration when a PS is a word that after being wrongly
produced is successively produced with internal adjustments, looking for the right
target (súsape, písipe, targeting and failing in either case príncipe ‘prince’; contro
as a wrong rendition of the right elaborated target, tronco ‘trunk’), as in (1). A self-
repair is a replacement when a wrong lexical item is replaced by the target (gato
‘cat’, instead of the previously mentioned conejo ‘rabbit’; viene ‘(he) comes’ instead
of the former va ‘(he) goes’), as in Examples (2) and (3). Lexical searches corre-
spond to interrupted repairs where a lexical item was expected, but the access is
precisely the Problem Source, and the repair sequence continues looking for a lexi-
cal form for a while (el < silent pause > búho; ‘the <silent pause > owl’) as in
Examples (4), (5) and (6).
Example 1
(1) Problem Source: lexical form; Target: trunk.
Repair Marker: pause; Repair Strategy: elaboration.
PLI2: es un contro (mixed syllables-target: tronco) es un tronco
‘It´s a ktrun (mixed syllables of intended target: trunk) -pause 100 ms- is a trunk’
PS RM R
RST = 135 ms
Example 2
(2) Problem Source: noun; Target: toy.
Repair Marker: word interruption; Repair Strategy: immediate replacement.
PLI1: Él lo puso en el ni-* juguete
‘(He) put it into the chi-* -*word interruption- toy’
PS *RM R
RST = 0 ms
Example 3
(3) Problem Source: colour term; Target: different colour term.
Repair Marker: pause; Repair Strategy: delayed replacement.
TLD2: pero con el negro no se marca bien

gris
‘But with the black one cannot mark it well -pause 436 ms- grey’
PS RM R
RST = 965 ms
Example 4
(4) Problem Source: access to lexical item; Target: noun: ‘deer’.
Repair Marker: repetition; Repair Strategy: recycling while doing a lexical search.
TLD3: se lo llevó el se lo llevó el venado
‘he was caught by the he was caught by the deer’
-repetition 760ms-
PS RM R
RST = 760
Example 5
(5) Problem Source: access to lexical item; Target: noun phrase, the other Barbie.
Repair Marker: vowel prolongation, item repetition and pause; Repair Strategy: lexical search.
PLI3: Las muñecas menos la: la: la: la otra Barbie
‘The dolls but less the: the: the: - vowel prolongation, repetition + pause - 13010 ms- the other Barbie’
PS RM R
RST = 1310 ms
Example 6
(6) Problem Source: access to lexical item; Target: noun phrase, the boot.
Repair Marker: word interruption, pause, repair particle; Repair Strategy: lexical search.
PLI3: Mira la muñe-* … digo la bota
‘Look at the do-* … I mean the boot’
(word interruption ‘doll’) + (pause 80 ms)+ ‘I mean’
PS RM R
RST = 590 ms
These strategies –elaborations, replacements, lexical searches–, may interact

with other features in self-repairs. For instance, they may involve an immediate
detection and immediate replacement (as in 2). They may have a delayed detection
of the Problem Source, and a late replacement (as in 3), where the child keeps talk-
ing after having produced the Problem Source –negro ‘black’–, before he makes a
cut off and pauses to prepare the repair. Children may also repeat part of the previ-
ous construction (said to be recycled) when preparing the repair solution (as in 4).
They may keep repeating an item while preparing the repair solution (as in 5), and
most prominently and frequently, they resort to silent pauses or pauses filled with
hesitation markers (mmm, este, eee), supplemented occasionally with discourse
expressions usual in repairs (digo ‘I mean’, más bien ‘better’) while they prepare the
repair solution. These different repairs markers may be individually or jointly used
(as in 6). As a whole, they are taken here as repair-indexes, and are referred to as
delay markers.
5.1.1 Some Interactions
An interaction was found between the type of Problem Source and the self-repair
strategy. Templates, for example, are exclusively repaired through elaborations. As
a group, open-class words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) are much more prone
to be replaced than closed-class words (pronouns, prepositions, articles). And as for
lexical searches, they tend to be related to nouns in particular, or to open lexical
classes in general (see Table 1).
Other interaction was also found between repair markers or delay markers and
lexical PSs. To understand this interaction we need to clarify which types of delay
Table 1 Interaction between type of problem sources and strategy in self-repairs

PLI group TLD group Total by
Problem Strategy problem
sources Elabora- Replace- Elabora- Replace- sources
category tions ment Searches tions ment Searches category
Lexical Form 19 0 0 8 0 0 27
(Template)
Nominal 0 10 7 0 12 6 35
(Open word
class)
Verb (Open 0 4 0 0 17 2 23
word class)
Other open 0 1 0 0 2 2 5
words class
Functional 0 11 0 0 7 0 18
categories
(Closed words
class)
Total by 19 26 7 8 38 10 108
strategy
Note: PLI primary language impairment; TLD typical language development
markers were used by the participants whenever they detected a PS. Before offering
a solution to the PS, children may make sudden stops or interruptions in the midst
of the lexical PS (as in (2) and (6)); or rather take some time by extending the last
vocalic segment of the word preceding a repair solution (la::: ‘the’ as in (5); they
may repeat some word(s) (as in (4)), or use explicit discourse markers (as in (6)).
These types of delay markers were grouped in the overt markers category.
Additionally, children suspended their productions upon detection of a problem or
simply attempted to repair immediately without any overt repair marker.
Interaction between these kinds of repair markers showed that children relied on
overt, single or joined markers (ƒ = 60: PLI ƒ = 22; TLD ƒ = 38), in the course of
repairing lexical templates, and an open lexical class, while they mainly made pauses
(f = 11: PLI ƒ = 9; TLD ƒ = 2 ), previous to repair of functional categories. Altogether,
PLI and TLD children do no rely equally on the different repair indexes. Children
with PLI either repair immediately or just keep a pause (f = 29), while they present
single or joined overt delay markers in a smaller proportion (f = 23). The opposite is
the case with TLD children. They mainly present overt delay markers (f = 42), while
pause or immediately repair are utilized to a lesser extent (f = 14) (see Table 2).
In summary, interaction effects were found between PSs and strategies, and also
between PS and delay markers. About the first interactions, PSs referents to tem-
plates (lexical forms) were solved only through elaborations; searches were exclu-
sively present for open class words, and prominently for nouns. As for the second
interaction effect, it was observed a preference for overt -single or joined- markers
Table 2 Interaction between delay markers and problem sources

PLI group TLD group
Delay markers categories
Problem Not marker Single Joined Not marker Single Joined
sources (Immediate overt overt (Immediate overt overt
category repair) Pause marker markers repair) Pause marker markers
Lexical 5 3 2 9 0 2 2 4
form
(Template)
Nominal 3 3 3 8 0 4 3 11
(Open
word
class)
Verb 1 3 0 0 3 2 9 5
(Open
word
class)
Other open 1 0 0 0 0 0 2 2
words
class
Functional 1 9 1 0 1 2 0 4
categories
(Closed
words
class)
Total by 11 18 6 17 4 10 16 26
delay
markers
Note: PLI primary language impairment; TLD typical language development
in repairing open class words, meanwhile the use of pauses was largely preferred for
PSs with functional categories.
5.2 Repair Solution Time Contrasts in Self-Repair
As for the quantitative analysis of the RST of 108 self-repairs, although the Levene
test yielded homogeneous variances for the groups (F (1106) = 0.282, p = .596), the
Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test showed that RST distributions for both the
TLD (D = .268, p < .001) and the PLI (D = .322, p < .001) deviated significantly
from normal distribution. We then proceeded to make the contrasts by factor using
the Mann-Whitney U, a nonparametric test for two groups, by contrasting the RST
of the total self-repairs per group. We found that children with PLI take more time
to repair Problem Sources at the lexical level (PLI: Mdn = 453 ms, IQR = 717; TLD:
Mdn = 400 ms, IQR = 957.5); however, this difference was not statistically signifi-
cant (U = 1410.50, p = 0.779).
5.3 Repair Solution Time and Problem Sources
Across the groups, children mainly repaired nouns, verbs and the internal compo-
nents of a word or template. Collapsing across groups, it took much longer to repair
nouns (Mdn = 760 ms, IQR = 1524.5) than verbs (Mdn = 225 ms, IQR = 582.25) (U
= 277, p < .004) or templates (Mdn = 390 ms, IQR = 500) (U = 228.50, p < .013)
(Table 3).
We found that children with PLI take more time for every type of category,
although no significance differences were achieved.
Children with PLI took longer to make all types of lexical repairs, nominal (U =
148.50, p < .357), verbs (U = 45.50, p < .233) and templates (U = 42.50, p < .84).
Differences in self-repair-time are more relevant only when children with PLI work
on PSs corresponding to verb items (see Table 4).
As for the possible effect of the repair strategy children adopt in repair and their
effects on repair solution time (RST), we have to consider that the children in both
groups adopted three strategies: lexical searches, lexical replacements and formal
elaborations. Lexical searches showed a tendency across groups taking more
RST (Mdn = 1816 ms, IQR = 1760). They took more time than replacements (Mdn =
312 ms, IQR = 539.75) (U = 180.50, p < .0001), and more time than formal elabora-
tions (Mdn = 400 ms, IQR = 567.5) (U = 116.50, p < .006). Each group independently
showed the following results in strategies. Replacements took approximately the same
time in both groups of children (PLI Mdn = 320 ms, IQR = 516.77; TLD Mdn = 300
ms, IQR = 677.5), but children with TLD spent less time on lexical searches (Mdn =
1195 ms, IQR = 3020) than children with PLI (Mdn = 1910 ms, IQR = 970). In addi-
tion, PLI children took longer to achieve a lexical target through elaboration (Mdn =
540 ms, IQR = 670) than children with TLD (Mdn = 380, IQR = 910). Although we
have not obtained statistical significances for any of the strategies: elaborations
Table 3 Repair solution time Problem sources

by Lexical Problem Sources category Both groups (Mdn ± IQR in ms)
Lexical Form (Template) 390 ± 500
Nominal 760 ± 1524.5
Verb 225 ± 582.25
Note: Mdn median; IQR interquartile range
Table 4 Repair solution time by Lexical Problem Sources by group

PLI group (Mdn ± IQR in
Problem sources category ms) TLD group (Mdn ± IQR in ms)
Lexical Form (Template) 400 ± 415 380 ± 370
Nominal 1100 ± 1787.75 590 ± 1130
Verb 400 ± 1580 150 ± 510
Note: PLI primary language impairment; TLD typical language development; Mdn median; IQR
interquartile range, ms milliseconds
(U = 51.50, p < .201), replacements (U = 439, p < 0.740), or lexical searches (U =

26.50, p < .434), the descriptive tendency is worth considering, particularly in relation
to the longer time children with PLI dedicate to get the conventional form of a lexical
item and doing lexical searches (Table 5).
As for the effects that the presence of different repair indexes may produce on the
length of the repair solution time, let us consider again that self-repairs may not
involve any overt repair index, but merely a pause indicating the problem (as in
Examples (1) and (3)). Or they may include a single overt delay marker (mmm, eee,
este), or a lexical marker (e.g., ‘better’, ‘let’s say’) and even join different type of
markers (as in (5) and (6)). We have considered the number of markers as a relevant
index of trouble and have divided the data in four groups: no markers, pauses, a
single marker and joined markers. The RSTs were significantly shorter for repairs
with a single marker (Mdn = 250 ms, IQR = 320), than pauses (Mdn = 418 ms, IQR
= 680), (U = 283, p < .05) and joined markers (Mdn = 970 ms, IQR = 1581) (U =
151.50, p < .001). However, there were no significant group differences when con-
trasting repair solution time in one marker (U = 90.50, p = .90), pauses (U = 84.50,
p = .98) and two or more markers (U = 188, p = .75) (see Table 6).
When focusing on the descriptive tendencies, there was a clear interaction of
repair solution time (RST) with the PS, the kind of strategy and the type of delay
marker. Concerning PS a hierarchy emerges where a problem with verbs is solved in
a larger amount of time, followed by a difficulty at the level of lexical form and
finally, problems with nominal items. Equally, a hierarchy in the use of distinct strat-
egies to repair was found, where searches took more time than elaborations and
replacements were the shortest strategy of all. Finally, in the use of different delay
markers to repair, joined markers consumed much more time than single markers.
Table 5 Repair solution time by strategy by group

Strategy category PLI group (Mdn ± IQR in ms) TLD group (Mdn ± IQR in ms)
Elaboration 540 ± 670 380 ± 910
Replacement 320 ± 516.77 300 ± 677.5
Search 1910 ± 970 1195 ± 3020
Table 6 Delay markers time by group

PLI group (Mdn ± IQR in TLD group (Mdn ± IQR in
Delay markers Category ms) ms)
Not marker (Immediate repair) 0.00 0.00
Pause 380 ± 560 436 ± 990
Single Overt Marker 250 ± 300 250 ± 385
Joined Overt Markers (two to four) 870 ± 1767.75 1100 ± 1670
This obvious result has to be considered as a consequence of the type of solution

strategy required by the different kind of PSs. For example, a lexical search strategy
is characterized by a prolonged exposure to a set of repair markers while the search
is being carried out. This is quite different from, for example, a lexical replacement,
which can be accomplished immediately without using repair markers.
Even though the differences between groups in these interactions did not reach
significance, they outline that RST employed by children with PLI tends to be larger
according to the diverse PSs they have to attend, the type of strategy they adopt, and
the number and sort of delay markers they utilized.
6 Discussion and Conclusions
6.1 Features Involved in Repair Solution Time
In regard to our inquiry concerning the language factors involved in the time taken
to effect a self-repair, analysis of repairs revealed that RST depends jointly on vari-
ables such as PS, the strategy used, and the number and type of repair markers. This
is reflected in the longer RST for word templates compared to nominal, and the
longer RST for nominal compared to verbal PSs. This was also true for different
strategies: RST for lexical searches is longer compared to RST for replacements.
We also found different RST related to the number and kind of repair markers (overt
markers versus pauses) in production. Therefore, we consider that the RST should
be understood by bearing in mind these relationships.
Concerning the link between RST and repair strategies, it is possible to say that
strategies have different layouts influencing self-repair time interval. A search strat-
egy, for example, tends to expose a delayed solution of the Problem Source: the
speaker makes large silent pauses or pauses filled with hesitation markers, while
doing the work related to the lexical retrieval of a suitable target item. An elabora-
tion strategy, on the other hand, supposes the local reorganization of the syllables
that make up a lexical item, so the speaker usually interrupts his production and
starts a new rendition. Reaching the targeted form solution takes a little more time
than the modal time recognized in form encoding by adults (Levinson 2016: 8).
Meanwhile, a replacement strategy most of the time gets to the solution in a shorter
time, or even immediately; switching an item for another one takes a shorter RST
than doing a lexical search.
As regards the relationship between PSs and a particular strategy, we consider
that the higher association between a nominal PS and a replacement strategy may
be a reflection of language use and the organization of utterances. On the one
hand, nouns are more frequently used in languages like Spanish (Jackson-
Maldonado et al. 2011) and are mainly recruited in referring expressions.
Children’s nominal repairs seek to clarify and get to reference recognition, using
as a frequent strategy: switching referring expressions, in this case, replacing

nominal items (Stivers et al. 2007).
As for the preference for an elaboration strategy in order to reorganize word
components, this association might be driven by the characteristics of the particular
PS: when the sequential components of an item are misplaced on a first try, the
strategy to solve the issue may be playing around the components to get the right
dispostion; strategy we have called, elaboration.
Turning now into considering the relation between repair marker types and RST,
we clearly observed a direct and natural correlation between the amount of repair
markers and the time interval. What seems more relevant here is the relationship
amongst (i) the production of overt markers in the presence of PSs within open lexi-
cal classes, mainly nominals, on the one side, and (ii) the presence of silent pauses
before closed lexical classes, on the other. The reason for this split is not completely
clear to us. As for functional words, we estimate that being typically short words
(one syllable long in most cases) with a grammatical role do not allow interruptions
at the middle of its production or repetition of its constituents. We propose that those
structural features of functional words subserve certain treatment when they are
repaired: they are only replaced, usually with silent pauses in between. As for the
presence of joint markers of repair in solving lexical problems with open class
words, we estimate again that the long delays and overt markers going together with
repair are telling us about the functional and structural diversities that open class
items have. In future research, further inspection and more robust data will be
needed to better understand these trends and associations.
6.2 Repair Solution Time in Groups
As for the differences in self-repair timing between the PLI and TLD children,
although we did not find statistically significant differences between the groups, we
can detect for children with PLI a tendency to take longer time intervals in preparing
a repair solution. This leads us to hypothesize that they require more time because
self-repairing is more complex for them, although our data revealed that self-repairs
focus primarily on the lexical-phonemic structure of words. This might suggest that
the PLI children took more time in planning and accessing a determined solution,
not only because of the complexity of the problem source involved, but due to the
difficulties in lexical processing reported by different studies (Montgomery 2002;
Velez and Schwartz 2010).
Interestingly, children with PLI overused elaborations of internal structure of
words, while children with TLD performed above all lexical replacements. These
suggest that both groups do monitoring activities of the same focal aspects of lan-
guage, but children with PLI confine themselves to a more restricted dimension as
syllable sequences, which may be more problematic for them than for the control
group. A second aspect touching the differences between PLI and TLD children,
now in terms on the connection between RST and search strategy, concerns their
different latencies and realizations. Children with TLD spend less time engaged in
a lexical search. One way to carry out this lexical search is in a steadily manner with
the support of delay markers. Another form is in a covert way, by conducting a latent
search while they continue with the discourse. Then after a variable time, they
abruptly interrupt their discourse to insert the item that they had previously been
unable to find. Children with PLI spend more time on the search and do not do latent
searches. These data could be related to the evidence of unsettled lexical-semantic
representations in school-aged children with PLI (Sabisch et al. 2006).
Another point to be considered is the preference that groups had for different
classes of repair markers. The TLD group relied more on overt markers (isolated or
joined), in contrast to the more frequent pauses and immediate elaboration repairs
done by children with PLI. This could point out a greater control of linguistic
resources from non-impaired children. Another possible explanation, from a con-
versational analysis perspective, is that TLD children use overt markers to keep the
conversational turn and solve the Problem Sources at the same time, as normal
adults do.
6.3 Repair Solution Time and Lexical Processing
In our literature review about the time taken to produce a self-repair, we realized
that there are very few papers on this issue. However, we took the transition between
turns as a baseline, considering that self-repairs generally take place within the con-
versation. We know that the modal time between turns in adult speech is minimal,
approximately 200 ms (Helner and Edlund 2010; Levinson and Torreira 2015;
Schegloff 2000; Stivers et al. 2009; Bosch et al. 2005), and that the detection of a
production error takes 250–321 ms (Blackmer and Mitton 1991; Levelt 1983). In
children ranging in age from 3 to 5 years, the time interval reported in turn-taking is
900–1500 ms (Garvey 1984). This is a wide range that may depend on how the adult
guides the conversation and the complexity of the next turn (Casillas 2014). In this
chapter, in an initial overall approach to children’s timing for self-repair, we found
a median of 1005.058 ms for the PLI children and 927.625 ms for TLD in the RST
of lexical self-repair process performed in the same turn. These values are within
the range reported by Garvey (1984) regarding the turn-taking in children’s conver-
sations, but the length of time that we reported here happens between the intona-
tional units of a single turn. This suggests that the repair processing requires at least
a similar amount of time as the speech planning processing during turn-taking, and
also that a turn transition in which there is a self-repair might take longer. However,
it would be necessary to have a larger number of data where self-repairs are made
when there is a change of turn in between.
When solving a repair, we have already set that RST in lexical searches is longer
than in replacements. This may be taken as an indication of the different processing
demands involved in finding an item from scratch, as in lexical searches, and access-
ing an item that most probably is a neighbor of the lexical PS previously said, which
may even have some priming effects in the target.
As for the presence of delay markers on RST, we should take into account that
according to Levinson and Torreira (2015) and Casillas (2014), in non-troubled
conversations, delay markers help the speaker to plan an upcoming turn and are
therefore a clear indicator of processing. In the self-repair data the tendency to use
more delay markers when the problem to be solved involves the production of an
open class item, and not when the target is a functional item, member of a closed
class, might also indicate different processing demands. Finding a particular item to
solve the problem source, when that item is member of a lexical open class, sup-
poses navigating a wider space to get to the target. If the target is a closed class item,
we can suppose a more reduced navigation domain.
Some experimental studies have shown a lexical processing deficit in children
with language impairment, for example, a delay in the time required for lexical
identification (Montgomery 2002) or evidence of unstable lexical-semantic repre-
sentations on the basis of the absence of indicators of cerebral processing such as
the N400 (Friedrich and Friederici 2006; Sabisch et al. 2006). Conversely, Kornilov
et al. (2015) did not find any significant differences in response times in the word-
image paradigm in children with PLI and controls. These experimental results could
explain partially our qualitative findings, which sketch a tendency in children with
PLI to require more time to solve lexical issues in production. This peculiarity
would be expressed in the prolongation of delay markers and the overextension of
their lexical searches and elaborations. In this regard, again, there would seem to be
a need to analyze a more significant number of self-repairs to determine whether
this is a trend or not.
Lastly, what does all this say about self-monitoring and production planning of
children with PLI? On line with other studies on lexical processing and priming
effects, our results strongly suggest that the time required to identify and plan a
solution for a lexical problem source depends on its linguistic complexity. Although
there is evidence of the deficit in lexical processing in children with PLI, and timing
appears to be a sensitive variable in this respect, the approach adopted in this study
focused in the conversational register seems to accommodate greater contextual
variability as this oral register was enriched in its multiple interactions with a large
number of variables that have an impact on the various levels involved in
processing.
References
Arias, J., & Lléo, C. (2009). Comparing the representation of iambs by monolingual German,
monolingual Spanish and bilingual German-Spanish children. In K. Braunmüller & J. House
(Eds.), Convergence and divergence in language contact situations (pp. 205–234). Philadelphia:
John Benjamins.
Beverly, B. L., & Estis, J. M. (2003). Fast mapping deficits during disambiguation in children with
specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47,
407–420.
Bishop, D. V. (1994). Grammatical errors in specific language impairment: Competence or perfor-
mance limitations? Applied PsychoLinguistics, 15, 507–550.
Bishop, D. V. (2004). Specific language impairment: Diagnostic dilemmas. In L. Verhoeven &
V. Balkom (Eds.), Classification of developmental language disorders (pp. 309–326). London:
Erlbaum.
Blackmer, E. R., & Mitton, J. L. (1991). Theories of monitoring and the timing of repairs in spon-
taneous speech. Cognition, 39, 173–194.
Bosch, L., Oostdijk, N., & Boves, L. (2005). On temporal aspects of turn taking in conversational
dialogues. Speech Communication, 47, 80–86. doi:10.1016/j.specom.2005.05.009.
Casillas, M. (2014). Talking the floor on time: Delay and deferral in children’s turn-taking. In
I. Arnon, M. Casillas, C. Kurumada, & B. Estigarribia (Eds.), Language in interaction: Studies
in honour of Eve V. Clark (pp. 101–114). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Chafe, W. (1994). Discourse, consciousness, and time. The flow and displacement of conscious
experience in speaking and writing. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Estis, J. M., & Beverly, B. L. (2015). Children with PLI exhibit delays resolving ambiguous refer-
ence. Journal of Child Language, 42(1), 180–195.
Finneran, D. A., Francis, A., & Leonard, L. B. (2009). Sustained attention in children with Specific
Language Impairment (SLI). Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 52,
915–929.
Friedrich, M., & Friederici, A. (2006). Early N400 development and later language acquisition.
Psychophysiology, 43, 1–12.
Garvey, C. (1984). Children’s talk. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gaskell, M. G., & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (1997). Integrating form and meaning: A distributed
model of speech perception. Language & Cognitive Processes, 12(5–6), 613–656.
Gathercole, S., Service, E., Hitch, G. J., Adams, A. M., & Martin, A. J. (1999). Phonological short-
term memory and vocabulary development: Further evidence on the nature of the relationship.
Applied Cognitive Psychology, 13, 65–77.
Heldner, M., & Edlund, J. (2010). Pauses, gaps and overlaps in conversations. Journal of Phonetics,
38, 555–568.
Jackson-Maldonado, D., Peña, E., & Aghara, R. (2011). Funciones de lenguaje y tipos de palabras
en la interacción entre madres y sus hijos e hijas. In C. Rojas-Nieto & D. Jackson-Maldonado
(Eds.), Interacción y uso lingüístico (pp. 27–62). México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México.
Kendrick, K. H. (2015). The intersection of turn-taking and repair: The timing of the other-
initiations of repair in conversation. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 509. doi:10.3389/
fpsyg.2015.00509.
Kitzinger, C. (2013). Repairs. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversational
analiysis (pp. 229–258). Oxford: Wiley-Blackewell.
Kormos, J. (1999). The timing of self-repairs in second language speech production. Studies in
Second Language Acquisition, 22, 145–167.
Kornilov, S., Magnuson, J., Rakhlin, N., Landi, N., & Grigorenko, E. (2015). Lexical processing
deficits in children with developmental language disorder: An event-related potentials study.
Development and Psychopathology, 25, 459–476.
Lara, W., Rojas-Nieto, C., Jackson-Maldonado, D., & Díaz, C. (2015). ¿Qué problemas fuente
autorreparan los niños con Trastorno Primario de Lenguaje? El él, el súsape, el pícipe. Estudios
de Lingüística Aplicada, 61, 165–197.
Lausberg, H., & Sloetjes, H. (2009). Coding gestural behaviour with the NEUROGES-ELAN
system. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 41(3), 841–849.
Leonard, L. B. (2014). Children with specific language impairment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Leonard, L. B., Weismer, S., Miller, C., Francis, D., Tomblin, J. B., & Kail, R. (2007). Speed of
processing, working memory and language impairment in children. Journal of Speech,
Levelt, W. J. M. (1983). Monitoring and self-repair in speech. Cognition, 14, 41–104.
Levelt, W. J. M. (1989). Speaking: From intention to articulation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Levelt, W. J. M., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech produc-
tion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(1), 1–38.
Levinson, S. C. (2016). Turn-taking in human communication – Origins and implications for lan-
guage processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(1), 6–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.
tics.2015.10.010
Levinson, S. C., & Torreira, F. (2015). Timing in turn-taking and its implications for processing
models of language. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 731. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00731.
Lum, J. A. G., Conti-Ramsden, G., Page, D., & Ullman, T. (2012). Working, declarative and pro-
cedural memory in specific language impairment. Cortex, 48, 1138–1154.
Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (1987). Functional parallelism in spoken word-recognition. Cognition, 25,
71–102.
Marslen-Wilson, W. (1993). Issues of process and representation in lexical access. In G. Altmann
& R. Shillcock (Eds.), Cognitive models of language processes: Second Sperlonga Meeting.
Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
McMurray, B., Samelson, V. M., Lee, S. H., & Tomblin, J. B. (2010). Individual differences in
online spoken word recognition: Implications for SLI. Cognitive Psychology, 60(1), 1–39.
http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2009.06.003
Melgar, M. (2002). Cómo detectar al niño con problemas del habla. México: Trillas.
Merryman, W. E., & Schuster, J. M. (1991). Young children’s disambiguation of object name refer-
ence. Child Development, 62, 1288–1301.
Mayer, M. (1969). Frog, where are you? Nueva York: Dial Books for Young Readers.
Montgomery, J. W. (2000). Relation of working memory to off-line and real-time sentence pro-
cessing in children with specific language impairment. Applied PsychoLinguistics, 21,
117–148.
Montgomery, J. W. (2002). Examining the nature of lexical processing in children with specific
language impairment: Temporal processing or processing capacity deficit? Applied
PsychoLinguistics, 23, 447–470.
Montgomery, J. W., Magimairaj, B. M., & Finney, M. C. (2010). WM and specific language
impairment: An update on the relation and perspectives on assessment and treatment. American
Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 19, 78–94.
Muñoz-Sandoval, A. F., Woodcock, R. W., McGrew, K., & Mather, N. (2005). Batería III
Woodcock-Muñoz. Itacca: Riversi.
Restrepo, M. A. (1998). Identifiers of predominantly Spanish-speaking children with language
impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 41(6), 1398–1411.
Roberts, S. G., Torreira, F., & Levinson, S. C. (2015). The effects of processing and sequence
organization on the timing of turn taking: A corpus study. Frontiers in Psichology, 6, 509.
doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00509.
Rojas-Nieto, C. (1998). La construcción del dato en el estudio de la adquisición del lenguaje. In
S. Reyes Coria (Ed.), Jornadas Filológicas 1997: Memoria (pp. 23–30). México: Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México.
Sabisch, B., Hahne, A., Galss, E., von Suchodoletz, W., & Friederici, A. (2006). Lexical-semantic
processes in children with specific language impairment. Neuroreport, 17(14), 1511–1514.
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of
turn-taking for conversation. Language, 50(4), 696–735.
Schegloff, E. A. (2000). Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-taking of conversation.
Language in Society, 29, 1–63. doi:10.1017/S0047404500001019.
Schegloff, E. (2013). Ten operations in self-initiated, same-turn repair. In M. Hayashi, G. Raymond,
& J. Sidnell (Eds.), Conversational repair and human understanding (pp. 41–70). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Schegloff, E. A., Jefferson, G., & Sacks, H. (1977). The preference for self-correction in the orga-
nization of repair in conversation. Language, 53(2), 361–382.
Semel, E., Wayne, W., & Secord, A. (2006). Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals, Spanish
edition (CELF-4). Psychological Corporation. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Sheng, L., & McGregor, K. (2010). Lexical-semantic organization in children with specific lan-
guage impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 146–159.
Snow, C. E. (1977). The development conversation between mothers and babies. Journal of Child
Language, 4, 1–22.
Stark, R., & Tallal, P. (1988). The children with specific language impairment. In R. J. McCauley
(Ed.), Language, speech and reading disorders in children: Neuropsychological studies
(pp. 56–114). San Diego: College-Hill Press.
Stivers, T., Enfield, N. J., & Levinson, S. C. (2007). Person reference in interaction. In N. J. Enfield
& T. Stivers (Eds.), Person reference in interaction: Linguistic, cultural and social perspectives
(pp. 1–20). Cambride: Cambridge University Press.
Stivers, T., Enfield, N. J., Brown, P., Englert, C., Hayashi, M., Heinemann, T., Hoymann, G.,
Rossano, F., de Ruiter, J., Yoon, K., & Levinson, S. (2009). Universal and cultural variation in
turn-taking in conversation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United
States of America, 106(26), 10587–10592. doi:10.1073/pnas.0903616106.
Tallal, P., & Stark, R. (1981). Speech acoustic-cue discrimination abilities of normal developing
and language-impaired children. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 69, 568–574.
Tomasello, M. (2010). Origins of human communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Velez, M., & Schwartz, R. G. (2010). Spoken word recognition in school-age children with SLI:
Semantic, phonological, and repetition priming. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing
Research, 53(6), 1616–1628.
Vihman, M., & Croft, W. (2007). Phonological development: Toward a “radical” templatic phonol-
ogy. Linguistics, 45(4), 683–725.
Wechsler, D. (1981). Escala de inteligencia de Wechsler para preescolar y Primaria (WIPPSI).
Madrid: TEA Ediciones.
Narrative Comprehension and Language
Skills in Chilean Children with Specific
Language Impairment
Carmen Julia Coloma and María Mercedes Pavez
Abstract Background and rationale. Children with Specific Language Impairment

(SLI) experience grammatical, phonological and semantic difficulties in oral pro-
duction. Moreover, their narrative skills may also be affected. Narrative skills are
relevant to study in children with SLI as they are tightly linked to reading compre-
hension. As for comprehension, theoretical models emphasize the importance of
vocabulary and grammar, thus these components may affect narrative comprehen-
sion in children with SLI. This chapter addresses the following research questions:
(a) Are there differences in the narrative comprehension in children with SLI when
compared to a control group? (b) Do difficulties in narrative comprehension coexist
with lexical and grammatical problems in children with SLI?
Method. A total of 13 children with SLI and 13 children with typical develop-
ment participated in the study. The participants were enrolled in first grade of pri-
mary school (mean age = 6.9) and their hearing and non-verbal cognitive skills were
found to be within typical ranges.
Narrative comprehension was measured using the test “Prueba para evaluar la
comprensión del discurso narrativo”, EDNA method (3 questionnaires with literal
and inferential questions about 3 stories presented orally).
Vocabulary was measured using the test “Vocabulario sobre dibujos”, section
“Language Survey –Revised” (Spanish version). Grammatical was assessed by ana-
lyzing the complexity of sentences after retelling 3 stories.
Results. No significant differences were found when the scores in the compre-
hension test were compared (mean SLI = 22,9 (6.1); mean typical d evelopment = 26,4
(6.0), t 1.48). Significant differences were found, in the second story, when scores
This research was conducted with funding from the regular FONDECYT Project, 2013, No
1130201.
C.J. Coloma (*)
Departamento de Fonoaudiología y Centro de Investigación Avanzada en Educación (CIAE),
Departamento de Fonoaudiología, Universidad de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile
e-mail: ccoloma@med.uchile.cl
M.M. Pavez
Departamento de Fonoaudiología, Universidad de Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile
e-mail: mmpavez@hotmail.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_13
262 C.J. Coloma and M.M. Pavez
were compared (mean SLI = 6,5 (2.8); mean typical development = 9,5 (2.1); t 2,5,
p 0.002). The significant difference was observed in the inferential questions (mean
SLI = 1,7 (1.8); mean typical development = 4,0 (1.7), t 2.6, p 0.01). 69% of chil-
dren with SLI and 38% of children with typical development showed difficulties in
comprehending narratives. We found that difficulties in narrative comprehension in
children with SLI do not coexist with lexical problems but with grammatical com-
plexity. Few children showed lexical difficulties (15% SLI and 8% typical develop-
ment). All children with SLI who had lexical difficulties showed poor performance
in comprehension and grammatical complexity.
Discussion. Results indicated that narrative comprehension is affected in most
children with SLI and suggest that difficulties in comprehending narratives are
linked to inferential processing. Furthermore, it was also observed that difficulties,
on narrative comprehension coexist with difficulties on grammatical complexity.
This situation changes when children with SLI have lexical difficulties. This profile
was not observed in children with typical development.
Keywords Narrative comprehension • Lexical production • Grammatical complex-

ity • Spanish-speaking children • Specific Language Impairment
1 Introduction
1.1 Discourse Comprehension and Narrative Comprehension
Comprehension is a complex phenomenon that has been explained by different

theoretical models. Some authors have focused on reading comprehension (Gough
and Tunmer 1986), while some others have examined comprehension in general
(Kamhi and Catts 2005; Kintsch and Van Dijk 1983). Given the differences between
theoretical models, a distinction can be made between the comprehension of words
and sentences and discourse comprehension (Belichón et al. 2005).
One of the models that has been frequently used to describe discourse compre-
hension is Kintsch and Van Dijk’s model (1983). According to this model, discourse
comprehension is a strategic process that builds a text base and a situational model
by means of the generation of inferences. Text base is a semantic representation that
corresponds to the information available on the discourse surface. That representa-
tion is defined in terms of relationships among propositions. The elaboration of
propositions is based on words’ meaning and the syntactic structure and semantics
of the sentences.
Thus, discourse comprehension entails the processing of lexical and grammati-
cal aspects. The situational model is seen as a cognitive representation of events,
actions and people involved in the situation described in the discourse. In the situ-
ational model and the text base it is possible to integrate previous experiences that
are similar to the events presented by the discourse being processed. A match
between text base and situational model clarifies the content of text base.
Narrative Comprehension and Language Skills in Chilean Children with Specific… 263
In narratives, relationships among propositions that constitute the text base are
underpinned by the narrative’s structure and the causal and temporal associations
(Burris and Brown 2014). Relationships can be explicitly formulated in the text
(literal) or they can be drawn from inferences in which text information is integrated
with previous knowledge. Therefore, narrative comprehension requires the process-
ing resources of various linguistic and cognitive abilities.
The development of narrative comprehension is a gradual process that can be
clearly observed from the age of 3. Between 3 and 4 years of age, children are able to
establish inferential causal relationships between concrete events (Brown et al. 2011).
Children aged 5 already elaborate a semantic narrative representation based on the
story’s structure. This is possible because they begin integrating different contents of
the narratives and they draw causal inferences which are more complex and which
include emotional states and the characters’ objectives (Burris and Brown 2014).
Children aged 6 and 7 improve on their ability to generate complex causal infer-
ences and integrate world knowledge with greater ease. This allows them to make
inferences which are more global and somehow detach from the details of the story.
At age 8, children are more aware of objects and subordinate results. However, they
are not able to identify central objects in the narrative. Narrative comprehension
keeps evolving through adolescence and even into early adulthood (Bishop and
Donlan 2005; Szaflarski et al. 2012; Burris and Brown 2014). Narrative comprehen-
sion development can be affected in children with language disorders, being chil-
dren with Specific Language Impairment one of the most frequently studied
populations.
1.2 C
hildren with Specific Language Impairment: Language
and Narrative Difficulties
Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is a deficit that typically affects language pro-
duction or language production and comprehension simultaneously. It is not the
direct result of hearing impairment, autism spectrum disorders, general develop-
mental disability, or neurological impairment (Acosta et al. 2012; Fresneda and
Mendoza 2005; Leonard 2014).
Children with SLI have a wide range of language deficits. Differences in these
difficulties have been observed to vary depending on the particular language dimen-
sions involved and the affected linguistic modality. The linguistic performance of
children with SLI is heterogeneous and it involves different SLI subtypes (Marini
et al. 2008). However, grammar is usually a particularly compromised domain
(Morgan et al. 2013), which translate into different kinds of problems depending of
the grammatical nuances of each language (Leonard 2014).
Grammatical difficulties in children with SLI have been studied mainly in
English-speaking children (Mendoza et al. 2005). A general consensus is that verb
morphology, especially third person singular and past tense morpheme in regular
verbs, are particularly difficult, at least for English-speaking children with SLI
(Redmond and Rice 2001; Norbury et al. 2001). As for complex syntax, children
with SLI seem to produce less subordinate sentences, although they usually comply
with grammaticality (Marinellie 2004). However, these findings belong to a study
that analyzed semi-spontaneous interactions between children with SLI and adults.
Thus, since face-to-face conversations are less demanding than other genres (such
as narratives), children with SLI might generate ungrammatical subordinate sen-
tences when engaged in more difficult tasks (Marinellie 2004). Difficulties with
passive sentences and limitations in complex sentence comprehension have also
been reported (Bishop and Donlan 2005; Leonard et al. 2006).
Research on grammatical deficits in Spanish-speaking children with SLI is
sparse and has mainly focused on bilingual children (Ebert & Pham, this volume;
Girbau, this volume; Hincapié et al. 2007; Simón-Cereijido, this volume). Research
on monolingual Spanish-speaking with SLI is even more scarce (Chávez & Auza,
this volume; Lara & Rojas, this volume; Jackson-Maldonado & Maldonado 2015).
Nonetheless, distinguishing evidence regarding monolingual children with SLI
from evidence regarding bilingual children with SLI might prove important, since
contact with another language can impact on linguistic performance (Morgan et al.
2013).
Just like English-speaking children with SLI, Spanish-speaking children with
SLI have problems with sentence comprehension and production. These problems
can be observed mainly in complex sentences (Buiza et al. 2004; Hincapié et al.
2008; Acosta et al. 2014). Children make errors in complex sentence comprehen-
sion involving coordination, subordination, compound verb tenses, and conditional
mood (Hincapié et al. 2008). Specifically, comprehension difficulties for temporal,
causal and purpose subordinate clauses have been observed.
Sentence production also poses a problem for Spanish-speaking children with
SLI, particularly when involving purpose, temporal, and comparative adverbial sub-
ordinate clauses. However, few mistakes have been observed when children with
SLI produce both subordinate adverbial sentences and simple and coordinated sen-
tences (Buiza et al. 2004). They produce significantly less compound sentences in
their narratives than a control group matched for chronological age (Acosta et al.
2014). However, Jackson-Maldonado and Maldonado (Jackson and Maldonado
2015) found no significant differences in the use of subordinate sentences between
children with SLI and children with Typical Language Development (TLD) (both
groups being similarly in age and both asked to engage in spontaneous narratives).
Differences might arise if children are asked to perform more resource-demanding
tasks, such as retelling (with or without pictures), which are more likely to promote
syntactic complexity (Jackson-Maldonado and Maldonado Jackson and Maldonado
2015). Research on grammaticality in production has mostly focused on articles,
clitic pronouns, and verbs (Anderson and Souto 2005; Bedore and Leonard 2001,
2005; Sanz-Torrent 2002). Prepositions have been rarely studied in children with
SLI (Auza and Morgan 2013b).
Research on Spanish-speaking children with SLI has been usually conducted by
means of a three-group design: children with SLI, children controlled by age, and
children controlled by language level (Bedore and Leonard 2001, 2005; Morgan
et al. 2013; Sanz-Torrent 2002). Somehow less frequent are two-group designs
comparing children with SLI with a chronological age group (Anderson and Souto
2005; Morgan et al. 2013). As for the tasks used in the studies, they include inter-
actional conversations with an adult (Sanz-Torrent 2002), storytelling, describing
some picture, and a playful interaction with an adult (Anderson and Souto 2005;
Bedore and Leonard 2005). Controlled tasks intended to elicit specific grammatical
constructions are also used, such as picture naming, sentence completion or
describing events (Bedore and Leonard 2001). Sometimes children are asked to
orally complete cloze-style sentences or answer some specific questions (Morgan
et al. 2013).
Results regarding grammaticality in children with SLI show that they do not
perform adequately when using articles. In spontaneous speech, comparison
between children with SLI and a control group matched by chronological age
showed that children with SLI omit significantly more articles than their control
peers (Anderson and Souto 2005). In another study using controlled tasks, differ-
ences were found between children with SLI and their chronological age control
group, although their performance was similar to the language control group
(Bedore and Leonard 2001). When studying the specific use of definite articles in
three-group designs, children with SLI performed poorer than both control groups
(Bedore and Leonard 2005). Similar results regarding definite articles were observed
in a recent work with control groups matched by age and language development.
Nevertheless, all three groups exhibited similar use of indefinite articles (Auza and
Morgan 2013a).
Both in controlled tasks and in spontaneous language, children with SLI perform
lower than children of the same age and younger ones with a similar language
development when using clitic pronouns (Bedore and Leonard 2001, 2005; Morgan
et al. 2013). Thus, results showed that clitic pronouns are problematic for children
with SLI.
Studies on the use of verbs in children with SLI have mainly addressed aspects
related to semantics, syntax, and morphology. Results have shown that in conversa-
tions, children with SLI use semantically simple verbs and lower argument com-
plexity verbs, as compared to their chronological and language peers. Children with
SLI also produce a higher percentage of errors than their control peers (Sanz-Torrent
2002). However, when analyzing spontaneous speech, children with SLI perform
similarly to both control groups in terms of their use of past and present verbal
inflections (Bedore and Leonard 2005). In a study where children with SLI had to
perform control tasks, a similar pattern in the use of past and present tenses was
observed when compared to a control group matched by language, but differences
were found with their chronological peers. Moreover, children with SLI made sig-
nificantly more mistakes related with verbs (Bedore and Leonard 2001).
Few studies have been performed on the use of prepositions in monolingual
Spanish-speaking children. Children with SLI performed poorly when using prepo-
sitions in a retelling task. Specifically, they produced a significantly lower number
of prepositions than two control groups matched by chronological age and by lan-
guage level (Auza and Morgan 2013b).
Lexical development is closely linked to grammatical development. One possible

explanation is the bidirectional effect between the lexical and syntactic domains.
Children are thought to extract grammatical regularities from lexical samples
(lexical bootstrapping) or they use syntactic clues to access word meanings (syntac-
tic bootstrapping) (Pérez-Leroux et al. 2012). Evidence has been drawn from a lon-
gitudinal study with children aged 2.0 to 5.6, divided in two groups: children with
TLD and late-talkers. In this study, grammatical measures were correlated to vocab-
ulary measures in both groups and in all ages, except in 4-year-old children (Moyle
et al. 2007). A relationship between lexical productivity and general grammatical
development in 5-year-old Spanish-speaking children has also been reported (Pérez-
Leroux et al. 2012).
The above mentioned results support a strong relationship between both linguis-
tic domains. Thus, lexical development in children with SLI is an important domain
to study, not only because of its relationship with grammar but because of the impact
it may have in reading comprehension (Protopapas et al. 2012). Lexical develop-
ment needs lexical knowledge. And for lexical knowledge, children need to learn
information about the syntactic category (e.g. noun, verb, adjective), and how these
categories combine with each other, depending on both syntactic and semantic
information (Andreu & Sanz-Torrent, this volume).
A general consensus exists that children with SLI face lexical difficulties which
surface in different ways (De Hoog et al. 2015; Mainela-Arnold et al. 2010; McGregor
et al. 2002; Sheng and McGregor 2010). One difficult area is learning new words
(Gray 2004, 2005; Hansson et al. 2004; Kan and Windsor 2010; Riches et al. 2005).
It has been suggested that this difficulty in learning new lexical items is linked to a
difficulty to create and relate the semantics and the phonological representation of
the new words and to establish a strong relationship between both representations
(Gray and Brinkley 2011). It has also been proposed that children with SLI have an
inadequate semantic knowledge. This conclusion came from a study with a group of
6-year-old children with SLI who were asked to draw and define objects. Children
with SLI showed more difficulties in these tasks than children from the control
group. The proposed explanation is that children with SLI’s inadequate semantic
knowledge can be a cause of their naming problems (McGregor et al. 2002).
In older children with SLI (10 years old on average) difficulties were observed
regarding the activation of semantic and lexical networks. Data were gathered in a
study in which children with SLI were asked to perform a task in which they had to
distinguish semantically-related pairs of words from words which were not related
(Pizzioli and Schelstraete 2011). Despite the fact that there is generally a consensus
on the lexical difficulties that children with SLI have, those difficulties are not
always apparent. For instance, a study with children with SLI aged 6 showed that in
semantic fluency tasks and naming and semantic comprehension tasks they per-
formed within normal range (Marini et al. 2008).
Narrative skills have been extensively studied in children with SLI, with a special
focus on narrative production. It has been suggested that children with SLI have dif-
ficulties in narrative production (Manolitsi and Botting 2011; Reuterskiöld Wagner
et al. 1999; Ukrainetz and Gillam 2009). Research on narrative comprehension by
children with SLI is scarce, especially on research involving Spanish-speaking
c hildren. The present chapter is intended to contribute to the literature by focusing on

this area. Children with SLI have difficulties in understanding literal explicit informa-
tion in texts, as well as implicit information which requires inference elaboration
(Bishop and Adams 1992; Coloma et al. 2013; Norbury and Bishop 2002).
This problem has been observed in children with SLI aged between 8 and 12
(Bishop and Adams 1992) and in children aged between 6 and 7. When these chil-
dren are compared to two control groups (one paired for chronological age and the
other one paired for linguistic age), results show that children with SLI perform
significantly lower than their chronologically aged-matched peers. Also, children
with SLI performed similarly to younger children (2 years younger) and similar
linguistic development (Coloma et al. 2013).
Inferential narrative comprehension has also been studied on children with dif-
ferent clinical conditions. One study considered children with SLI aged between 6
and 10, children with pragmatic impairment, children with high-functioning autism,
and a control group. It was observed that inferential questions were more difficult
for all children, while literal questions were easier. All of the children in the three
clinical groups drew inferences; however, their inferences were wrong. Thus, the
conclusion was that the problems arise when children elaborate relevant inferences
based on the context of the story. In other words, children tended to draw inferences
which were decontextualized. Also, children in clinical groups performed signifi-
cantly lower than the group of TLD children. Nevertheless, no significant between-
group differences were found when comparing only the three selected clinical
groups of children (Norbury and Bishop 2002).
Story comprehension including causal and purpose questions has also been
examined. These aspects have been measured in groups of children with SLI, chil-
dren with a low SES, and children with TLD between 7 and 9 (Contreras and Soriano
2004). Children were presented a picture and asked questions such as “Why is the
child demanding an ice-cream?” (expecting a causal response) and “Why is the
child asking for money?” (expecting a purpose response). TLD children performed
better than children in the other groups. Children with SLI had problems under-
standing questions about causes and purposes just as socially-deprived children did,
and their answers were unrelated to the questions and were decontextualized
(Contreras and Soriano 2004). Narrative comprehension difficulties can also arise
when children retell a story. Children with SLI aged between 5 and 9 produce irrel-
evant information when retelling a story (Schneider 1996).
Difficulties experienced by children with SLI on retelling stories focused on rel-
evant contents can be linked to difficulties in making contextualized inferences
related to the story.
Coding and retrieving the central ideas of a narrative are essential requirements
of a story-retelling task. These processes are linked to syntactic and lexical skills.
Children with SLI aged 7–8 asked to describe the events presented in a series of
photographs use a rather limited number of complex clauses and lexical elements
expressing mental states. This pattern has been linked to retelling problems.
Specifically, children with SLI were reported to express less main ideas than a simi-
lar aged control group (Bishop and Donlan 2005).
In summary, children with SLI have problems related with narrative comprehen-
sion. These problems involve the comprehension of explicit information and the
elaboration on implicit information by means of inference generation. The gram-
matical and lexical deficits associated with SLI negatively affect their narrative
comprehension. In Kintsch and Van Dijk’s model (1983), the construction of a text
demands knowledge of sounds and word meanings and the relevant use of gram-
matical knowledge. Thus, we aim at exploring the relationships among lexical
items, grammar and narrative comprehension in children with SLI.
This chapter presents a study designed to examine narrative comprehension by
monolingual children with SLI. We address the following research questions: (a)
Are there any differences in the narrative comprehension of Spanish-speaking chil-
dren with SLI when compared to a control group? (b) Do difficulties in narrative
comprehension relate to lexical and grammatical difficulties in children with SLI?
2 Method
2.1 Participants
Twenty-six first-graders (M = 6;9) were recruited. Parents or caregivers provided

informed consent for all the children participating in the study. Children were
enrolled in public and private subsidized schools in the Santiago Metropolitan
Region, Chile. These schools have integration projects that are specifically designed
to provide particular educational provisions to children with special educational
needs and disabilities. Children from levels A and B usually enroll in public schools
and children from level C in private subsidized schools (levels A and B include
adults who have between 8 and 10 years of schooling and an average monthly
income fluctuating between US$ 285 and US$ 420, while level C includes adults
who have, on average, 12 years of schooling and a monthly US$ 643 income).
Nineteen children were attending public schools (8 children with SLI and 11 with
TLD) and seven were attending private subsidized schools. Thus, children with SLI
received professional assistance for their language impairment within their schools.
Children were divided into two groups: the first group consisted of 13 children
with SLI and the second group consisted of 13 children with TLD. Children with
SLI were selected based on the diagnostic evaluation conducted by a speech and
language pathologist following criteria stated by the Ministry of Education of Chile
(Supreme Decree, 170/2010). To meet these criteria, children must perform poorly
on receptive and expressive language tests. These normed tests measure phonology,
vocabulary and morphosyntax. Also, language samples were used to examine narra-
tive abilities. A general medical examination and a psycho-pedagogical evaluation
were also conducted. Supreme Decree 170/2010 in Chile established that to be diag-
nosed with SLI, a child must perform poorly on at least two tests that measure dif-
ferent language components. Children with TLD were recruited among children
with SLI’s classmates. Aside from typical language development, these children
exhibited normal learning abilities. This information was obtained from an inter-
view with school teachers.
Only children with normal non-verbal cognitive abilities and with level of hear-
ing within normal range were selected for this study. Non-verbal cognitive abilities
were measured with the test Coloured Progressive Matrices. In this test, children
who obtained scores that fall within the 25 and 74 percentile are considered to be
within normal range (Raven 2005). Hearing acuity was measured at 500, 1000,
2000 and 4000 Hz. Normal hearing threshold is between 0–20 dB HL (American
Speech-Language-Hearing Association 2005).
2.2 Materials
Three areas were evaluated: (a) narrative comprehension, which included literal and
inferential comprehension; (b) grammar, which covered sentence grammaticality
and complexity, and (c) vocabulary, which covered lexical naming and lexical diver-
sity (verbs and nouns).
Narrative Comprehension Narrative comprehension was measured using the test
Evaluación del Discurso Narrativo (EDNA) (Pavez et al. 2008), which evaluates
production and comprehension of narratives based on the retelling of three chil-
dren’s stories. EDNA’s comprehension test reliability coefficient is 0.84 (Cronbach’s
alpha).
The stories in the test are: La ardillita glotona (The greedy squirrel), El sapito
saltarín (The jumping frog) and El lobo friolento (The chilly wolf). The structure of
these stories includes presentation, episode and ending. The presentation corresponds
to the initial part of the narrative and presents the main character and the problem. The
episode presents the development of the narrative and it has the sequence of actions,
obstacle and result. Finally, the ending includes the resolution of the problem previ-
ously stated in the presentation. Each story has a set of literal and inferential questions.
Literal questions are conceived as questions about information explicitly stated in the
text. Inferential questions involve linking explicit information from the text with pre-
vious knowledge. Both types of questions are presented in the Appendix. La ardillita
glotona (The greedy squirrel) is followed by six literal questions and three inferential
questions. For El sapito saltarín (The jumping frog) and El lobo friolento (The chilly
wolf), there are seven literal questions and there are three inferential questions. In the
three stories, there are 10 questions about the presentation (3 inferential questions), 16
questions about the episode (6 inferential), and three questions about the ending.
All inferential questions are about psychological and motivation causes (Burris
and Brown 2014). Inferential psychological questions require establishing a link
between events and the internal state of the characters (e.g., Why did the present
make him happy?) Inferential motivational questions establish a relationship between
events and characters’ objectives (e.g., Why did they hide the trap?). In each story,
there are 3 inferential questions. The questionnaire in La ardillita glotona (The
greedy squirrel) consists of two motivational questions and one psychological ques-
tion, the questionnaire in El sapito saltarín (The jumping frog) has one motivational
question and two psychological questions, and the questionnaire in El lobo friolento
(The chilly wolf) has one motivational question and two psychological questions.
Scores for each participant followed the criteria presented in EDNA. Answers
with grammatical mistakes are not considered wrong in the grading procedure, as
the test evaluates comprehension. Thus, it is the general idea expressed by each
child what is evaluated. Literal answers were awarded one point (20 questions) and
inferential answers were awarded two points (9 questions). Consequently, the total
possible score for literal questions was 20 and the total possible score for inferential
questions was 18, with a maximum score of 38. The EDNA test considers a poor
narrative comprehension, those children who obtain scores below the 25th percen-
tile. The stories and questions are presented in the Appendix.
Grammar The grammatical analysis was conducted on the corpus obtained from
the three stories retold by the children. The procedure was that an examiner read one
story to each child (with no pictures as visual aids) and subsequently they were
asked to retell the story. After retelling the story, children took the corresponding
comprehension test. Children’s retellings were transcribed orthographically. These
corpora were used for evaluating grammar and lexical diversity.
Retold stories were recorded and transcribed following the method proposed by
EDNA (Pavez et al. 2008). Narratives were chosen because children with SLI produce
more words per sentence in narratives than in conversations. Also, because narrative
discourse requires the production of complex syntactic structures both in children with
SLI and children with TLD (Gutiérrez-Clellen and Hofstetter 1994; Pavez et al. 2001).
Sentences in the three narratives produced by each child were identified. A sentence
was defined as a minimal unit of predication in which a relationship between a subject
and a predicate is established (Real Academia Española 2010). Partially unintelligible
sentences were excluded from the corpus. Then, sentences were identified and counted
based on complexity and grammaticality. Corresponding criteria are presented below.
Complexity: Simple Sentence/Complex Sentence A simple sentence is a construc-
tion with a predicative head without any subordinate verbs, such as: “Los animalitos
pusieron una trampa” (the animals laid a trap). On the contrary, a complex sentence
has a predicative head and one or more subordinate predicative heads, as in: “La
ardillita no pudo salir de su casa porque estaba muy gorda” (the squirrel was not
able to leave the house because it was too fat).
Grammaticality: Grammatical Sentence/Ungrammatical Sentence In a gram-
matical sentence, all morphosyntactic criteria are adequately met, for instance: “le
hicieron una casa chiquitita” (they built a very small house for her). In an ungram-
matical sentence, on the contrary, one or more morphosyntactic criteria are not met,
as is the case when a grammatical element in the sentence is modified in its syntactic
and/or morphological organization. For instance in the omission or substitution of
obligatory gender or number grammatical elements determined a sentence as
ungrammatical: “Las-feminine article animales se sentían tristes” (instead of “Los-
masculine article animales se sentían tristes”), “la ardilla estaba gordita y lo-mascu-
line pronoun invitaban a jugar” (instead of “la-feminine pronoun invitaban a jugar”),
“el sapito saltaba de noche y no los dejábamos-plural dormir a sus amigos” (instead
of “…y no los dejaba-singular dormir a sus amigos”).
Vocabulary As mentioned above, vocabulary was examined considering lexical
naming and lexical diversity. In the following section, both categories are
presented.
Naming Lexical Production Lexical naming production was assessed using
Vocabulario sobre dibujos, Language Survey – Revised. Test Book-Spanish
(Woodcock et al. 2005). This test has a Kuder-Richardson Coefficient of reliability
of 0.89. The test consists of 58 items with a progressive increasing difficulty level
from frequent words to less frequent words in children’s school and family settings.
All words are nouns. Each item includes an image that the child has to name. Despite
the fact that the task focuses on naming, there are six comprehension items. These
items consist of frequent lexical elements that children must produce when asked to
correct answers are awarded one point. Consequently, the total test score is 58
points. Each child was asked to name each image. The test was given until any chil-
dren provided six consecutive wrong answers.
Lexical Diversity Lexical diversity, as well as grammatical performance, was
explored in the three narrative corpora produced by the children. The total number
of verbs and nouns, along with the number of different verbs and nouns, were
counted for each story. Total number of words was divided by total number of dif-
ferent words. Lexical elements with morphological variations, for instance, lobo
(wolf) and lobito (little wolf), were considered as a single noun.
2.3 Procedure
The sessions were conducted individually in the children’s school by a speech and
language pathologist or a teacher trained to do so. The evaluation process took place
in a quiet classroom. The narrative comprehension test, the story retelling, and the
vocabulary test were given in a single 35-min. session.
3 Results
The first goal was to determine whether there were any differences in the narrative
comprehension of Spanish-speaking children with SLI when compared to a group
of age-matched children with TLD. The percentage of participants with narrative
difficulties was considered in each group. The second goal was to compare
grammatical and lexical performance by children with SLI and their age-matched
peers with TLD.
Finally, the correlation between difficulties in narrative comprehension and lexi-
cal and grammatical difficulties in children with SLI and children with TLD was
explored.
3.1 Narrative Comprehension
We compared total scores and question type scores between groups.

As can be seen in Table 1, children with SLI have problems in understanding
narratives; their overall scores were lower than those of children with TLD.
Differences were statistically significant in the comprehension of literal questions
and in questions related to the story components of presentation and episode. Both
groups performed similarly in inferential questions, given that the difference
observed was not statistically significant. Despite this, it was observed that the aver-
age score of children with SLI on inferential questions was 49.4% (8.9/18), while
children with TLD scored 62.2% on average (11.1/18). This means that the perfor-
mance of children with SLI was below 50%. Regarding the comprehension of the
story ending, both groups of children had very few correct answers and differences
between groups were not significant. Size effect measures (Cohen’s d) ranged
between medium and large.
As for comprehension of information given at the presentation and episode, the
average score obtained by children with SLI was 65% of the total score for the pre-
sentation (8.5/13), whereas for the episode they scored 60.9% of the total score
Table 1 Comparison of narrative comprehension between children with SLI and children with
TLD
SLI TLD
n 13 n 13
Narrative comprehension M (SD) M (SD) t p Cohen’s d
Total (maximum score 38) 22.5 26.7 2.1* .023 .84
(4.7) (5.2)
Type of Inferential (maximum 8.9 (3.4) 11.2 1.4 .079 .56
Question score 18) (4.6)
Literal (maximum 13.6 15.4(2.1) 2.2* .020 .85
score 20) (2.1)
Formal Presentation (maximum 8.5 (2.0) 10.0 2.0* .028 .78
categories of the score 13) (1.8)
story Episode (maximum 13.4(2.9) 15.9 1.8* .037 .78
score 22) (3,7)
Ending (maximum 0.5(0.7) 0.7 (1.0) .04 .335 .36
score 3)
* p < 0.05
Fig. 1 Percentage of 100%

children with SLI and TLD
with and without narrative 90%
31%
comprehension difficulties 80%
70% 62%
TYPICAL NARRATIVE
60% COMPREHENSION
50% POOR NARRATIVE
COMPREHENSION
40%
69%
30%
20% 38%
10%
0%
SLI TLD
(13.4/22). This result indicates that the comprehension of the episode was more
difficult to them. Children with TLD performed similarly (although they did score
higher). Their average score on the presentation was 76.9% (10/13) and 72.2% on
the episode (15.9/22). Consequently, both groups seem to experience difficulties in
understanding the episode.
In order to complete the analysis about how children with SLI performed on nar-
rative comprehension, the percentage narrative comprehension with and without
difficulties was calculated based on the test’s norms. The same procedure was fol-
lowed with the group of children with TLD. Results are presented in Fig. 1.
As can be seen, a higher number of children with SLI showed narrative compre-
hension difficulties. On the contrary, most children with TLD had no narrative
difficulties.
3.2 C
omparison Between Linguistic Abilities in Children
with SLI and Children with TLD
The performance of both groups was compared considering the lexical domain and
the grammatical domain. In the lexical domain, lexical naming and lexical variety
(nouns and verbs) were compared. In the grammatical domain, the percentage of
complex sentences and the percentage of ungrammatical sentences were compared.
The comparison was made using percentages to normalize differences in the total
number of sentences in participants from both groups. Comparisons were conducted
by running Student’s t tests and effect size was calculated using Cohen’s d. Results
are presented in Table 2.
Table 2 Comparison of linguistic abilities in between children with SLI and children with TLD
SLI TLD
n 13 n 13
Linguistic abilities M (SD) M (SD) t p Cohen’s d
Vocabulary Lexical nomination 29.8 (5.1) 31.8 (5.5) 0.9 .17 .37
Noun lexical variety 18.3 24.1 (7.0) 1.4 .07 .58
(12.3)
Verb lexical variety 20.3 30.1 1.8* .03 .74
(14.2) (11.9)
Grammar % of complex sentences 25.8 31.3 0.8 .21 .31
(15.7) (18.7)
% of ungrammatical 20.1 (8.6) 11.3 (5.3) 3.1* .002 1.23
sentences
* p < 0.05
Table 2 shows that children with SLI performed lower than of children with TLD
on each lexical skill, although differences were not statistically significant.
Significant differences were found for the lexical variety of verbs. As for grammati-
cal skills, children with SLI produced significantly more ungrammatical sentences
than children with TLD. This represents one of the distinguishing features of this
impairment. Concerning the production of complex sentences, both groups were not
significantly different from each other, despite the fact that children with SLI pro-
duced a lower amount of complex sentences than children with TLD.
3.3 R
elationship Between Narrative Comprehension
and Linguistic Skills in Both Groups of Children
An analysis was conducted to determine whether if there was a correlation between

scores from the narrative comprehension and performance in each of the abilities
that were measured. This analysis was conducted using Pearson’s correlation coef-
ficient (r).
Narrative comprehension was correlated with lexical abilities, −specifically,-
with lexical naming (r = .70, p = .007) only among children with SLI. No correla-
tions between narrative comprehension and lexical abilities were observed. Also,
narrative comprehension was not correlated with any grammatical abilities in nei-
ther of the groups.
4 Discussion
In this study, two main questions have been posed: the first question examined the
differences in narrative comprehension between Spanish-speaking children with
SLI and a control group. The second question aimed at exploring the possible
correlation between narrative comprehension and linguistic skills (lexical and gram-
matical) in children with SLI. Based on these questions and the results presented
above, we will finally elaborate on the characteristics of the narrative comprehen-
sion performance by children with SLI and their linguistic skills. We will also dis-
cuss the relationships found between narrative comprehension and lexical skills.
Finally, we will present the limitations and the projections of our study.
4.1 C
haracteristics of Narrative Comprehension by Children
with SLI
Narrative comprehension performance by children with SLI was found to be differ-

ent from the performance by children with TLD with a similar age. This translates
into a high percentage of children with SLI performing poorly in narrative compre-
hension (69%). This fact is not surprising and it is consistent with previous studies
which found that children with SLI have the same difficulties (Bishop and Adams
1992; Coloma et al. 2013; Contreras and Soriano 2004; Norbury and Bishop 2002).
However, one third of the children with SLI did not have narrative-related difficul-
ties, as was observed in a previous similar study (Coloma et al. 2013). This result
confirms that children with SLI experience narrative difficulties, but also that their
performance is heterogeneous.
Difficulties in comprehension can be especially noticed when children have to
process information explicitly formulated in the story and, based on this informa-
tion, answer literal questions. In this task, children’s performance is significantly
lower than that of children with TLD. This represents an important problem, since
it not possible to identify relevant explicit information for the story. These difficul-
ties are consistent with difficulties previously reported for Spanish-speaking chil-
dren with SLI and English-speaking children with SLI (Bishop and Adams 1992;
Coloma et al. 2013).
On the contrary, children with SLI are not statistically different from children
with TLD regarding inferential questions which require processing information not
explicitly stated in narratives. This finding differs from previous studies which
reported that children with SLI scored lower on inferential questions (Coloma et al.
2013; Contreras and Soriano 2004; Norbury and Bishop 2002).
A possible explanation for this result in our study might lie in that the evaluated
inferential questions were about implicit causal relationships. It has been suggested
that this kind of relationship is consolidated between 6 and 7 years of age, in typical
development of narrative comprehension (Burris and Brown 2014). Consequently,
these are relationships which do not pose important difficulties on children aged 6 or
7. Some difficulties are observed though, on making inferences from questions about
other kinds of semantic relations, such as those about opposition. Nevertheless, it is
noteworthy to remember that the average of correct answers provided by children
with SLI was 49.4%, while the control group scored obtained 62.2% on average.
Differences on these percentages suggest that this kind of task is more difficult for
children with SLI.
In some cases, statistical significance might have been not achieved because of
sample size (not enough power due to the total number of participants in each
group). In fact, another study which included children with similar characteristics
and used the same test studying a bigger sample reported significant differences in
comprehension between children with SLI and children with TLD (Coloma et al.
2013).
In our study, results regarding children with SLI’s inference skills might seem
controversial, since overall children with SLI do perform lower than children with
TLD, but they are unable to produce relevant responses and can generate adequate
causal inferences.
On the other hand, narrative comprehension difficulties experienced by children
with SLI can also be observed in questions related to the categories presentation and
episode in the stories. In these tasks, their performance is significantly poorer than
children with TLD. All of this supports the idea that children with SLI have prob-
lems with narrative comprehension, which limits extracting information about the
main character and the problem affecting him (presentation). Also, it involves dif-
ficulties in understanding the development of the story organized in the sequence
“action + obstacle + result” (episode). One important finding is that children in both
groups seemed to have more problems to understand the episode than to understand
the presentation. Moreover, information about the end of the story (where conflict is
solved) challenged most of the children in both groups. Most of the children were
unable to answer correctly the questions about the end of the story. This is not sur-
prising, since previous studies have reported that this category is the latest one to be
developed in the narrative production (Pavez et al. 2008). It has even been stated
that few school-age children can provide an appropriate ending for their stories.
This can be achieved at approximately the age of 10 years (Norbury and Bishop
2003). Thus, at the age of 6, children might have not acquired the category story
ending yet; consequently, they are unable to understand it.
In sum, performance of children with SLI in narrative comprehension is different
from that of children with TLD who are similar in age. Difficulties on understanding
narratives by children with SLI are evident. Their difficulties can be clearly observed
in questions which require them to process explicit information in the story. On the
contrary, their performance on answering questions which require inferences are
poorer than that of the group with TLD, despite the fact that no significant differ-
ences were observed. Difficulties on understanding the information given on the
categories of presentation and episode were also seen. Conversely, children with
SLI performed poorly in questions about the story ending, very similar to the chil-
dren with TLD.
4.2 L
anguage Abilities in Children with SLI and Their
Relationship with Narrative Comprehension
Children with SLI performed lower than children with TLD in each of the lexical
skills measured. However, significant differences were only found on the lexical
variety of verbs. Their performance on naming and on noun variety was similar to
the control group. These similar results might be explained by the fact that nouns in
the test can be considered frequent words for children. To meet high-frequency
criteria, words must be phonologically simple and denote concrete entities belong-
ing to the children’s daily experience. Thus, it is possible that these words do not
challenge the children. On the other hand, previous studies have observed a similar-
ity between lexical variety in children with SLI and in children with TLD matched
by age (Owen and Leonard 2002). Also, it has been reported that children with SLI
about the same age as children who participated in our study performed within the
normal range on a measure of semantic fluency, semantic naming and comprehen-
sion (Marini et al. 2008).
Lexical difficulties by children with SLI can be seen in significantly lower verb
diversity as compared to children with TLD. This is consistent with previous studies
which have stated that verbs seem to pose particular lexical problems for these chil-
dren and that verbs are particularly challenging for them (Schwartz 2009).
The main difficulty that children have with verbs can be linked to their slower
acquisition process, as can be seen in toddlers who produce a higher number of
nouns than verbs (Sandhofer and Smith 2000).
Specific difficulties with verbs suggest that the lexical problems which children
with SLI experience appear in tasks in which the words used are more demanding,
as these lexical items are.
As for grammatical skills, children with SLI performed significantly lower than
children in control group. They produced a higher number of ungrammatical sen-
tences as compared to the number produced by children with TLD. The higher
number of ungrammatical sentences coincides with the grammatical difficulty that
these children show (Morgan et al. 2013).
Both groups performed similarly regarding sentence complexity. This similarity
may be related to the age of the children, as complex sentences are mastered after
the age of 6 (Clemente 2000). This is in line with previous studies which included
Spanish-speaking children aged 7, who produced a similar number of complex
sentences in narratives as children with TLD (Jackson-Maldonado and Maldonado
Jackson and Maldonado 2015). Consequently, when producing narratives, children
with SLI used a variety of words similar to the variety used by children with
TLD. However, children with SLI produced significantly more ungrammatical sen-
tences and a similar number of complex sentences than children with TLD.
As for the correlation between narrative comprehension and linguistic skills,
only associations between noun lexical naming and narrative comprehension by
children with SLI were statistically significant. This means that they experience the
coexistence of improvement in lexical naming performance and improvement in

narrative comprehension. However, this was not observed in children with TLD.
Kintsch and Van Dijk’s (1983) model of discourse comprehension sustains that
to construct a text base, both lexical items and grammar are required. From this
perspective, it was expected that grammatical skills might have been associated
with narrative comprehension in children with SLI. However, the correlation
between these skills and comprehension was not observed. These children produced
ungrammatical sentences; therefore, it is possible to think that they children elabo-
rate the text base, children with SLI rely on their best developed skills which are
equivalent to those that children with TLD possess, such as lexical naming and,
probably, the use of a diverse number of nouns.
Children with TLD performed differently from children with SLI, scores on
comprehension were higher than those of children with SLI. Possibly, these differ-
ences are due to the fact that children with TLD not only rely on their linguistic
skills when solving comprehension problems, but also draw on their working
memory and their inference-generation skills (Kim 2016) which allows them to
integrate their previous knowledge to elaborate the text base.
4.3 Limitations and Future Directions
The main limitations of this study have to do with sample size and the instrument
used to measure narrative comprehension. Sample size constrained the statistical
analysis performed. Only mean comparisons and correlations were conducted.
Future research should explore multiple linear regression analysis to model the
effects of lexical and grammatical abilities on narrative comprehension.
Narrative comprehension assessed with our instrument is not based on pictures.
It is based on inferential and literal questions which are linked to a specific formal
category in the narrative. Therefore, results cannot be extended to the comprehen-
sion of some other types of narratives, such as stories about personal experiences.
Previous research has observed that different types of narratives follow different
developmental patterns (Allen et al. 1994).
Despite these limitations, this study presents a general view of how Spanish-
speaking children with SLI perform when engaged in narrative comprehension.
Also, this study contributes to the literature by presenting data about linguistic abili-
ties which can be associated with narrative comprehension in children with SLI.
Further studies in the domain of narrative comprehension and production by
Spanish-speaking children with SLI need to be conducted to characterize in depth
these skills. Also, narrative comprehension should be assessed using other types of
procedures. For instance, stories with pictures and visual support could be used so
that the children can answer the questions. Continuing research on grammatical dif-
ficulties and their impact on narrative comprehension is also important, since these
aspects are a key issue for children with SLI. Finally, studying narrative comprehen-
sion longitudinally would also contribute to deepen our understanding about the
characteristics of this ability in these children.
Appendix
La Ardillita Glotona
Había una vez una ardillita que vivía en el bosque y era muy glotona. Todos los días
la ardillita iba y les robaba la comida a todos sus amigos del bosque.
Los animalitos le quisieron dar una lección para que la ardillita no les comiera
más su comida. Se les ocurrió hacerle una casa bien chiquitita, con ventanas y puer-
tas chiquititas y adentro de la casa le dejaron: nueces, chocolates, miel, dulces, tor-
tas y helados. La ardillita estaba tan contenta que entró en su casa y se comió toda
la comida y se puso gorda, gorda.
Entonces vinieron sus amiguitos para invitarla a jugar, y como ella estaba tan
gorda no pudo salir ni por la puerta ni por las ventanas porque éstas eran muy
pequeñas.
Entonces la pobre ardillita, como no pudo salir de su casa, se puso muy triste
porque no podía ir a jugar con sus amiguitos, sólo podía mirarlos por la ventana.
Entonces, prometió que nunca más iba a comer tanto, y que nunca más les iba a
quitar la comida porque así ella podría salir de su casa y jugar con ellos.
El Sapito Saltarín
Había una vez un sapito que vivía en una laguna y que era muy saltarín. Al sapito le
gustaba saltar de noche y saltaba tanto que no dejaba dormir a los otros animalitos
de la laguna.
Un día los animalitos estaban tan cansados por no poder dormir que decidieron
ponerle una trampa al sapito. Construyeron una red y la ocultaron entre las flores de
la laguna. Entonces, cuando el sapito salió por la noche, en uno de sus saltos mor-
storys se enredó en la trampa y se quebró una patita.
Entonces el sapito ya no podía saltar y además por el dolor que sentía en su patita
quebrada lloraba de día y de noche. Los animalitos sintieron pena por lo que habían
hecho y se dieron cuenta de que así tampoco podrían dormir, así que decidieron
curarle la patita al sapito y, además, le construyeron un gimnasio para que pudiera
saltar a su gusto. Con el tiempo, el sapito mejoró y al ver el regalo que le habían
hecho sus amigos se puso muy feliz.
El sapito en agradecimiento prometió no saltar nunca más de noche para que
todos pudieran descansar.
El Lobo Friolento
Había una vez un lobo que era muy friolento y pasaba todos los días muerto de frío.
Cuando llegó el invierno, el lobo casi no podía caminar, ni podía comer, ni podía
hablar de tanto frío que tenía. Entonces decidió hacer algo. Salió de su cueva y vio
que los conejitos que vivían al lado de él tenían una estufa. Entró calladito y se la
robó.
Los conejitos lo vieron y comenzaron a gritar «¡Socorro! ¡Socorro! ¡El lobo nos
robó la estufa!». El lobo se fue corriendo rápidamente para que los conejitos no lo
alcanzaran y se encerró en su casa con la estufa. Después de un rato se quedó dor-
mido, pero como estaba tan cerca de la estufa se le empezó a quemar la cola y se
despertó muy asustado gritando: « ¡Socorro! ¡Sálvenme! ¡Se me quema la cola!»
Los conejitos lo escucharon y fueron a ayudarlo y le tiraron agua para apagarle
la cola, pero como hacía mucho frío el agua se convirtió en hielo y el lobo quedó
encerrado en un cubo de hielo. Pero a los conejitos les dio pena dejarlo así y le pusi-
eron la estufa para que se derritiera el hielo.
Cuando el lobo estaba bien, se dio cuenta de que los conejitos eran muy buenos
y prometió que nunca más robaría nada a nadie. Los conejitos lo invitaron a que-
darse en su casa y así el lobo nunca más sintió frío.
The Greedy Squirrel
Once upon a time, there was a squirrel that lived in the woods and that was very
greedy. Every day the squirrel stole the food from his friends in the forest.
The animals wanted to give the squirrel a lesson so that he would not eat their
food ever again. It occurred to them to build him a tiny house with tiny windows and
doors and left nuts, chocolates, honey, candy, cakes and ice cream inside. The squir-
rel was so happy that it entered the house and ate all the food and became really fat.
Then his friends came to invite him to play outside and, as he was so fat, he could
not go out through the door or the windows because they were too small.
Then the poor squirrel was very sad because he could not leave his house and
could not go out to play with his friends, and could only look at them through the
window.
Then he promised that would never eat as much and that he was never going to
take their food away because that way he would be able to get out of his house and
play with them.
The Jumping Frog
Once upon a time there was a frog that lived in a pond and that really liked to jump.
The frog liked to jump at night and he jumped so much that he did not let the other
animals of the pond get their sleep.
One day the animals were so tired from not sleeping that they decided to put a
trap for the frog. They built a net and hid it in the flowers of the pond. Then, when
the frog came out at night, in one of his somersaults he got caught in the trap and
one of his legs was broken.
Therefore, the frog could not jump anymore and, furthermore, because of the
pain in his broken leg, he cried day and night. The animals felt sorry for what they
had done and realized that this way it would be impossible as well for them to sleep,
so they decided to heal the frog’s leg and, besides, they built a gym so that he could
jump to his liking. After some time, the frog got better and when he saw the gift his
friends had made him he was very happy.
In gratitude, the frog promised never to jump at night again, so that everyone
could have his rest.
The Chilly Wolf
Once upon a time there was a wolf that got cold easily and was everyday frozen to
death. When the winter came, the wolf felt so cold that he could hardly walk, could
hardly eat, and could hardly speak. He decided to do something. He left his cave and
realized that the bunnies living next to him had a stove. He entered their house very
quietly and stole it.
The bunnies saw him and screamed “Help! Help! The wolf stole our stove!”. The
wolf ran quickly so that the bunnies could not reach him and locked himself in his
house with the stove. After a while, he fell asleep, but as he was so close to the stove,
his tail started burning and he woke up very scared shouting: “Help! Save me! My
tail is burning!”
The bunnies heard his screaming and went to help him and poured water to put
out the burning tail, but as it was very cold, the water turned to ice and the wolf was
trapped in an ice cube. But the bunnies felt sorry for him and did not want to leave
him like that, so they put the stove next to him to melt the ice.
When the wolf recovered, he realized that the bunnies were very kind and prom-
ised not to steal anything from anybody ever again. The bunnies invited him to stay
with them at home and so the wolf never felt cold again.
PRUEBA PARA EVALUAR COMPRENSIÓN DE DISCURSO NARRATIVO

TEST TO EVALUATE NARRATIVE DISCOURSE COMPREHENSION
NOMBRE: _______________________ EDAD: SEXO:____________
________
NAME: __________________________ AGE: SEX:_____________
_________
LA ARDILLITA GLOTONA
THE GREEDY SQUIRREL
1. ¿De qué animalito se habla en el cuento? 1 point
What animal is the story about? (Literal)
2. Se habla de una ardillita. ¿Qué les hace la ardillita a los amigos? 1 point
It is about a squirrel. What does the squirrel do to his friends?
(Literal)
3. Les robaba la comida. ¿Qué sentían los animalitos entonces? 2 points
He stole their food. What did the animals feel then? (Inferential)
4. ¿Y qué hicieron los amiguitos? 1 point
What did his friends do? (Literal)
5. Le hicieron una casa chiquitita. ¿Qué hizo la ardillita en la 1 point
casa chiquitita?
They built a tiny house for him. What did the squirrel do in the
tiny house? (Literal)
6. ¿Por qué le dejan tanta comida en la casa? 2 points
Why did they leave a lot of food for him in the house? (Inferential)
7. ¿Qué problema tuvo? 1 point
What problem did he have? (Literal)
8. ¿Qué pasó al final? 1 point
What happened in the end? (Literal)
9. ¿Por qué prometió que nunca más iba a comer tanto? 2 points
Why did he promise not to eat so much ever again? (Inferential)
EL SAPITO SALTARÍN
THE JUMPING FROG
2. Se habla de un sapito. ¿Qué les hace el sapito a los otros 1 point
animalitos?
It is about a frog. What does the frog do to the other animals?
(Literal)
3. Por qué cuando el sapito saltaba no los dejaba dormir? 2 points
Why could they not sleep when the frog jumped? (Inferential)
4. ¿Qué hicieron los animalitos? 1 point
What did the animals do? (Literal)
5. Le pusieron una trampa. ¿Qué le pasó al sapito en la trampa 1 point
que le pusieron?
They put a trap for him. What happened to the frog in the trap?
(Literal)
(continued)
6. ¿Por qué escondieron la trampa? 2 points

Why did they hide the trap? (Inferential)
7. El sapito se quebró la patita ¿Qué les pasó después a los 1 point
animalitos?
The frog broke his leg. What happened to the animals afterwards?
(Literal)
8. ¿Qué le regalaron al sapito? 1 point
What did they build for the frog? (Literal)
9. ¿Le regalaron un gimnasio. ¿Por qué se puso feliz con el 2 points
regalo?
They built a gym for him. Why was he so happy with the present?
(Inferential)
EL LOBO FRIOLENTO
THE CHILLY WOLF
2. Se habla de un lobo. ¿Qué le pasa al lobo? 1 point
It is about a wolf. What happens to the wolf? (Literal)
3. ¿Qué les hizo el lobo a los conejitos? 1 points
What did he do to the bunnies? (Literal)
4. El lobo les robó la estufa. ¿Qué le pasó al lobo en su casa? 1 point
He stole them the stove. What happened to the wolf at home?
(Literal)
5. ¿Para qué les robó la estufa? 2 points
What did he steal the stove for? (Inferential)
6. ¿Qué sintieron los conejitos cuando el lobo les robó la estufa? 2 points
What did the bunnies feel when the wolf stole their stove?
(Inferential)
7. El lobo se quemó la cola. ¿Qué le pasó al lobo después? 1 point
The wolf’s tail got burnt. What happened to the wolf afterwards?
(Literal)
8. El lobo quedó encerrado en un hielo. ¿Qué le pasó después? 1 point
The wolf was trapped in an ice cube. What happened to him
afterwards? (Literal)
10. ¿Por qué el lobo se dio cuenta de que los conejitos eran 2 points
buenos?
Why did the wolf realize that the bunnies were kind? (Inferential)
References
Acosta, V., Moreno, A., & Axpe, A. (2012). La acción inclusiva para las habilidades de lenguaje
oral y de lectura inicial para niños con Trastorno específico de lenguaje (TEL). Revista de
Educación, 359, 332–356.
Acosta, V., Axpe, A., & Moreno, A. (2014). Rendimiento lingüístico y procesos lectores en alum-
nado con Trastorno específico del Lenguaje. Revista Española de Pedagogía, 259, 477–490.
Allen, M., Kertoy, M., Sherblom, J., & Pettit, M. (1994). Children’s narrative productions: A com-
parison of personal event and fictional stories. Applied Psycholinguistics, 15, 149–176.
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. (2005). Audiology Information Series. http://
www.asha.org/uploadedFiles/aud/InfoSeriesHearingLossTypes.pdf#search=%22Degree%22,
deconsulted August 09, 2011.
Anderson, R., & Souto, S. (2005). The use of articles by monolingual Puerto Rican Spanish-
speaking children with specific language impairment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26,
621–647.
Auza, A., & Morgan, G. (2013a). El uso del artículo en niños hispanohablantes con trastorno espe-
cífico del lenguaje. Revista Chilena de Fonoaudiología, 12, 3–20.
Auza, A., & Morgan, G. (2013b). Uso de preposiciones en el recuento de una historia. Comparación
de niños hispanohablantes con y sin trastorno del lenguaje. Infancia y Aprendizaje, 36(1),
35–49.
Bedore, L., & Leonard, L. (2001). Grammatical morphology deficits in Spanish speaking-children
with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44,
905–924.
Bedore, L., & Leonard, L. (2005). Verb inflections and noun phase morphology in the spontaneous
speech of Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. Applied
Psycholinguistics, 26, 195–225.
Belichón, M., Igoa, J., & Riviere, A. (2005). Psicología del Lenguaje. Investigación y Teoría.
Madrid: Trotta.
Bishop, D., & Adams, C. (1992). Comprehension problems in children with specific language
impairment: Literal and inferential meaning. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 35,
119–129.
Bishop, D., & Donlan, C. (2005). The role of syntax in encoding and recall of pictorial narratives:
Evidence from specific language impairment. British Journal of Developmental Psychology,
23, 25–46.
Brown, D., Lile, J., & Burns, B. (2011). Basic language skills and young children’s understanding
of causal connections during storytelling. Reading Psychology Journal, 32, 372–394.
Buiza, J., Adrián, J., González, M., & Rodríguez-Parra, M. (2004). Evaluación de marcadores
psicolingüísticos en el diagnóstico de niños con Trastorno Específico del Lenguaje. Revista de
Logopedia, Foniatría y Audiología, 24(4), 142–155.
Burris, S., & Brown, D. (2014). When all children comprehend: Increasing the external validity of
narrative comprehension development research. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1–13.
Clemente, R. (2000). Desarrollo del Lenguaje. Barcelona: Octaedro.
Coloma, C. J., Pavez, M. M., Peñaloza, C., Araya, C., Maggiolo, M. M., Maggiolo, M., & Pavez,
M. M. (2013). Comprensión de narraciones orales en niños con Trastorno Específico del
Lenguaje. Actualidades en Psicología, 27(115), 129–140.
Contreras, M. C., & Soriano, M. (2004). El valor de la narrativa en la caracterización de los alum-
nos con dificultades de lenguaje. Revista de Logopedia, Foniatría y Audiología, 24(3),
119–125.
De Hoog, B., Langereis, M., van Weerdenburg, M., Knoors, H., & Verhoeven, L. (2015). Lexical
access in children with hearing loss or specific language impairment, using the cross-modal
picture-word interference paradigm. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 37, 81–94.
Fresneda, D., & Mendoza, E. (2005). Trastorno específico del Lenguaje: concepto, clasificaciones
y criterios de identificación. Revista de Neurología, 41(1), 51–56.
Gough, P., & Tunmer, W. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disabilities. Remedial and
Special Education, 7, 6–10.
Gray, S. (2004). Word learning by preschoolers with specific language impairment: Predictors and
poor learners. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47, 1117–1132.
Gray, S. (2005). Word learning by preschoolers with specific language impairment: Effect of pho-
nological or semantic cues. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48,
1452–1467.
Gray, S., & Brinkley, S. (2011). Fast mapping and word learning by Preschoolers with specific
language impairment in a supported learning context: Effect of encoding cues, phonotactic
probability, and object familiarity. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 54,
870–884.
Gutierrez-Clellen, V., & Hofstetter, R. (1994). Syntactic complexity in Spanish narratives: A devel-
opment study. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 3, 645–654.
Hansson, K., Forsberg, J., Löfqvist, A., Mäki-Torkko, E., & Sahlén, B. (2004). Working memory
and novel word learning in children with hearing impairment and children with specific lan-
guage impairment. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 39,
401–422.
Hincapié, L., Giraldo, M., Castro, R., Lopera, F., & Pineda, D. (2007). Propiedades Lingüísticas de
los Trastornos Específicos del Desarrollo del Lenguaje. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología,
39(1), 47–61.
Hincapié, L., Giraldo, M., Lopera, F., Pineda, D., Castro, R., Lopera, J. P., Mendieta, N., Jaramillo,
A., Arboleda, A., Aguirre, D., & Lopera, E. (2008). Trastorno Específico del Desarrollo del
Lenguaje en una población infantil colombiana. Universitas Psychologica, 7(2), 557–569.
Jackson-Maldonado, D., & Maldonado, R. (2015). La complejidad sintáctica en niños con y sin
Trastorno Primario de Lenguaje. In I. Rodríguez Sánchez & E. Vázquez (Eds.), Estudios de
Lingüística Funcional. Santiago de Querétaro: Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro.
Kamhi, A., & Catts, H. (2005). Language and reading: Convergences and divergences. In H. Catts
& A. Kamhi (Eds.), Language and reading disabilities (2nd ed., pp. 1–25). Boston: Pearson.
Kan, P., & Windsor, J. (2010). Word learning in children with primary language impairment: A
meta-analysis. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 739–756.
Kim, Y. S. (2016). Direct and mediated effects of language and cognitive skills on comprehension
of oral narrative texts (listening comprehension) for children. Journal of Experimental Child
Kintsch, W., & Van Dijk, T. (1983). Strategies of discourse comprehension. New York: Academic
Press.
Leonard, L. (2014). Children with specific language impairment (2nd ed.). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Leonard, L., Wong, A., Deevy, P., Stokes, S., & Fletcher, P. (2006). The production of passive by
children with specific language impairment: Acquiring English or Catonese. Applied
Psycholinguistics, 27(2), 267–299.
Mainela-Arnold, E., Evans, J. L., & Coady, J. A. (2010). Explaining lexical-semantic deficits in
specific language impairment: The role of phonological similarity, phonological working
memory, and lexical competition. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53,
1742–1756.
Manolitsi, M., & Botting, N. (2011). Language abilities in children with autism and language
impairment: Using narrative as an additional source of clinical information. Child Language
Teaching and Therapy, 27(1), 39–55.
Marini, A., Tavano, A., & Fabbro, F. (2008). Assessment of linguistic abilities in Italian children
with specific language impairment. Neuropsychologia, 46, 2816–2823.
Marinellie, S. (2004). Complex syntax used by school-aged children with specific language
impairment (SLI) in child-adult conversation. Journal of Communication Disorders, 37,
517–533.
McGregor, K. K., Newman, R. M., Reilly, R. M., & Capone, N. C. (2002). Semantic representation
and naming in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and
Mendoza, E., Carballo, G., Muñoz, J., & Fresneda, D. (2005). Evaluación de la comprensión gram-
atical: un estudio translingüístico. Revista de Logopedia, Foniatría y Audiología, 25(1), 12–29.
Morgan, G., Restrepo, A., & Auza, A. (2013). Comparison of Spanish morphology in monolingual
Spanish–English bilingual children with and without language impairment. Bilingualism:
Moyle, J., Weismer, S., Evans, J., & Lindstrom, M. (2007). Longitudinal relationships between
lexical and grammatical development in typical and late-talking children. Journal of Speech,
Norbury, C., & Bishop, D. (2002). Inferential processing and story recall in children with com-
munication problems: A comparison of specific language impairment, pragmatic language
impairment and high-functioning autism. International Journal of Language and
Norbury, C., & Bishop, D. (2003). Narrative Skills of children with communications impairments.
Norbury, C., Bishop, D., & Briscoe, J. (2001). Production of English finite verb morphology: A
comparison of SLI and mild moderate hearing impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and
Owen, A., & Leonard, L. (2002). Lexical diversity in the Spontaneous speech of children with
specific language impairment: Application of D. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing
Research, 45, 927–937.
Pavez, M. M., Coloma, C. J., & González, P. (2001). Discurso narrativo y desempeño gramatical
en niños con Trastorno Específico del Lenguaje. Revista de Logopedia, Foniatría y Audiología,
21(3), 124–130.
Pavez, M. M., Coloma, C. J., & Maggiolo, M. (2008). El desarrollo narrativo en niños. Una pro-
puesta práctica para la evaluación y la intervención en niños con trastorno de lenguaje. Ars
Médica: Barcelona.
Pérez-Leroux, A., Castilla-Earls, A., & Brunnera, J. (2012). General and specific effects of Lexicon
in grammar: Determiner and object pronoun omissions in child Spanish. Journal of Speech,
Pizzioli, F., & Schelstraete, M. A. (2011). Lexico-semantic processing in children with specific
language impairment: The overactivation hypothesis. Journal of Communication Disorders,
44, 75–90.
Protopapas, A., Simos, P., Sideridis, G., & Mouzaki, A. (2012). The components of the simple
view of reading: A confirmatory factor analysis. Reading Psychology, 33, 217–240.
Raven, J. (2005). Test de Matrices Progresivas. Escala Coloreada, General y Avanzada. Buenos
Aires: Paidós.
Real Academia Española. (2010). Nueva Gramática de la Lengua Española. Buenos Aires: Espasa.
Redmond, S., & Rice, M. (2001). Detection of irregular verb violations by children with and with-
out specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 44(3),
655–669.
Reuterskiöld Wagner, C., Sahlén, S., & Nettelbladt, U. (1999). What’s the story? Narration and
comprehension in Swedish preschool children with language impairment. Child Language,
Teaching and Therapy, 15(2), 113–137.
Riches, N., Tomasello, M., & Conti-Ramsden, G. (2005). Verb learning in children with SLI:
Frequency and spacing effects. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48,
1397–1411.
Sandhofer, C., & Smith, L. (2000). Counting nouns and verbs in the input: Differential frequen-
cies, different kinds of learning? Journal of Child Language, 27, 561–585.
Sanz-Torrent, M. (2002). Los verbos en niños con trastorno del lenguaje. Revista de Logopedia,
Foniatría y Audiología, 22(2), 100–110.
Schneider, P. (1996). Effects of pictures versus orally presented stories on story retellings by chil-
dren with language impairment. American Journal of Clinical Practice, 5, 86–96.
Schwartz, R. (2009). Specific language impairment. In R. Schwartz (Ed.), Handbook of child lan-
guage disorders (pp. 3–43). New York: Psychology Press.
Sheng, L., & McGregor, K. (2010). Lexical-semantic organization in children with specific lan-
guage impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 146–159.
Szaflarski, J., Altaye, M., Rajagopal, A., Eaton, K., Meng, X., Plante, E., & Holland, S. (2012). A
10-year longitudinal fMRI study of narrative comprehension in children and adolescents.
NeuroImage, 63, 1188–1195.
Ukrainetz, T., & Gillam, R. (2009). The expressive elaboration of imaginative narratives by chil-
dren with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research,
52(4), 883–898.
Woodcock, R., Muñoz, A., Ruef, M., & Alvarado, C. (2005). Language survey-revised. Test book-
Spanish. Rolling Meadows: Riverside Publishing Company.
Working Memory and Morphosyntax
in Children with Specific (Primary) Language
Impairment
Andrea Chávez and Alejandra Auza Benavides
Abstract Background and rationale. Mexican children with Specific (Primary)

Language Impairment (SLI) were assessed in order to evaluate how Spanish com-
plex morphology and Spanish complex syntax are related to the performance of
Working Memory. Many studies have assessed Working Memory performance in
children with SLI, specifically through their performance in non-word repetition
tasks. Nonword repetition is a useful task to assess storage capacity. However,
another important working memory component (according to Baddeley’s model) is
the Central Executive. Moreover, children with SLI have difficulties processing syn-
tactic complex sentences (Simon-Cereijido G, Gutiérrez-Clellen VF: App Psycho
Linguist 28(2):317–339, 2007). The aim of the study was to analyze (1) how
Spanish-speaking children processed linguistic information by responding to con-
tent questions related to relative sentences; (2) how children stored phonological
information by repeating nonwords included in simple and complex sentences.
Research Question. How does syntactic complexity in relative sentences interact
with Working Memory abilities in Mexican children with and without SLI?
Methods. Performance of Working Memory was assessed in fifteen children with
SLI compared to fifteen children with Typical Language Development (TLD). The
task was based on the Modified Listening Span task proposed by Marton and
Schwartz (J Speech Lang Hear Res 46(5):1138–1153, 2003), based on Daneman’s
and Carpenter’s (J Verb Learn Verb Behav 19(4):450–466, 1980) Listening Span
task. In this task, children listened to sentences with nonwords included at the end.
After each sentence, children repeated the last word (storage capacity) and, just
after repetition, they answered to a content question (processing function). In order
to identify to what extent the relative sentences interacted with Working Memory,
ten subordinate sentences and ten simple sentences were created. Results and dis-
cussion. Syntactic complexity in relative sentences showed a significant interaction
A. Chávez (*)
Posgrado en Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM),
Mexico City, Mexico
e-mail: lenguaylenguaje@gmail.com
A. Auza Benavides
Hospital General “Dr. Manuel Gea González”, Mexico City, Mexico
e-mail: alejandra.auza@yahoo.com

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_14
290 A. Chávez and A. Auza Benavides
with Working Memory abilities. Children in both groups commited significantly

more mistakes in the storage capacity when sentences were syntactically complex.
Moreover, Children with TLD repeated nonwords and answered the questions more
accurately than SLI children did, despite the sentence complexity. Processing was
more affected on both groups than the storage ability, when children were exposed
to complex working memory tasks. Significant differences were found in the num-
ber of errors generated in relative sentences versus simple sentences. These tasks
have the potential to be used for the identification of children with SLI.
Keywords Working memory • Morphosyntax • Specific (primary) language

impairment • Storage capacity • Processing
1 Introduction
Historically, Specific (Primary) Language Impairment (SLI) has been defined by

exclusionary criteria, as children are characterized by having language difficulties
in the absence of hearing impairment, intellectual disabilities, motor problems, gen-
eral developmental delay or autism (Leonard 2014a; Schwartz 2017). Children with
SLI often show difficulties with language comprehension, production or both. But
the most pervasive difficulty that has been observed in children of any spoken lan-
guage is in grammar, although difficulties vary according to the typological charac-
teristics of the language (Leonard 2014b). In Spanish, the most vulnerable
morphosyntactic particles can be found in articles (Anderson et al. 2009; Anderson
and Souto 2005; Auza 2009; Auza and Morgan 2013a; Bedore and Leonard 2001,
2005; Bosch and Serra 1997; Eng and O’Connor 2000; Morgan et al. 2009; Simon-
Cereijido and Gutiérrez-Clellen 2007; Restrepo and Gutiérrez-Clellen 2001), clit-
ics – both direct object and indirect object pronouns (Bedore and Leonard 2005;
Bosch and Serra 1997; Jacobson and Schwartz 2002; Gutiérrez-Clellen et al. 2006;
Simon-Cereijido and Gutiérrez-Clellen 2007; Morgan et al. 2009; Morgan and Auza
2013), prepositions (Auza and Morgan 2013b; Restrepo and Kruth 2000; Sanz-
Torrent et al. 2007) and derivational morphemes, at least in agentive (AG) (occupa-
tions) morphemes (pescar – pescador [to fish – fisher]) and adjectives (ADJ)
(enojarse – enojado [get angry – be angry]) (Auza and Roldán 2003; Morgan et al.
2009). When compared to Typical Language-Developing (TLD) children, children
with SLI generally make substitutions in articles and prepositions, omissions in
clitic pronouns and omissions and substitutions in derivational morphemes (Morgan
et al. 2009, 2013).
Other morphosyntactic difficulties are found in the production and/or repetition
of complex sentences. Difficulties have been observed mainly in ditransitive con-
structions and subordinate sentences (Sanz-Torrent et al. 2011; Simon-Cereijido
and Gutiérrez-Clellen 2007). SLI children also face difficulties with sentence repe-
tition not only due to the morphosyntactic complexity of the language but also to the
increased effort that they need to process it (e.g., Alloway and Gathercole 2005;
Ebert 2014; Gutiérrez-Clellen and Simon-Cereijido 2010).
Working Memory and Morphosyntax in Children with Specific (Primary) Language… 291
Sentence repetition is a combined measure of linguistic and processing abilities

in which short-term memory is involved (e.g., Casalini et al. 2007; Archibald and
Gathercole 2006; Dollaghan and Campbell 1998; Girbau and Schwartz 2007;
Simón-Cereijido, this volume). In several languages, subordinate sentences, such as
relative clauses, are highly challenging for both children with and without SLI
because they feature non-canonical word order, long distance movement, thematic
role assignment and structural embedding of a syntactic structure (Contemori and
Garraffa 2010; Friedmann and Novogrodsky 2004; Frizelle and Fletcher 2015;
Novogrodsky and Friedmann 2006; Schuele and Tolbert 2001). Furthermore, the
syntactic features (e.g. structural embedding, thematic role assignment) might affect
short-term memory too. Given their complexity, relative clauses are mastered by
children with TLD in later language acquisition (for Spanish: Barriga 2002; Aparici
et al. 2016; for Italian: Guasti 2002). Therefore, we can expect that children with
SLI might struggle when producing and/or repeating these kinds of structures.
Following different studies from diverse languages, sentence repetition has been
an excellent measure for identifying monolingual children with language difficul-
ties (Conti-Ramsden et al. 2001; Seeff-Gabriel et al. 2010; Smolík and Vávrů 2014;
Stokes et al. 2006) and bilingual children as well (Simón-Cereijido, this volume).
To date, there is still controversy about whether the difficulties producing these
kinds of sentences are due to grammatical or processing deficits (Klem et al. 2015;
Komeili and Marshall 2013). Therefore, in order to analyze the nature of language
difficulties in Spanish-speaking children with SLI it is crucial to use measures that
include processing tasks constructed with vulnerable morphosyntactic particles and
structures.
2 Working Memory and Its Relation to SLI
Traditionally, Baddeley’s model has framed working memory (WM) as a system

integrated by four subsystems. Each one is in charge of specific tasks that, alto-
gether, allow us to store and manipulate information temporarily, which is assumed
to be necessary for a wide range of complex cognitive activities. The Central
Executive subsystem is thought to be in charge of focusing attention and dividing it
between two important targets or stimulus streams (e.g., digit recalling while eye-
tracking given numbers). It is also able to attend selectively to one stimulus and
inhibit the disrupting effect of another. Additionally, it is in charge of holding and
manipulating long-term memory information (Baddeley 1996).
There are three other temporary storage subsystems that interact constantly with
the Central Executive: the Phonological Loop, the Visuo-Spatial Sketch-Pad and
-more recently proposed- the Episodic Buffer (Baddeley 2000). The first two sub-
systems temporarily store speech, sound and visuo-spatial information; the third
one holds integrated episodes or chunks of information in a multidimensional code
and links WM to perception and Long Term Memory (Baddeley 2012). The role that
each of these components has in language comprehension in children with SLI is
still not clear. Most of the studies that have explored the relation between WM and
SLI have focused on the phonological loop and its ability to store new phonological
information during a brief period of time. This process is usually examined through
a Non-word Repetition Task (NWRT).
3 Non-word Repetition Task
NWRT requires participants to listen to a list of nonsense words and then repeat
them after their presentation. Such a task, requires participants to store temporarily
novel linguistic elements, segment and assemble different sounds, and finally, plan
the motor sequences to be produced in order to achieve an accurate reproduction
(Coady and Evans 2008).
Since many complex tasks are involved when performing NWRT, researchers
have been interested for decades in how NWRT works in children and adults.
NWRT was not initially used for evaluating phonological storage skills, but as an
attempt to understand how phonotactic structure knowledge influences the way
adults perceive speech units (Brown and Hildum 1956). After Brown & Hildum’s
research, NWRT task was used as a method for examining different linguistic abili-
ties and the processes involved within them, from motor planning deficits in chil-
dren with developmental verbal dyspraxia (Snowling and Stackhouse 1983; Yoss
and Darley 1974) to WM capacity in children with language impairments (Casalini
et al. 2007; Gathercole and Baddeley 1990; Girbau, this volume; Girbau and
Schwartz 2007; Montgomery 2004).
Because non-words are unfamiliar to children with and without SLI, and factors
such as frequency, familiarity and age of acquisition may affect their repetition
performance when comparing them with children with TLD there has been great
interest in using the Non-word Repetition Task as a measure for exploring the storage
capacity of children with SLI. More specifically, interest has been put in the role that
the phonological loop plays on WM (e.g., Archibald and Gathercole 2006; Gathercole
and Baddeley 1989, 1990; Girbau and Schwartz 2007; Montgomery 1995, 2004).
This task has revealed very interesting results in this population. For example, chil-
dren with SLI are less accurate than children with TLD when repeating non-words.
Also, children’s scores on this task have been associated with their receptive vocabu-
lary scores (Gathercole and Baddeley 1989), their ability to learn new words in their
native language (Gray 2004; Michas and Henry 1994) and bilingual children’s lan-
guage skills in both of their languages (Ebert & Pham, this volume).
The focus on phonological information storage alone not only leaves aside the
role of other components that take part in the complex WM process– like the Central
Executive- but also disregards the fact that language relies upon other linguistic
components, apart from how much phonological information we are able to store/
learn for a short period of time.
The potential role of Central Executive functions in language development is
well described by Hoffman and Gillam (2004): As the Central Executive is respon-
sible of analyzing, coordinating and interpreting either visual or verbal input in
order to later store the information in the long-term memory, it is consistently work-
ing in regulating the flow of information being processed between the visuo-spatial
sketch-pad and the phonological loop, as well as supporting the development of
meaning by coordinating selective attention. If the exposure to repetitive combina-
tions of sensory stimuli is constant over time, sensory patterns are established and,
thus, recognized as significant by the Central Executive, regulating the long-term
storage of this information. Due to the crucial role of the Central Executive in lan-
guage processing, its study in children with SLI is relevant for a more comprehen-
sive analysis of how these children process, comprehend and store language.
Just and Carpenter (1992) described a model of WM that analyzes the relationship
between WM and language comprehension. This model is based on the Central
Executive functions’ model that was first proposed by Baddeley (1996) and considers
how the activation of different representational elements of language –not only pho-
nological- affect WM capacity. Words, phrases, grammatical and thematic structures
are examples of some representational elements in Just and Carpenter’s theory.
Representational elements in Just & Carpenter’s theory (Just and Carpenter
1992) have an associated activation level and they can represent words, morphemes,
phrases, syntactic elements, grammatical and semantic structures, etc. During a
comprehension task, different elements are activated so that they can be encoded
(from written or spoken input), generated or retrieved from long-term memory.
Following Just and Carpenter (1992) if the level of activation of some element is
above some minimum threshold, it will be useful in diverse processes. On the con-
trary, when its level of activation is low it will not be retained in WM and conse-
quently forgotten, with a high cost on processing language comprehension.
Montgomery (2002) differentiated between two models that have been used tra-
ditionally for evaluating WM in children with SLI: 1) Non-word Repetition Tasks
based on Baddeley’s phonological loop model (Baddeley et al. 1998); 2) sentence
span tasks -based on Daneman & Carpenter’s model- (Daneman and Carpenter
1980) that evaluates storage and processing simultaneously. The evaluation of the
phonological loop was referred as phonological WM (PWM) and the evaluation of
the storage and processing capacities –Central Executive Functions- was referred as
Functional Working Memory (FWM).
Just & Carpenter’s model and the evaluation of the FWM in children with SLI
has been used in different studies in order to explore the relation between storage
and processing in this population. Results have shown that not only PWM is
affected, but also FWM.
4 Functional WM in Children with SLI
Other difficulties that have been documented for children with SLI are in sentence
comprehension (Montgomery 1995, 2000; Montgomery and Evans 2009). If we
take into account that language comprehension is a very complex system that
involves different highly demanding processes that take place simultaneously, these
difficulties can be attributed to processing abilities. While SLI children listen to new
information, different sequences of linguistic elements are activated, recognizing

already-established grammatical rules that are recalled from previous knowledge.
That information is stored with the WM system and used during conversations. At
the same time, information is decoded and if any of the words is not recognized,
previous knowledge and different semantic and pragmatic factors are activated (i.e.,
the context in which the word was produced, words that surrounded it during the
message, the place in the sentence where it was allocated) in order to understand its
meaning and the possible role it has within the utterance (Bornkessel-Schlesewsky
and Schlesewsky 2009).
WM deficits in these children cannot be attributed solely to their difficulty in stor-
ing phonological information, and language is more complex than the storage and
manipulation of sounds. Consequently, researchers have worked on developing dif-
ferent tasks for assessing the effect of grammatical complexities in sentences on chil-
dren’s comprehension and processing abilities such as FWM (Montgomery 2002).
In order to evaluate how grammatical complexities are related to comprehension
and processing abilities Weismer et al. (1999) used the Competing Language
Processing Task (CLPT) first developed by Gaulin and Campbell (1994). In their
task, groups composed of one to six short sentences were presented to children; they
needed to respond Yes or No to each statement. At the same time, children had to
recall the last word of each sentence after listening to all the sentences. The task
required children to store information (last words in sentences) while processing the
veracity of each sentence. Results showed that children with SLI had greater deficits
in verbal WM capacity than children with TLD.
Montgomery (1995, 2000) used a sentence comprehension task to examine if
redundancy in sentences affects children’s ability to recall different words. He cre-
ated two sets of twenty sentences: The first set contained linguistically redundant
sentences -with different types of morphological and syntactic complexities- and
the second set contained linguistically non-redundant sentences. Children with SLI
comprehended fewer sentences of both types when compared with children with
TLD; moreover, in between-group analysis, children with TLD showed diminished
comprehension when sentences were redundant. These studies suggest an interac-
tion between syntactic complexity and comprehension.
Another interesting finding regarding sentence comprehension has shown that
children with SLI can benefit from a slower input rate (Montgomery 2004).
Montgomery repeated the experiment with school-aged children, but this time with
an additional variable (longer sentences). Sentences were presented at different
speed rates (normal and slow). Comparisons between a group of 12 children with
SLI and two control groups of children (matched by age and receptive syntax)
showed that children with SLI presented significantly poorer comprehension of
normal-rate sentences compared with both control groups.
With the aim of exploring an interaction between WM and syntactic comprehen-
sion in English speaking children with SLI, Marton and Schwartz (2003) used a
Listening Span Task. A total of 90 sentences were included (30 syntactically simple,
short sentences; 30 syntactically complex, short sentences; and 30 syntactically
complex, long sentences) with all final words substituted by a non-word. This task
was created for evaluating the influence of syntactic processing on WM. Also, con-
tent questions for each sentence were created. Children listened to a sentence and
repeated the final non-word of the sentence. After repetition, they were asked to
answer a content question about each sentence. The results on this task exhibited
that the increase in syntactic complexity negatively influenced the repetition of non-
words. Children with TLD repeated the non-words and answered the questions
more accurately than the children with SLI. Children in both groups responded
more accurately when sentences were simpler than when they were complex (even
if these were shorter sentences). Sentence length did not affect performance, only
complexity did.
This study was replicated in Hungarian children with SLI, in order to observe if
the rich morphological system of this agglutinative language had an effect on WM
(Marton et al. 2006). Results showed a word-length effect in the repetition of non-
words in both groups. Hungarian children repeated more non-words and answered
more questions correctly when they were morphologically simple; morphological
complexity had a greater impact than syntactic complexity on their WM capacity,
particularly in children with SLI.
In a similar study (Cohen-Mimran et al. 2013), the role of the Arabic morpho-
logical complexity in verbal WM was evaluated. Researchers administered sets of
two, three or four sentences to children with TLD. After each set was presented,
participants recalled the last words of the sentences. These target words could be
either base words (with no inflectional affixes); broken plurals (frequent irregular
morphological complex words); or possessive nouns (regular morphological com-
plex words that contain a base word with a suffix). Findings showed that base words
were easier to recall than possessive noun words and broken plural words. Also,
broken plural words were easier to recall than possessive noun words.
These studies have shown how particular characteristics of different languages
can influence WM performance in children with and without SLI. While
English-speaking children demonstrate more difficulties with syntactically complex
sentences, Hungarian-speaking children struggle with morphologically complex
sentences. Results show us that syntactic or morphological complexity in different
languages might play a different role in WM in both children with TLD and SLI.
5 Our Study
The aim of this study was to analyze how Spanish-speaking children with SLI pro-
cess and store linguistic information of syntactically and morphologically complex
sentences in a Modified Listening Span task (based on Daneman and Carpenter
1980; Marton and Schwartz 2003). Syntactically and morphologically complex sen-
tences were included in the task because Spanish has a rich morphological system
(Socarrás 2011) usually embedded in syntactically complex sentences. We wanted
to observe if syntactic and morphological complexity influenced the correct repeti-
tion of non-words inserted in simple and complex sentences (storage capacity). We
also explored how syntactically simple and complex sentences influence the correct
responses of content questions (processing abilities).
Compared to children with TLD, how is the storage capacity affected in children
with SLI under different morphological and syntactic conditions? Our first hypoth-
esis was that storage capacity would be more affected under both morphological
and syntactic conditions in children with SLI as compared to children with TLD.
Compared to children with TLD, how is the processing ability affected in children
with SLI under different morphological and syntactic conditions? Our second hypoth-
esis was that processing ability would be more affected under both morphological
and syntactic conditions in children with SLI as compared to children with TLD.
Which of the two conditions of complexity (morphological and syntactic) con-
tribute to significantly differentiate children with and without SLI? Given the mor-
phological richness of the Spanish language, our third hypothesis was that
morphologically complex sentences would separate better among children with SLI
as compared to children with TLD.
7 Method
7.1 Participants
A total of 45 children between the ages of 6;0–7;06 (M = 6.29) participated in the

study. All children were first graders who were recruited from public schools in two
urban cities in Central Mexico. All children with SLI were diagnosed after a clinical
assessment that was performed at their school setting.
All of the children were monolingual, Spanish speakers and did not have any
contact with indigenous languages. None of the participants had a history of hearing
loss, sensorimotor or neurological problems, severe psychological disorders or
health problems, according to a parent questionnaire. Children were divided into
two groups: 15 children with SLI and 25 children with TLD paired with age-
matched peers (± 3 months); a variation analysis showed no statistical differences in
months between the children with SLI and their age-matched peers (p = 0.094). All
participants belonged to a similar socio-cultural level, defined by the educational
level of their mothers (M = 11.03) (p = .430).
7.2 Selection Criteria
Each child with SLI fulfilled the following criteria: (1) there was an explicit concern
expressed by the teachers and/or parents with respect to the child’s language devel-
opment as expressed in a questionnaire (adapted from Restrepo 1998; (2) a speech-
language pathologist expressed concerns about the child’s language performance;
(3) there was no history of motor, hearing, emotional or neurological problems; (4)
they obtained a standard score of 80 or higher on the Kaufman Brief Intelligence

Test (KBIT-2; Kaufman and Kaufman 2004), a non-verbal intelligence scale; (5) on
the Spanish Language (morphosyntactic) Screener /Tamiz para detectar Problemas
del Lenguaje en español (TPL-México; Auza et al. in press) children obtained a
score of one standard deviation below the mean for each age range; (6) children
received a score at least one Standard Deviation (SD) below the mean on either the
Word Structure or Sentence Repetition subtests of the Clinical Evaluation of
Language Fundamentals Fourth Edition, Spanish (CELF-4, Spanish; Wiig et al.
2006). The criterion of one SD below the mean on these subtests has allowed us to
identify borderline cases of SLI and to conduct further testing.
All participants with TLD met the following criteria: (1) there was no explicit
concern from their teachers and/or parents with respect to their language develop-
ment; (2) they had no history of motor, hearing, emotional or neurological prob-
lems; (3) they obtained a standard score equal or higher to 80 on KBIT-2, a
non-verbal intelligence scale; (4) on the Spanish Language (morpho-syntax)
Screener Tamiz para detectar Problemas del Lenguaje (TPL-México; Auza et al. in
press) children obtained a score of 86% or higher; (5) children received a score of at
least one SD above the mean on either the Recordando Oraciones (Recalling
Sentences) and Estructura de Palabras (Structure of Words) subtest of the CELF-4,
Spanish. Results from the three groups are presented in Table 1.
Table 1 Results on clinical tests

TPL-México SCELF-4
ID K-abc2 Morphology Sentence repetition Word structure Recalling sentences
1206 108 84.62 90.7 14 12
1207 85 76.92 90.7 9 12
1208 85 100 100 9 12
1209 85 76.92 62.79 12 13
1210 86 61.54 86.05 13 9
1375 117 61.54 97.67 10 14
1378 85 95.35 100 9 11
1457 92 84.6 100 13 12
1459 95 92.3 100 14 11
1650 104 76.92 100 8 10
1653 88 92.31 93.02 5 9
1658 88 92.31 95.35 9 10
1661 88 100 97.67 8 10
1662 118 100 100 11 11
1663 101 92.31 100 11 18
1665 108 76.92 100 7 10
1668 85 92.31 95.35 10 7
1670 87 92.31 81.4 8 11
1674 100 92.31 100 10 11
1684 101 92.31 74.4 6 4
Note. ID Identification number; K-abc2 = Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, 2nd Edition,
(Kaufman and Kaufman 2004; CELF Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, 4th edition,
Spanish (Wiig et al. 2006). TPL Tamiz de Problemas de Lenguaje-México (Auza et al. in process)
Fig. 1 Procedure for the modified listening span task
7.3 Stimuli
We used the Modified Listening Span task proposed by Marton and Schwartz (2003)
and the Daneman and Carpenter’s (1980) Listening Span task. In this task, children
listened to sentences with non-words placed at the end. After each sentence, chil-
dren repeated the last non-word (evaluating storage capacity). After repetition, they
answered to a content question concerning the question they had just heard before
(evaluating processing function) (Fig. 1).
In order to identify how relative sentences and morphologically rich sentences
interacted with WM, 30 sentences were created and programmed for presentation in
three different formats with the Psychopy application (Peirce 2007). Formats were
presented randomly in a laptop screen to each of the participants.
7.3.1 Syntactically Complex Sentences
A total of 30 sentences were created: 10 syntactically complex sentences, 10 mor-

phologically complex sentences and 10 simple sentences (which were used as con-
trol sentences). We controlled for the length of the sentences, which were made up
of 14 or 15 syllables in length. The final word of each sentence was a non-word
which did not modify the length of the sentence.
7.3.2 Characteristics of Non-Words
Non-words in this study were created following the phonotactic constraints of

Spanish words. Each non-word was created with two or three syllables and was
accentuated in the penultimate syllable. These words did not have any meaningful
combination of syllables in order to avoid the recognition of any segment on the

word as a content word (phonotactic constraints were also considered for this rule)
thus ensuring that all the linguistic elements to be stored were new to the partici-
pants. All sentences had five, two-syllable non-words and five, three-syllable
non-words.
7.3.3 Morphologically Complex Sentences
In order to create morphologically complex sentences, different linguistic markers,

such as articles, clitics and prepositions, which have been reported to be difficult to
produce by children with SLI, were considered (Anderson et al. 2009; Anderson
and Souto 2005; Auza and Morgan 2013a, b; Bedore and Leonard 2001, 2005;
Bosch and Serra 1997; Eng and O’Connor 2000; Jacobson and Schwartz 2002;
Simon-Cereijido and Gutiérrez-Clellen 2007; Morgan et al. 2009, 2013; Restrepo
and Kruth 2000; Sanz-Torrent et al. 2007, 2008; Simon-Cereijido and Gutiérrez-
Clellen 2007). These sentences were created with 4 or 5 morphological elements
(clitics, articles and prepositions) in order to give complexity to the morphologi-
cally complex sentences as compared to the control sentences, which had 0 or 1
morphological element (See Table 2).
7.3.4 Syntactically Complex Sentences
All of the syntactically complex sentences included in this study were relative sen-
tences with only one relative pronoun (See example in Table 2).
Table 2 Examples of sentence complexity

Morphologically complex Syntactically complex
Simple sentence sentence sentence
Bety quiere comer mucho Un señor vende globos en el Esos lápices que compramos
chocolate en “pobo*” parque de los “brecos*” están muy “napenos*”
Bety wants to eat a lot of A man sells balloons at the Those pencils that we bought
chocolate in “pobo” park of the “brecos” are very “napenos”
Number of syllables 15 Number of syllables 15 Number of syllables 15
(in Spanish): (in Spanish): (in Spanish):
Morphologically 1 Morphologically 5 Morphologically 1
complex elements: complex elements: complex elements:
Relative pronoun: 0 Relative pronoun: 0 Relative pronoun: 1
Note. * non-word
7.4 Procedures
Children were tested in a quiet room at their school settings in individual sessions.
Before the experiment was presented, the researcher ensured that the child compre-
hended the instructions by playing a practice set of sentences without using the
head-phones. In this way, the researcher could assess the child’s performance.
Once the examiner was sure that the child had fully understood the task, a new set
of sentences was presented to the child using headphones. Answers were recorded
for further analysis.
7.5 Scoring
A. Repetition of non-words
One syllable that was correctly repeated received one point. The omission or
substitution of a phoneme in a syllable was considered incorrect and received no
points. A two-syllable word had a maximum score of two and a minimum of zero;
a three-syllable word had a maximum score of three and a minimum of zero.
B. Answers to content questions
For this analysis, each child was given one point for a correct answer and no
points/zero points for an incorrect answer.
7.6 Analyses
To answer whether the storage capacity was more affected under different morpho-
logical and syntactic conditions (question 1) in children with SLI compared to chil-
dren with TLD, a Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was carried out to
test the effect on the group and the different sentences on non-word repetition accu-
racy. The dependent variables were the number of correctly repeated syllables or the
number of correct answers given to the questions under each condition. The fixed
factors were the two groups. To answer questions 2 and 3, a discriminate analysis
was carried out in which the grouping variables were the groups (SLI and TLD) and
the independent variables were the number of accurately repeated syllables or the
number of correct answers to the questions under each condition.
8 Results
Our results showed that storage capacity was more affected under different morpho-
logical and syntactic conditions in children with SLI compared to children with
TLD. Children with TLD repeated non-words significantly more accurately than did
Table 3 Means and standard deviations of total number of syllables accurately repeated and
number of correct answers given to the content questions
TLD PLI
Types of sentences NWR Correct NWR Correct
syllables answers syllables answers
Simple M 20.76 7.84 15.6 6
SD 2 1.97 4.54 1.92
Morphologically complex M 22.4 7.92 17.47 5.87
SD 2.21 1.57 5.01 4.4
Syntactically complex M 20.68 7.32 16.87 5.6
SD 2.78 1.86 3.5 2.5
the children with SLI under both conditions of complexity (morphological or syn-
tactical conditions) (p < .001 in both conditions).
Our results about processing ability (question 2) showed that it was more affected
in children with SLI compared to children with TLD, under different morphological
and syntactic conditions (p = .040 and =.018 respectively).
To answer which of the two conditions of complexity (morphological or syntac-
tic) contributed to differentiate significantly children with and without SLI (ques-
tion 3), our results showed that morphologically complex sentences were better
indicators for differentiating children with SLI from children with TLD, as shown
in Table 3.
8.1 Group Comparisons
Storage capacity was significantly lower in children with SLI when compared with
children with TLD. Children with SLI repeated significantly fewer correct syllables
than did the children with TLD under each condition: morphologically complex
sentences (p < .001) and syntactically complex sentences (p < .001).
Comprehension processing ability was lower in children with SLI when com-
pared with their peers with TLD. Children with SLI correctly answered significantly
fewer questions than did the children with TLD under each condition: morphologi-
cally complex sentences (p = .040) and syntactically complex sentences (p = .018).
Both kinds of complexities had a strong contribution for differentiating the groups
in the storing capacity with standardized coefficients of .674 (syntax) and .760
(morphology). Both kinds of complexities had a strong contribution for differentiat-
ing the groups in processing ability with standardized coefficients of .646 (syntax)
and .749 (morphology) (Table 4).
Table 4 Contribution for Structure matrix

differentiating groups
Types of sentences NWR syllables Correct answers
Morphologically 0.76 0.749
complex
Syntactically complex 0.674 0.646
9 Discussion
The purpose of this study was to analyze the role of Spanish morphology and com-
plex syntax and its relationship with WM in children with SLI through a task that
involves both storage and processing ability. Overall results showed that both mor-
phological and syntactic complexity affects the storage and processing abilities in
children with SLI. We found out that both conditions of complexity can differentiate
this group of children from their peers with TLD, but morphologically complex
sentences were the best indicators of language impairment. The strong contribution
of Spanish morphology on the WM capacity of children with SLI showed that clit-
ics, articles and prepositions play a key role on their processing and storing capac-
ity. We can argue that when sentences were overloaded with these morphological
elements, children with SLI were less able to repeat non-words and to answer con-
tent questions. We also observed that these children have difficulties with complex
sentences such as relative sentences, but the sentences were more challenging when
they were constructed with a high load of morphology.
Children had greater difficulties when trying to store non-words. We suggest that
this result might be due to poor abilities in WM, which are not just limited to the
isolated storage of new lexical information (as traditional non-word repetition tasks
show), but related to the grammatical complexity. A similar result was found when
children with SLI answered content questions; responses were less accurate when
sentences were overloaded with morphology. On the other hand, syntax played a
significant role in sentence comprehension, since complex -relative sentences- gen-
erated more errors than simple sentences. Processing information from syntactically
complex sentences might be difficult for children with and without SLI due to ana-
phoric distance, which implies WM capacity limitations. Moreover, these kinds of
grammatical constructions are not mastered before the age of 6 (Barriga 2002).
Although subject relative sentences are learned about age 4, children tend to spon-
taneously simplify complex sentences. This strategy is more frequent when object
relative sentences are used given that they are even more difficult than subject rela-
tives (Aparici et al. 2016).
Our results are consistent with Marton and Schwartz (2003) who found that
English speaking children with SLI perform more poorly than their age-matched
peers in all WM tasks involving non-word repetition. Their results also showed that
the children’s accuracy decreases when the task is more complex especially when
sentences are syntactically complex. Our results support the hypothesis that
language-specific characteristics have an effect on WM functions. Our results coin-

cide with (Marton et al. 2006) who showed that morphology in Hungarian also had
a greater impact on WM capacity than syntactic complexity.
Our findings have clinical and social implications in children with SLI. They
may struggle storing and processing complex morphological and syntactic informa-
tion in daily linguistic interactions. As a consequence, an impact in comprehending
and using ongoing language will place them in a vulnerable situation in different
social situations. Children with SLI may encounter difficulties learning new linguis-
tic information that they will need in school settings. It is well known that children
with SLI are more prone to developing difficulties in written language during ele-
mentary school (Bishop and Adams 1990; Catts et al. 2005, 2006; Nation et al.
2004). Thus, first graders with SLI will show diminished WM capacity due to unre-
solved grammatical difficulties. Although we have gained some knowledge, further
studies on WM will allow us to learn far more about the nature of Spanish-speaking
children with SLI. More studies on the relationship of WM and specific linguistic
features will reveal more about the profiles of children with SLI speaking different
languages.
Acknowledgement This research has been funded by a scholarship from Consejo Nacional de
Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT) attributed to Andrea Chávez.
References
Alloway, T. P., & Gathercole, S. E. (2005). The role of sentence recall in reading and language
skills of children with learning difficulties. Learning and Individual Differences, 15,
271–282.
Anderson, R. T., & Souto, S. (2005). The use of articles by monolingual Puerto Rican Spanish-
speaking children with specific language impairment. Applied PsychoLinguistics, 26,
621–647.
Anderson, R., Marquez, A., & Grinstead, J. (2009). The article paradigm in Spanish-speaking
children with SLI in language contact situations. Hispanic child languages: Typical and
impaired development, 50, 29–55.
Aparici, M., Rosado, E., & Perera, J. (2016). Later development of relative clauses across dis-
course genres and modalities of production. In J. Perera, M. Aparici, E. Rosado, & N. Salas
(Eds.), Written and spoken language development across the lifespan: Essays in honour of
Liliana Tolchinsky (literacy studies 11) (pp. 201–225). Amsterdam: Springer.
Archibald, L. M. D., & Gathercole, S. E. (2006). Short-term and working memory in specific lan-
guage impairment. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders/Royal
College of Speech & Language Therapists, 41(6), 675–693.
Auza, A. (2009). Uso de artículos y sus funciones semánticas en niños con y sin Trastorno del
Lenguaje. (Unpublished Doctoral dissertation). Querétaro: Universidad Autónoma de
Querétaro, México.
Auza, A., & Morgan, G. P. (2013a). El uso del artículo en niños hispanohablantes con trastorno
específico del lenguaje. Revista Chilena de Fonoaudiología, 12, 3–19.
Auza, A., & Morgan, G. P. (2013b). Uso de preposiciones en el recuento de una historia.
Comparación de niños hispanohablantes con y sin trastorno del lenguaje. Infancia y Aprendizaje,
36(1), 35–49.
Auza, A., Murata, C., Márquez, M. E., & Morgan, G. (in press). Tamiz para detectar problemas del
lenguaje TPL-México. Mexico: Manual Moderno.
Auza, A., & Roldán, M. (2003, November). Derivational morphology deficits in Mexican Children
with SLI. Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-
Hearing Association (ASHA), Chicago.
Baddeley, A. (1996). Exploring the central executive. Applied Psychology, 1, 5–28.
Baddeley, A. (2000). Review: The episodic buffer: A new component of working memory? Trends
in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 417–423.
Baddeley, A. (2012). Working memory: Theories, models, and controversies. Annual Review of
Baddeley, A., Gathercole, S., & Papagno, C. (1998). The phonological loop as a language learning
device. Psychological Review, 105(1), 158.
Barriga, R. (2002). La producción de oraciones de relativo en niños de seis años. En Estudios
sobre habla infantil en los años escolares.“… un solecito calientote”. Mexico: El Colegio de
México.
Bedore, L. M., & Leonard, L. B. (2001). Grammatical morphology deficits in Spanish-speaking
Research, 44(4), 905–924.
Bedore, L. M., & Leonard, L. B. (2005). Verb inflections and noun phrase morphology in the spon-
taneous speech of Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment. Applied
Psycholinguistics, 26(02), 195–225.
Bishop, D. V., & Adams, C. (1990). A prospective study of the relationship between specific lan-
guage impairment, phonological disorders and reading retardation. Journal of Child Psychology
and Psychiatry, 31(7), 1027–1050.
Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, I., & Schlesewsky, M. (2009). Processing syntax and morphology: A
neurocognitive perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bosch, L., & Serra, M. (1997). Grammatical morphology deficits of Spanish-speaking children
with specific language impairment. Amsterdam Series in Child Language Development, 6(69),
33–45.
Brown, R. W., & Hildum, D. C. (1956). Expectancy and the perception of syllables. Language,
411–419.
Catts, H. W., Adlof, S. M., Hogan, T. P., & Weismer, S. E. (2005). Are specific language impair-
ment and dyslexia distinct disorders? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research,
48(6), 1378–1396.
Catts, H. W., Adlof, S. M., & Weismer, S. E. (2006). Language deficits in poor comprehenders: A
case for the simple view of reading. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49,
278–293.
Casalini, C., Brizzolara, D., Chilosi, A., Cipriani, P., Marcolini, S., Pecini, C., et al. (2007). Non-
word repetition in children with specific language impairment: A deficit in phonological work-
ing memory or in long-term verbal knowledge? Cortex, 43(6), 769–776.
Coady, J. A., & Evans, J. L. (2008). Uses and interpretations of non-word repetition tasks in chil-
dren with and without specific language impairments (SLI). International Journal of Language
& Communication Disorders/Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists, 43(1), 1–40.
Cohen-Mimran, R., Adwan-Mansour, J., & Sapir, S. (2013). The effect of morphological complex-
ity on verbal working memory: Results from Arabic speaking children. Journal of
Psycholinguistic Research, 42(3), 239–253.
Contemori, C., & Garraffa, M. (2010). Comparison of modalities in SLI syntax: A study on the
comprehension and production of non-canonical sentences. Lingua, 120(8), 1940–1955.
language impairment (SLI). Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines,
42(6), 741–748.
Daneman, M., & Carpenter, P. A. (1980). Individual differences in working memory and reading.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19(4), 450–466.
Dollaghan, C., & Campbell, T. (1998). Nonword repetition and child language impairment.
Ebert, K. D. (2014). The role of auditory nonverbal working memory in sentence repetition for
bilingual children with primary language impairment. International Journal of Language &
Edwards, J., & Lahey, M. (1998). Nonword repetitions of children with specific language impair-
ment: Exploration of some explanations for their inaccuracies. Applied Psycholinguistics,
19(2), 279–309.
Eng, N., & O’Connor, B. (2000). Acquisition of definite article+ noun agreement of Spanish-
English bilingual children with specific language impairment. Communication Disorders
Quarterly, 21(2), 114–124.
Friedmann, N., & Novogrodsky, R. (2004). The acquisition of relative clause comprehension in
Hebrew: A study of SLI and normal development. Journal of Child Language, 31(03),
661–681.
Frizelle, P., & Fletcher, P. (2015). The role of memory in processing relative clauses in children
with specific language impairment. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 24(1),
47–59.
Gathercole, S. E., & Baddeley, A. D. (1989). Evaluation of the role of phonological STM in the
development of vocabulary in children: A longitudinal study. Journal of Memory and Language,
28(2), 200–213.
Gathercole, S. E., & Baddeley, A. D. (1990). Phonological memory deficits in language disordered
children: Is there a causal connection? Journal of Memory and Language, 29(3), 336–360.
Gaulin, C. A., & Campbell, T. F. (1994). Procedure for assessing verbal working memory in nor-
mal school-age children: Some preliminary data. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 79(1), 55–64.
specific language impairment (SLI). International Journal of Language & Communication
Disorders/Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists, 42(1), 59–75.
Gray, S. (2004). Word learning by preschoolers with specific language impairment: Predictors and
poor learners. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47(5), 1117–1132.
Guasti, M. T. (2002). Language acquisition: The growth of grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. F., Restrepo, M. A., & Simón-Cereijido, G. (2006). Evaluating the discrimi-
nant accuracy of a grammatical measure with Spanish-speaking children. Journal of Speech,
Language, and Hearing Research, 49(6), 1209.
Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. F., & Simon-Cereijido, G. (2010). Using nonword repetition tasks for the
identification of language impairment in Spanish-English-speaking children: Does the lan-
guage of assessment matter? Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 25, 48–58.
Hoffman, L. M., & Gillam, R. B. (2004). Verbal and spatial information processing constraints in
Research: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47(1), 114–125.
Jacobson, P. F., & Schwartz, R. G. (2002). Morphology in incipient bilingual Spanish-speaking
preschool children with specific language impairment. Applied PsychoLinguistics, 23(1),
23–41.
Just, M., & Carpenter, P. (1992). A capacity theory of comprehension: Individual differences in
working memory. Psychological Review, 99(1), 122–149.
Kaufman, A. S., & Kaufman, N. L. (2004). Kaufman brief intelligence test KBIT-2 (2nd ed.).
Bloomington: Wiley Online Library.
Klem, M., Melby-Lervåg, M., Hagtvet, B., Lyster, S. A. H., Gustafsson, J. E., & Hulme, C. (2015).
Sentence repetition is a measure of children’s language skills rather than working memory
limitations. Developmental Science, 18(1), 146–154.
Leonard, L. B. (2014a). Children with specific language impairment second edition. Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press.
Leonard, L. B. (2014b). Specific language impairment across languages. Child Development
Perspectives, 8(1), 1–5.
Marton, K., & Schwartz, R. G. (2003). Working memory capacity and language processes in chil-
dren with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research,
46(5), 1138–1153.
Marton, K., Schwartz, R. G., Katsnelson, V., & Farkas, L. (2006). Effect of sentence lenght and
complexity on working memory performance in Hungarian children with specific language
impairment (SLI): A cross-linguistic comparison. International Journal of Language &
Michas, I. C., & Henry, L. A. (1994). The link between phonological memory and vocabulary
acquisition. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 12(2), 147–163.
Montgomery, J. W. (1995). Examination of phonological working memory in specifically
language-impaired children. Applied PsychoLinguistics, 16(4), 355–378.
Montgomery, J. W. (2000). Verbal working memory and sentence comprehension in children with
specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 43(2),
293–308.
Montgomery, J. W. (2002). Understanding the language difficulties of children with specific lan-
guage impairmentsdoes verbal working memory matter? American Journal of Speech-
Language Pathology, 11(1), 77–91.
Montgomery, J. (2004). Sentence comprehension in children with specific language impairment:
Effects of input rate and phonological working memory. International Journal of Language &
Communication Disorders/Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists, 39(1), 115–133.
Montgomery, J. W., & Evans, J. L. (2009). Complex sentence comprehension and working mem-
ory in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing
Research, 52(2), 269–288.
Morgan, G. P., & Auza, A. (2013). El uso del Artículo en Niños Hispanohablantes con Trastorno
Específico del Lenguaje. Revista Chilena de Fonoaudiología, 12, 3–20.
Morgan, G., Restrepo, M. A., & Auza, A. (2009). Variability in the grammatical profiles of Spanish-
speaking children with specific language impairment. In J. Grinstead (Ed.), Hispanic child
languages: Typical and impaired development (pp. 283–302). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Morgan, G. P., Restrepo, M. A., & Auza, A. (2013). Comparison of Spanish morphology of bilin-
gual and monolingual children with and without language impairment? Journal of Bilingualism,
Nation, K., Clarke, P., Marshall, C. M., & Durand, M. (2004). Hidden language impairments in
children parallels between poor reading comprehension and specific language impairment?
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 47(1), 199–211.
Novogrodsky, R., & Friedmann, N. (2006). The production of relative clauses in syntactic SLI: A
window to the nature of the impairment. Advances in Speech Language Pathology, 8(4),
364–375.
Peirce, J. W. (2007). PsychoPy – Psychophysics software in python. Journal of Neuroscience
Methods, 162(1–2), 8–13.
Restrepo, M. A. (1998). Identifier of predominantly Spanish-speaking children with language
impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 41, 1398–1411.
Restrepo, M. A., & Kruth, K. (2000). Grammatical characteristics of a Spanish-English bilingual
child with specific language impairment. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 21(2), 66–76.
Restrepo, M. A., & Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. F. (2001). Article use in Spanish-speaking children with
specific language impairment. Journal of Child Language, 28(2), 433–452.
Sanz-Torrent, M., Badia, I., & Serra, M. (2007). Contributions from bilingual specific language
impairment in Catalan and Spanish to the understanding of typical and pathological language
acquisition. In C. Pérez Vidal, M. Juan-Garau, & A. Bel (Eds.), A portrait of the young in the
new multilingual Spain (pp. 135–158). Tonawanda: Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Sanz-Torrent, M., Andreu, L., Badia, I., & Sidera, F. (2011). Argument omissions in preschool
Catalan and Spanish speaking children with S SLI. Infancia y Aprendizaje, 34(1), 49–66.
Sanz-Torrent, M., Serrat, E., Andreu, L., & Serra, M. (2008). Verb morphology in Catalan and
Spanish in children with specific language impairment: a developmental study. Clinical
Schuele, C. M., & Tolbert, L. (2001). Omissions of obligatory relative markers in children with
specific language impairment. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 15(4), 257–274.
Schwartz, R. G. (2017). Handbook of child language disorders second edition. New York:
Routledge.
Seeff-Gabriel, B., Chiat, S., & Dodd, B. (2010). Sentence imitation as a tool in identifying expres-
sive morphosyntactic difficulties in children with severe speech difficulties. International
Simon-Cereijido, G., & Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. F. (2007). Spontaneous language markers of Spanish
language impairment. Applied PsychoLinguistics, 28(2), 317–339.
Smolík, F., & Vávrů, P. (2014). Sentence imitation as a marker of SLI in Czech: Disproportionate
impairment of verbs and clitics. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 57(3),
837–849.
Snowling, M., & Stackhouse, J. (1983). Spelling performance of children with developmental ver-
bal dyspraxia. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 25(4), 430–437.
Socarrás, G. M. (2011). First language acquisition in Spanish: A minimalist approach to nominal
agreement. London: Continuum.
Stokes, S. F., Wong, A. M., Fletcher, P., & Leonard, L. B. (2006). Nonword repetition and sentence
repetition as clinical markers of specific language impairment: The case of Cantonese. Journal
of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49(2), 219–236.
Weismer, S. E., Evans, J., & Hesketh, L. J. (1999). An examination of verbal working memory
capacity in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and
Wiig, E. H., Semel, E., & Secord, W. A. (2006). Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals – 4
Spanish (SCELF–4). Needham Heights: The Psychological Corporation.
Yoss, K. A., & Darley, F. L. (1974). Developmental apraxia of speech in children with defective
articulation. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 17(3), 399–416.
Part IV
Children with Syndromes and other
Language Disorders
Morphological Profile of Williams Syndrome:
Typical or Atypical?
Eliseo Diez-Itza, Verónica Martínez, Maite Fernández-Urquiza,

and Aránzazu Antón
Abstract Williams syndrome (WS) is a neurodevelopmental genetic disorder char-

acterized by displaying language skills higher than expected in the context of a mild
to moderate level of intellectual disability. Despite a certain degree of heterogeneity,
WS is always associated with initial developmental language delay, but on reaching
school age, the linguistic abilities of children with WS develop rapidly and they
generally manage to achieve a good level of productive grammar. Thus, it seems
that the delayed linguistic development in WS does not follow the typical develop-
mental trajectory, but neither does it seem to reach a typical age equivalent level
since subjects demonstrate persistent problems with grammar. It has been argued
that WS subjects present some levels of impairment in morphological processing,
but it remains unclear whether they correspond to typical or atypical morphological
profiles. However, few studies have been conducted based on conversational
corpora.
We report here results from a sample of 12 Spanish-speaking subjects with
Williams syndrome between 5 and 35 years of age. The study is included in a
broader comparative linguistic analysis of typical development profiles and neuro-
developmental genetic syndromes (Down, Williams and Fragile X syndromes).
Subjects were recorded engaging in spontaneous conversation with a researcher.
Each conversation was transcribed in CHAT format, and analyzed using the CLAN
programs provided by the CHILDES Project. The CHILDES system provides full
support for analyses based on automatic morphosyntactic coding. The core pro-
grams used in this work were MOR, and the POST disambiguator, complemented
with hand annotations. We compared the results with those of children in the latest
stages of typical morphological development (TD), and with those from a sample of
Down syndrome children and adolescents.
E. Diez-Itza (*) • V. Martínez • M. Fernández-Urquiza • A. Antón

Universidad de Oviedo, LOGIN Research Group, Oviedo, Spain
e-mail: ditza@uniovi.es; martinezveronica@uniovi.es; fernandezmaite@uniovi.es;
aanton@uniovi.es

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_15
312 E. Diez-Itza et al.
The WS sample showed a distribution very similar to that of TD children in the

most frequent morphological categories. Both groups showed a low rate of morpho-
logical errors, and those are independent of MLU, age or frequency of lexical types.
However, the frequency of morphological errors is significantly higher in the WS
group. If we consider the error type, differences remain significant only in the case
of omissions. When we consider the morphological categories affected, differences
arise only in definite articles and prepositions. In the TD group, MLU and lexical
diversity increase with age, while errors tend to decrease, which would point to a
process of active development at that age. In the WS group, differences with age are
not observed. Errors tend to persist, and they can not be explained in terms of a
delay. Furthermore, the WS group showed a pattern similar to the DS group as
regards the relative distribution of errors. The TD group, in contrast, showed a com-
pletely different pattern, with a higher proportion of errors in verbs, indefinite arti-
cles and personal pronouns, and a lowest one in definite articles, prepositions and
conjunctions. In conclusion, although the participants with WS showed few errors
and may look quantitatively closer to the TD group, the differences observed in
type, category and error pattern, qualitatively closer to the DS group, suggest an
atypical morphological profile of Williams syndrome.
Keywords Williams syndrome • Morphology • Lexical diversity • Atypical lan-

guage development • Neurodevelopmental disorders • Intellectual disability
1 Introduction
Williams syndrome (WS) is caused by a hemizygous microdeletion on chromosome

band 7q11.23 (Ewart et al. 1993). In addition to certain physical and physiological
characteristics of the WS phenotype such as dysmorphic facial features, short stat-
ure, infantile hypercalcemia, elastin arteriopathy, auditory hyperacusis, delayed
motor milestones or connective tissue abnormalities, people with WS exhibit a
behavioral and cognitive phenotype characterized by hypersociability (Jones et al.
2000), attention problems, anxiety disorders (Mervis et al. 2000), and a mild to
moderate level of intellectual disability (Howlin et al. 1998). Their Standard Full
Scale IQ scores had been suggested to range from 40 to 100, with means of around
60 (Bellugi et al. 1999). Although it is important to underline the high variability in
the intellectual functioning within this population, a later review shows an average
Full Scale IQ of 55 among 47 published studies, and few WS individuals score
higher than 70 (Martens et al. 2008).
Within the context of their intellectual disabilities, individuals affected by WS
typically display a complex neuropsychological profile of strengths and weak-
nesses, that is to say, some cognitive abilities are relatively spared, whilst others are
disproportionally impaired. Namely, profiles of individuals with WS appear to have
relative strengths in linguistic skills and auditory memory, in deep contrast to
Morphological Profile of Williams Syndrome: Typical or Atypical? 313
marked impairments in visual-spatial cognitive functioning. This specific cognitive

profile does not vary greatly with chronological age or overall intelligence level
(Mervis et al. 2000).
Nonetheless, people with WS demonstrate a rather unusual profile within the
domain of visuospatial cognition. On the one hand, they exhibit serious visual-
spatial and visual-constructive disorders, exemplified by poor performance in tasks
requiring understanding and manipulation of spatial elements such as self-
orientation, drawing or copying drawings, where WS individuals show a lack of
overall organization and a bias towards attention to detail (Bellugi et al. 2001),
problem solving, composing figures, or carrying out numerical operations (Paterson
et al. 2006). However, their visual-perceptual functioning is not globally impaired,
and they are surprisingly proficient in recognizing faces whether they are familiar or
unfamiliar (Rossen et al. 1995). They are also unexpectedly successful in recogniz-
ing objects from unusual perspectives or from blurred images (Landau et al. 2006).
Yet, face recognition in people with WS may involve atypical processes, and event-
related potential studies report abnormal brain activity during recognition of upright
and inverted faces (Mills et al. 2000).
The initial linguistic profile of WS was based on research that had suggested
remarkably spared lexical and grammatical abilities in language production when
compared with mental age matched adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) (Bellugi
et al. 1990). WS individuals perform better in vocabulary tests and in fluency tasks,
whereas DS individuals give fewer responses and some of them are semantically
unrelated. They also produce longer utterances as measured by MLU, containing a
diversity of complex grammatical clauses, and are capable of giving detailed
descriptions of pictures and narratives (Bellugi et al. 1994). In fact, WS individuals
show grammatical facility on formal tests of comprehension and production, includ-
ing some tests of metalinguistic abilities as well (Bellugi et al. 2001). Moreover,
their spontaneous expressive language has been described as including a wide range
of grammatically complex forms (Lichtenberger and Bellugi 1998).
Despite these findings, studies of younger children with WS consistently reveal
developmental language delays (Stojanovik et al. 2006). This includes the late onset
of vocabulary and grammar (Mervis et al. 2000; Singer-Harris et al. 1997). Pre-
linguistic elements of communication such as gazing, gestures, as well as pointing,
are also delayed compared to children with DS and typically developing (TD) chil-
dren (John and Mervis 2010).
Later in language development, children with WS display a significant advantage
on grammatical complexity over children with DS. Children with WS at age four
were no different from TD children with regards to the relation between lexical
production and grammatical development, and they even tended to produce longer
utterances (Singer-Harris et al. 1997). Thus, it seems that the delayed linguistic
development in WS does not follow the typical developmental trajectory, since at a
certain stage it progresses rapidly. Children with WS tend then to achieve relatively
adequate linguistic competence in comparison to other non-verbal abilities.
However, it fails to reach a normal level, as individuals demonstrate persistent prob-
lems with grammatical gender, prepositions, tenses, verb-noun agreement,
r eferencing indicators, overgeneralization of grammatical rules and irregularities in

sentence structure (Diez-Itza et al. 1998; Ibernon and Boloh 2010; Thomas et al.
2001; Volterra et al. 1996).
Narratives of individuals with WS display an overdeveloped evaluative dimen-
sion; they include frequent comments on the affective or emotional state of the story
characters. Other frequently used narrative enrichment devices include the use of
direct speech to simulate the characters’ talk, instead of using reported speech, and
creative onomatopoeias to vividly describe events (Losh et al. 2000). These findings
are consistent with the loquacity that has been described as a characteristic of WS
in the context of a highly prosocial behavioral orientation (Udwin and Yule 2005).
Furthermore, individuals exhibit a proclivity for unusual words along with an
atypical pattern of semantic categorization (Bellugi et al. 1994). Some of the lan-
guage strengths in the WS profile may reflect a strength on phonological short-term
memory (Vicari et al. 1996), which is related to lexical and other learning processes
in neuropsychological development (Bellugi et al. 2000). One account of these traits
relies on a heightened sensitivity to auditory information and good auditory-verbal
short-term memory that could permit the construction of overly detailed and spe-
cific phonological representations (Majerus 2004). Other studies propose that short-
term memory deficits in DS, compared to those in WS, may explain their specific
differences in language development (Jarrold et al. 1999; Wang and Bellugi 1994).
Preschool aged children with WS display the same types of articulatory patterns
and errors as typically developing children of the same mental age. A large sample
of children with WS studied by Gosch et al. (1994) revealed articulation abilities
that were significantly better than those of a mental age-matched group of children
with no specific retardation.
Despite reported fluent and relatively well-articulated speech, some aspects of
phonology remain impaired in WS. Word segmentation deficits in early phonologi-
cal processing may account for the late lexical onset in children with WS, beyond
other cognitive and semantic delays (Nazzi et al. 2003). Whether these phonological
problems are caused by a delay in phonological acquisition or whether phonological
processes are atypical in WS still remains to be determined.
A number of studies have also questioned the idea of the preservation of prag-
matic abilities (Asada et al. 2010; John et al. 2012). In TD children, early nonverbal
and verbal pragmatic skills, such as pointing or usage of cohesive devices, have
been related to the onset of grammatical development (Diez-Itza et al. 2001). In
contrast, children with WS do not comprehend and produce pointing gestures until
well after the onset of referential word production, and also they are significantly
less likely to use verbal devices to engage in joint attention (Asada et al. 2010;
Mervis and John 2012). Pragmatic abilities continue to be particularly challenging
for WS individuals during the school years and into adulthood, as problems with
turn taking, conversational topic maintenance, and appropriate use of eye gaze tend
to persist (Mervis and Becerra 2007).
Pragmatic abilities also seem to be impaired across a number of areas compared
to children with typical language development and children with SLI (Stojanovik
2006). This study examined exchange structure, turn taking, information transfer
and conversational inadequacy, suggesting that children with WS follow an atypical

trajectory of development. They showed difficulties with exchange structure,
responding inappropriately to the interlocutor’s turns. They usually did not provide
enough information for the conversational partner to understand what they meant,
even when their interlocutor asked for clarification. They were also more likely to
misinterpret what their conversational partner had meant and had serious difficulties
to build up turns that continued the conversation. Thus, while some basic grammati-
cal skills seem to be relatively spared, individuals with WS exhibit clear signs of
pragmatic impairment.
As pointed above, successful communication involves not only a mastery of the
structural aspects of language, but it requires being able to simultaneously consider
other sources of information concerning the communicative situation and about the
conversational partner. One characterization of a subset of this information is
“Theory of Mind” (ToM). ToM development in children with WS is considerably
impaired (Tager-Flusberg 2000), and the studies on pragmatic abilities of the WS
population are congruent with an impairment of ToM into adulthood.
The apparent dissociation between linguistic and visual-spatial skills in WS neu-
ropsychological profile has often been used to argue for the independence of lan-
guage from other aspects of cognition (Bellugi et al. 2000, 1994). This has been one
of the central controversies in WS neuropsychological research since its beginnings,
and it is closely related to the discussion concerning whether or not language acqui-
sition is guided by domain-specific capacities or, in other words, if language is a
modular system of the brain.
Early reports of WS gave the impression that language of individuals with WS
was intact, but the generally accepted view now is that their linguistic abilities are
only relatively spared. During the last two decades, this debate has focused on the
morpho-syntactic inflectional capacities of individuals with WS.
Researchers who posit a modular account of grammar assume that the submod-
ules of grammar show differential delays, resulting in within-domain dissociations.
It has been suggested that syndrome-specific cognitive limitations, such as verbal
short-term memory, may affect specific subcomponents of grammar to a different
degree, causing an asynchronously delayed development (Schaner-Wolles 2004).
This author found that in German-speaking children with WS and DS the same error
types occur (in verb morphology, subject-verb agreement, and verb placement), but
with higher frequency and longer persistence, accounting for common patterns in
both syndromes and in TD children.
Previous studies of morphological skills in English-speaking individuals with
WS focused on two phenomena: past-tense formation and noun plural formation
(Clahsen et al. 2004). Clahsen and Almazan (1998, 2001) found that children with
WS were accurate in producing regular past tense and regular plural inflection, but
their scores in production of irregular forms were lower than those of unimpaired
mental age controls. They also found that the individuals with WS showed a ten-
dency to over regularize more frequently (e.g., goed). Comparative endings for
adjectives (e.g., −er) reveal similar patterns (Clahsen and Temple 2003). Children
with WS frequently overapply –er affixation ignoring the lexical exceptions, and
producing forms such as *dangerouser. This may be the result of a selective impair-
ment in retrieving information from the lexicon.
These results are overall interpreted as if the computational (rule-based) system
of language were unimpaired. Irregularly inflected forms and lexical exceptions
may be stored in long-term memory as subnodes to the corresponding basic lexical
entries, and children with WS would be unable to access morphological feature
information represented in these subnodes. The basic lexical entry would be still
retrieved in contexts in which the child does not retrieve the exceptional form, thus
yielding over regularizations (Clahsen et al. 2004).
Similar results have been reported for German participles and noun plural inflec-
tion in five German-speaking children with WS (Penke and Krause 2004). Irregular
forms (verbs and especially nouns) in German are more frequent than in English.
Typically developing children tend to overregularize infrequent irregular verbs,
whereas children with WS tend to overregularize frequent irregular verbs too. In
typically developing children, the percentage of errors with frequent irregular parti-
ciples decreases as age increases. In contrast, the frequent form errors are develop-
mentally stable in children with WS. Plural formation errors are not uniform among
German individuals with WS, but the authors suggested that the selective impair-
ment of irregular inflectional morphology may be a characteristic symptom of WS
cross-linguistically.
English-speaking children with WS failed to show a selective deficit in irregular
past tense performance when verbal mental age was controlled (Thomas et al.
2001). However, they presented lower levels of generalization of regular inflection
to novel verbs when compared to typically developing children. Reduced levels of
generalization of inflectional patterns were also found in a French gender task by
Karmiloff-Smith et al. (1997). Results from both studies were interpreted as a con-
sequence of atypical phonological representations, too specific to support robust
generalization. However, a replication of the French gender task by Ibernon and
Boloh (2010) challenged the existence of a specific deficit in the gender attribution
abilities of individuals with WS, concluding that the differences are not observed at
the morpho-syntactic level.
The presumption that the syntax of children with WS is intact was also chal-
lenged by the results of receptive tasks testing various syntactic structures
(Karmiloff-Smith et al. 1998). In a word-monitoring task, English-speaking adults
with WS were sensitive to the violation of auxiliary markers and phrase structure
rules but, unlike typical controls, they did not show sensitivity to violations of sub-
category constraints. This suggests impairments in their processing of certain syn-
tactic structures, beyond morphological feature analysis.
Unusual syntactic and morphological errors have also been reported by Capirci
et al. (1996) and Volterra et al. (1996). These authors described an atypical morpho-
logical profile in Italian children with WS, showing errors that were completely
ungrammatical, and unlike those observed in typically developing Italian children.
Similar statements have been made regarding the comparison between WS and
DS developmental trajectories in Spanish and Italian populations (Diez-Itza 2014;
Vicari et al. 2002). Individuals with WS, albeit less compromised than DS, showed
specific morpho-syntactic difficulties both in comprehension and production, sup-

porting the view that language does not develop following a typical path in these
special populations.
Evidence for atypical developmental trajectories has been posited against the
hypothesis of fractionation of the linguistic system (Thomas and Karmiloff-Smith
2003). The end-state architecture of the system is to be understood as a product of
the interaction between the genotype of WS population and the developmental pro-
cess of each individual. Thereby, the developmental process itself is a key contribu-
tor to phenotypical outcomes (Hsu and Karmiloff-Smith 2008; Karmiloff-Smith
1998; Thomas and Karmiloff-Smith 2005).
Standardized language tests along with data from verbal production in conversa-
tional settings indicate that language abilities in WS are heterogeneous across
domains (Stojanovik et al. 2006). While individuals with WS exhibit better gram-
matical skills than those with DS, comparison with data from TD children indicates
that their grammatical abilities are no better than could be expected on the basis of
their overall cognitive abilities at any stage of development.
In summary, while it remains controversial whether morpho-syntactic develop-
ment in WS is typical or atypical, methodological issues should also be taken into
account, as evidence mostly comes from experimental studies. Further research is
needed in languages with different morphological complexity, and using alternative
corpus-based methodologies.
We present data from a study about morphological errors in free and bound mor-
phemes in a spontaneous speech corpus elicited from a group of Spanish-speaking
individuals with WS, and we compare them with those from a group of children
with TD paired by verbal age. The study is included in a broader project (the
“Syndroling Project”: Diez-Itza et al. 2014) comparing linguistic profiles from
speech corpora of individuals with Williams syndrome, Down syndrome, Fragile X
syndrome, and TD.
In the present study, we examined whether the individuals with WS and the TD
controls differed in:
(i) The lexical diversity and distribution of the parts of speech
(ii) The frequency and variability of morphological errors
(iii) The relationships between morphological errors and age, MLU or lexical
diversity
(iv) The type of errors and the incidence of overregularization
(v) The parts of speech affected by the errors
(vi) The patterns of relative distribution of errors by parts of speech
2 Method
Participants were 12 individuals with Williams Syndrome (five males/seven

females) and 12 individuals with Typical Development (five males/seven females).
The two samples were paired by sex and by MLU, as an indicator of verbal age (WS
MLU 5/SD 1.87; TD MLU 5.1/SD 1.77). The WS sample included: three children
(Mean age 6.08/SD 1.58), four adolescents (Mean age 15.77/SD 1.27) and five
adults (Mean age 24.71/SD 6.54).
We analyzed spontaneous speech corpora. Individual speech samples were elic-
ited from each subject at home, in conversation with an investigator. The conversa-
tions had variable duration (30–45 min.). They were videotaped, and then transcribed
and analyzed using the tools provided by the CHILDES Project (MacWhinney
2000). In order to control the size differences of the samples, 1000 consecutive
word tokens of each sample were selected for morphological analysis. The two
corpora obtained (24,000 words) were analyzed using the CLAN programs of
CHILDES specifically developed for automatic morphological analysis: MOR and
POST. The programs output the part of speech for each word, along with the mor-
phological analysis of affixes, such as the past tense marks on the verbs. For exam-
ple, the programs give the following analysis for the utterance “Oop I spilled it”:
int|oop pro|I v|spill-PAST pro|it (int: interjection; pro: pronoun; v: verb).
The frequency of morphological errors by parts of speech in both WS and TD
corpora was assessed. Tagging included errors of gender, number and person agree-
ment, tense inflection, as well as errors in the use of function words. The types of
errors were further divided in three classes: omissions, substitutions and additions,
as in the following examples:
–– Iré a *piscina/I will go to swimming pool (*omission: article)
–– Dónde lo viste? *el anuncio/where did you see it? the commercial (*omission:
preposition)
–– Dijo: abrió la boca/he said: opened the mouth (substitution: verb tense
inflection)
–– Unas ositos/some little bears (substitution: gender agreement of quantifier)
–– El elefantes no son peligrosos/the elephants are not dangerous (substitution:
number agreement of article)
–– Yo lo tengo muchos/I have it many (addition: personal pronoun)
–– Te deseamos a todos/we wish you to all (addition: preposition)
3 Results
The WS and the TD groups had an almost identical lexical diversity (Types/Tokens
=.33), with a very similar distribution for the most frequent parts of speech (i.e.
Adverbs, Nouns and Verbs) (see Table 1). This would allow for a reliable compari-
son of morphological errors between the two groups.
Table 1 Distribution of Types and most frequent Parts of speech

Category Group Mean SD T-test
TYPES WS 330.25 25.223 t = –.241
TD 333.00 30.496 p < .812
ADV WS 103.92 25.960 t = .064
TD 103.33 18.247 p < .950
N WS 160.42 30.690 t = –.087
TD 161.50 30.652 p < .932
V WS 126.92 14.279 t = –.015
TD 127.00 13.410 p < .988
Note: ADV adverbs, N nouns, V verbs
Table 2 Differences in the distribution of Parts of speech

Category Group Mean SD T-test
CO WS 90.67 37.967 t = 2.852
TD 53.33 24.791 p < .009
COP WS 21.00 6.769 t = −3.155
TD 32.08 10.113 p < .005
PRO|REFL WS 8.42 5.017 t = −2.793
TD 13.75 4.309 p < .01
Note: CO communicators, COP copulas, PRO|REFL reflexive pronouns
Fig. 1 Individual differences in the frequency of errors
The WS group produced more communicators (i.e., conversation markers includ-

ing interjections, adverbs, vocatives such as well, right, so, dear,…), and fewer
copulas and reflexive pronouns (see Table 2). Given that the individuals from both
groups showed a very low rate of errors in these three categories, the differences
observed would not affect error frequency comparisons.
Fig. 2 Types of 70
morphological errors
(Note: OM omissions; SS 60
Frequency of error
substitutions; AD 50
additions)
40 WS
30 TD
20
10
0
OM SS AD
Type of error
Note: OM=omissions; SS=substitutions; AD=additions
Although frequency of morphological errors was low in both groups (WS: mean
= 10.25/SD = 7.27; TD: mean = 4.08/SD = 3.23), the WS group made more errors
than the TD group (t = 2.683; p < .014).
The WS group presented a broader range of individual differences (see Fig. 1),
even though the coefficient of variation (showed in the percentage of variability in
relation to the mean of each population: % SD/Mean) was lower in the WS group
(70.9%) than in the TD group (79.1%). Six individuals in the WS group lay within
the TD range, while the other six individuals scored above the highest error rate in
the TD group. Two individuals in the WS group showed fewer morphological errors
than their TD pairs. In contrast, other two individuals in the WS group scored above
one standard deviation away from the mean.
Both low and high error rates, within and over the range of the TD group, were
observed in the children, the adolescents and the adults with WS. Consequently, no
significant correlation between frequency of morphological errors and age was
found in the WS group. Frequency of errors and age showed no association with
lexical diversity or with MLU. As expected, no correlation was observed between
these same variables in the TD group, except for age and MLU (r = .645; p < .02).
The analysis of error types revealed a similar distribution in both groups, with
higher frequencies in errors of substitution, and lower frequencies in errors of addi-
tion (see Fig. 2). The error frequency of the three types (i.e. omissions, substitu-
tions, and additions) was higher in the WS group, but statistically significant
differences were just found in the case of omissions (t = 2.995; p < .007). Only one
case of over regularization appeared in the WS group, against seven in the TD
group.
When the parts of speech affected by the errors were taken into account together
with the types of errors, significant differences were observed in four categories
where the individuals in the TD group showed no errors: omission of definite
articles (t = 2.691; p < .013), omission of object pronouns (t = 2.569; p < .018),
substitution of prepositions (t = 2.530; p < .019), and substitution of verb tenses
(t = 2.611; p < .016). When considering all types of errors, significant differences
only appeared in two of the categories: definite articles (t = 3.604; p < .002), and
prepositions (t = 2.955; p < .007).
In order to explore the patterns of relative distribution of errors by parts of
speech, the percentage of errors in each class was calculated. The WS group showed
a distinct pattern, with a much higher incidence of errors than the TD group in defi-
nite articles, prepositions, and conjunctions (WS 50%/TD 20%). The pattern of the
WS group was similar to that found in a DS group (53%) from a previous study
(Diez-Itza and Miranda 2007). In contrast, the percentage of error in verbs was
similar in both groups (WS 28%/TD 33%), as opposed to the DS group (17%). The
WS group had a lower percentage of errors than the TD group in nouns, adjectives,
personal pronouns, and quantifiers (WS 18%/TD 44%), again closer to the DS per-
centage (25%) in these same categories.
4 Discussion
The results of the study presented in this chapter, comparing the incidence of mor-
phological errors in the spontaneous speech of a group of Spanish-speaking chil-
dren, adolescents, and adults with WS, with that of a group of TD children paired by
sex and MLU, although exploratory and necessarily limited, allow for a discussion
of some questions raised by previous research about whether or not the morphology
in WS may be considered to respond to a typical pattern.
Both groups have almost identical lexical diversity (type/token ratio), and the
distribution of tokens by parts of speech did not reveal significant differences, which
suggests that subsequent differences observed in the frequency and types of errors
would not be associated to a more or less frequent use of certain word classes by
either of the two groups.
The incidence of morphological errors found in the group with WS is relatively
low, which could contribute to the initial impression that morpho-syntax is pre-
served in this population, especially when compared with the grammatical impair-
ment in Down syndrome (Bellugi et al. 1990). Nevertheless, the mean error rate
observed in the WS group was significantly higher than that of the TD pairs, in line
with early findings from Romance languages and challenging the notion that the
comprehension and the use of morpho-syntactic rules are intact in WS individuals
(Diez-Itza et al. 1998; Karmiloff-Smith et al. 1997; Volterra et al. 1996). These stud-
ies of Spanish, French, and Italian individuals with WS showed clear-cut deficits in
the production of aspects of morphosyntax (e.g. errors in grammatical gender
assignment and preposition use), claiming for an atypical morphological develop-
ment in WS.
Broader individual differences are also found in the WS group, consistent with
the heterogeneity suggested by previous research using various methodologies
(Stojanovik et al. 2006). The coefficient of variation was higher than that observed
in a DS group (WS 70%/DS 42%) in a study using the same corpus-based
ethodology for the analysis of morphological errors (Diez-Itza and Miranda

m
2007). However, higher relative variation may be affected by the low frequency of
morphological errors both in the WS and TD groups, and consequently could not be
interpreted as an indicator of differential developmental pathways.
Individuals with WS may follow a typical path, and the differences may just be
quantitative, with higher frequency and longer persistence of errors than in typical
language development. Schaner-Wolles (2004) suggested that the patterns of errors
in grammar found in German-speaking children with WS are of the same types as
those observed in TD children. From this view, differences would be due to process-
ing deficits affecting specific linguistic subcomponents and causing grammar to
develop at different rates, which would explain within-domain dissociations.
Although the frequency and types of errors found in the TD group may be con-
sidered typical of children in the late stages of morpho-syntactic development
(MLU > 5), with their MLU still growing with age, those showed by the individuals
in the WS group are independent of age or MLU. The fact that it does not seem pos-
sible to assign all the individuals in the WS group to the same stage of morpho-
syntactic development points towards a morphological error pattern that may not be
described as “retarded”, but rather as the outcome of specific characteristics of
morpho-syntactic processing in the WS population.
Errors of omission, substitution, and addition of free and bound morphemes are
observed both in WS and TD corpora, with high frequency of substitutions, and low
frequency of additions. Nevertheless, the significantly higher relative proportion of
omissions in the WS group represents an atypical tendency to omit free and bound
morphemes, which could then be a characteristic of the WS population, as it has
also been described in the DS population (Diez-Itza and Miranda 2007).
Differences between the WS group and the TD group also arise when the catego-
ries affected by the errors are considered. Omissions of definite articles and object
pronouns together with substitutions of prepositions and verb tenses are signifi-
cantly more frequent in the WS group, whereas they are absent in the TD sample.
The incidence of overregularization, included within morphological substitu-
tions, was examined. Only one case of overregularization was found in the WS
corpus, in contrast to the seven observed in the TD corpus. However, overregular-
ization in individuals with WS has been interpreted as the result of impaired lexical
representations in a spared rule-based system (Clahsen and Almazan 1998, 2001;
Clahsen et al. 2004; Clahsen and Temple 2003). These divergent findings may be
due to differences in the method of elicitation, and in the demands of the experimen-
tal tasks, although previous experimental studies also failed to find selective deficits
in WS irregular verb inflection (Thomas et al. 2001). Spontaneous speech produc-
tion may not challenge morphological knowledge in the same way as experiments
do, considering that natural conversation relies upon familiar word forms that are
easy to retrieve as they are part of the usual vocabulary of the individuals.
Overregularization of frequent words by German-speaking children with WS may
still be influenced by the method of elicitation, and should be interpreted consider-
ing the fact that a higher frequency of a word form does not imply that each indi-
vidual makes use of it in spontaneous speech (Penke and Krause 2004).
The more extensive use of overregularized forms by the TD individuals is con-

sistent with their ongoing typical morphological development, and it argues against
the notion of a developmental delay in the WS individuals. In an experiment where
grammatical gender was pitted against natural gender (Ibernon and Boloh 2010),
despite similar gender attribution abilities, WS participants differed from
CA-controls in that they did not shift to sex-based responses. Ibernon and Boloh
(2010) argued that the reasons for this difference are more likely to be found in
cognitive, lexical or meta-linguistic abilities rather than in morpho-syntactic ones.
Therefore, the observed similarities in morphological performance between WS and
TD do not exclude underlying differences, and do not necessarily indicate that they
are at the same stages of development.
Furthermore, when all error types were computed in both corpora, significant
differences were found only in two categories: definite articles and prepositions. If
we had to interpret this finding in terms of delayed morphology, we should place
WS individuals in an early stage of development but, at least in half of the individu-
als, morphological performance could not be considered below the range of indi-
viduals in the TD group, i.e. in later stages of morphological development.
The patterns of relative distribution of errors by morphological categories may
shed more light on this issue. Although the frequency of errors in individuals with
DS was much higher (WS 1%/DS 9%) (Diez-Itza and Miranda 2007), the percent-
age of errors affecting each category reveals a very similar pattern of error in the WS
and DS groups. In both groups, morphological errors affecting definite articles,
prepositions and conjunctions account for 50% of total errors, while in the TD
group the errors affecting these same categories are restricted to 20%. The atypical
concentration of errors in unstressed grammatical words observed in individuals
with DS has been partially explained as an effect of the more difficult weak-strong
pattern formed when they attach to the nearest stressed word (Pettinato and
Verhoeven 2009).
Despite relative strengths in phonological short-term memory (Vicari et al.
1996), experimental evidence suggests the construction of atypical overly detailed
phonological representations in the WS population that alter phonological perfor-
mance (Majerus 2004). These atypical representations could then also play a role in
the infrequent but atypical errors observed in the morpho-syntactic processing of
function words. In this way, the pattern of error regarding the morphological catego-
ries affected may reflect underlying atypical phonological processing of both WS
and DS individuals.
However, this parallelism was not found in the rate of errors in verbs, where the
WS group and the TD group showed a similar rate around 30%, as opposed to the
reported rate of 17% in the DS population. In part, the lower rate of errors affecting
verbs observed in the previous study of a DS group may be related to a lower use of
verbs, although this was not assessed in the study by Diez-Itza and Miranda (2007).
Moreover, the types of errors affecting verbs were different in the WS and the TD
groups. The TD group had errors of overregularization that may be considered typi-
cal in late morphological development, whereas the WS group showed a significant
incidence of verb tense errors that may be related to deeper cognitive limitations.
5 Conclusion
Our findings concerning the morphological errors in the spontaneous speech of 12

individuals with WS and their TD pairs do not support the hypothesis of a typical
morphological profile in WS. Beyond quantitative differences in the frequency of
errors, the patterns observed in the WS individuals did not respond to a typical path
of development. Thus, they could not be interpreted in terms of “delays” in specific
submodules of grammar. This atypical pattern of morphological errors shares some
similarities with the pattern observed in individuals with DS and could be associ-
ated to intellectual disability. Although these results are exploratory and further
research analyzing spontaneous speech is needed, they reveal the complexity of
atypical morphological errors observed in Williams syndrome.
Acknowledgements This study was supported by Research Project FFI2012-39325-C03-03

from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO). We wish to thank the
WS people and their parents, who generously agreed to participate in our research.
References
Asada, K., Tomiwa, K., Okada, M., & Itakura, S. (2010). Atypical verbal communication pattern
according to others’ attention in children with Williams syndrome. Research in Developmental
Disabilities, 31(2), 452–457. doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2009.10.010.
Bellugi, U., Bihrle, A., Jernigan, T., Trauner, D., & Doherty, S. (1990). Neuropsychological, neu-
rological, and neuroanatomical profile of Williams syndrome. American Journal of Medical
Genetics, 37(S6), 115–125.
Bellugi, U., Wang, P. P., & Jernigan, T. L. (1994). Williams Syndrome: An unusual neuropsycho-
logical profile. In J. Broman & S. Grafman (Eds.), Atypical cognitive deficits in developmental
disorders: Implications for brain function (pp. 1–59). Hillsdale: LEA.
Bellugi, U., Lichtenberger, L., Mills, D., Galaburda, A., & Korenberg, J. R. (1999). Bridging cog-
nition, the brain and molecular genetics: Evidence from Williams syndrome. Trends in
Neurosciences, 22(5), 197–207. doi:10.1016/S0166-2236(99)01397-1.
Bellugi, U., Lichtenberger, L., Jones, W., Lai, Z., & St. George, M. (2000). I. The neurocognitive
profile of Williams syndrome: A complex pattern of strengths and weaknesses. Journal of
Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(supplement 1), 7–29. doi:10.1162/089892900561959.
Bellugi, U., Korenberg, J. R., & Klima, E. S. (2001). Williams syndrome: An exploration of neu-
rocognitive and genetic features. Clinical Neuroscience Research, 1(3), 217–229. doi:10.1016/
S1566-2772(01)00008-1.
Capirci, O., Sabbadini, L., & Volterra, V. (1996). Language development in Williams syndrome a
case study. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 13(7), 1017–1040. doi:10.1080/026432996381764.
Clahsen, H., & Almazan, M. (1998). Syntax and morphology in Williams syndrome. Cognition,
68(3), 167–198. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(98)00049-3.
Clahsen, H., & Almazan, M. (2001). Compounding and inflection in language impairment:
Evidence from Williams syndrome (and SLI). Lingua, 111(10), 729–757. doi:10.1016/
S0024-3841(00)00047-4.
Clahsen, H., & Temple, C. M. (2003). Words and rules in children with William’s syndrome. In
Y. Levy & J. Schaeffer (Eds.), Language competence across populations: Toward a definition
of specific language impairment (pp. 323–352). Mahwah: LEA.
Clahsen, H., Ring, M., & Temple, C. (2004). Lexical and morphological skills in English-speaking
children with WS. In S. Bartke & J. Siegmüller (Eds.), Williams syndrome across languages
(pp. 221–244). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Diez-Itza, E. (2014). Lingüística clínica de las discapacidades intelectuales. Síndrome de Williams,
síndrome de Down y síndrome X-Frágil. In M. Fernández Pérez (Ed.), Lingüística y déficit
comunicativos (pp. 231–264). Madrid: Síntesis.
Diez-Itza, E., & Miranda, M. (2007). Perfiles gramaticales específicos en el síndrome de Down.
Revista de Logopedia, Foniatría y Fonoaudiología, 27(4), 161–172.
Diez-Itza, E., Antón, A., Fernández-Toral, J., & García, M. L. (1998). Language development in
Spanish children with Williams syndrome. In A. Aksu Koç, E. Erguvanli Taylan, A. Sumru
Özsoy, & A. Küntay (Eds.), Perspectives on language acquisition (pp. 309–324). Istanbul:
Bogazici University Printhouse.
Diez-Itza, E., Snow, C., & Solé, R. (2001). Scripts for Tom and Jerry: Spanish preschoolers relate
cartoons. In M. Almgren, A. Barreña, M. J. Eizezabarrena, I. Idiazábal, & B. MacWhinney
(Eds.), Research on child language acquisition (pp. 399–408). Somerville: Cascadilla Press.
Diez-Itza et al. (2014). The Syndroling Project: A comparative linguistic analysis of typical devel-
opment profiles and neurodevelopmental genetic syndromes (Williams, Down, and Fragile X
syndromes). Poster session presented at the 12th International Congress for the Study of Child
Language, Amsterdam.
Ewart, A. K., Morris, C. A., Atkinson, D., Jin, W., Sternes, K., Spallone, P., & Keating, M. T.
(1993). Hemizygosity at the elastin locus in a developmental disorder, Williams syndrome.
Nature Genetics, 5(1), 11–16.
Gosch, A., Städing, G., & Pankau, R. (1994). Linguistic abilities in children with Williams-Beuren
syndrome. American Journal of Medical Genetics, 52(3), 291–296. doi:10.1002/
ajmg.1320520308.
Howlin, P., Davies, M., & Udwin, O. (1998). Cognitive functioning in adults with Williams syn-
drome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 39(2), 183–189.
doi:10.1111/1469-7610.00312.
Hsu, C. F., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2008). Language and Williams syndrome. Annual Review of
Applied Linguistics, 28, 191–204. doi:10.1017/S0267190508080070.
Ibernon, L., & Boloh, Y. (2010). Grammatical gender vs. natural gender in French Williams syn-
drome. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 31(6), 1291–1298. doi:10.1016/j.
ridd.2010.07.013.
Jarrold, C., Baddeley, A. D., & Hewes, A. K. (1999). Genetically dissociated components of work-
ing memory: Evidence from Downs and Williams syndrome. Neuropsychologia, 37(6), 637–
651. doi:10.1016/S0028-3932(98)00128-6.
John, A. E., & Mervis, C. B. (2010). Comprehension of the communicative intent behind pointing
and gazing gestures by young children with Williams syndrome or Down syndrome. Journal of
Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53(4), 950–960.
doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2009/08-0234).
John, A. E., Dobson, L. A., Thomas, L. E., & Mervis, C. B. (2012). Pragmatic abilities of children
with Williams syndrome: A longitudinal examination. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 199.
doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00199.
Jones, W., Bellugi, U., Lai, Z., Chiles, M., Reilly, J., Lincoln, A., & Adolphs, R. (2000).
II. Hypersociability in Williams syndrome. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(supplement
1), 30–46. doi:10.1162/089892900561968.
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1998). Development itself is the key to understanding developmental disor-
ders. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2(10), 389–398. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(98)01230-3.
Karmiloff-Smith, A., Grant, J., Berthoud, I., Davies, M., Howlin, P., & Udwin, O. (1997). Language
and Williams syndrome: How intact is “intact”? Child Development, 68(2), 246–262.
Karmiloff-Smith, A., Tyler, L. K., Voice, K., Sims, K., Udwin, O., Howlin, P., & Davies, M. (1998).
Linguistic dissociations in Williams syndrome: Evaluating receptive syntax in on-line and off
line tasks. Neuropsychologia, 36(4), 343–351. doi:10.1016/S0028-3932(97)00133-4.
Landau, B., Hoffman, J. E., & Kurz, N. (2006). Object recognition with severe spatial deficits in
Williams syndrome: Sparing and breakdown. Cognition, 100(3), 483–510. doi:10.1016/j.
cognition.2005.06.005.
Lichtenberger, L., & Bellugi, U. (1998). The intersection of spatial cognition and language in
Williams syndrome. Cognitive Neuroscience Society Annual Meeting Abstract Program, 80,
68.
Losh, M., Bellugi, U., & Reilly, J. (2000). Narrative as a social engagement tool: The excessive use
of evaluation in narratives from children with Williams syndrome. Narrative Inquiry, 10(2),
265–290. doi:10.1075/ni.10.2.01los.
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES Project: Tools for analyzing talk (3rd ed.). Mahwah: LEA.
Majerus, S. (2004). Phonological processing in Williams syndrome. In S. Bartke & J. Siegmüller
(Eds.), Williams syndrome across languages (pp. 125–142). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Martens, M., Wilson, S., & Reutens, D. (2008). Williams syndrome: A critical review of the cogni-
tive, behavioral, and neuroanatomical phenotype. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry,
49(6), 576–608. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2008.01887.x.
Mervis, C. B., & Becerra, A. M. (2007). Language and communicative development in Williams
syndrome. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, 13, 3–15. doi:10.1002/
mrdd.20140.
Mervis, C. B., & John, A. E. (2012). Precursors to language and early language. In E. K. Farran &
A. Karmiloff-Smith (Eds.), Neurodevelopmental disorders across the lifespan: A neurocon-
structivist approach (pp. 187–204). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mervis, C. B., Robinson, B. F., Bertrand, J., Morris, C. A., Klein-Tasman, B. P., & Armstrong,
S. C. (2000). The Williams syndrome cognitive profile. Brain and Cognition, 44(3), 604–628.
doi:10.1006/brcg.2000.1232.
Mills, D., Alvarez, T., St. George, M., Appelbaum, G., Bellugi, U., & Neville, H. (2000).
Electrophysiological studies of face processing in Williams syndrome. Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience, 12(supplement), 47–64.
Nazzi, T., Paterson, S., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2003). Early word segmentation by infants and
toddlers with Williams syndrome. Infancy, 4(2), 251–271. doi:10.1207/S15327078IN0402_06.
Paterson, S. J., Girelli, L., Butterworth, B., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2006). Are numerical impair-
ments syndrome specific? Evidence from Williams syndrome and Down’s syndrome. Journal
of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 47(2), 190–204.
doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2005.01460.x.
Penke, M., & Krause, M. (2004). Regular and irregular inflectional morphology in German
Williams syndrome. In S. Bartke & J. Siegmüller (Eds.), Williams syndrome across languages
(pp. 245–270). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Pettinato, M., & Verhoeven, J. (2009). Production and perception of word stress in children and
adolescents with Down syndrome. Down Syndrome Research and Practice, 13(1), 48–61.
doi:10.3104/reports.2036.
Rossen, M. L., Jones, W., Wang, P. P., & Klima, E. S. (1995). Face processing: Remarkable sparing
in Williams syndrome. Genetic Counseling, 6(1), 138–140.
Schaner-Wolles, C. (2004). Spared domain-specific cognitive capacities? Syntax and morphology
in Williams syndrome and Down syndrome. In S. Bartke & J. Siegmüller (Eds.), Williams
syndrome across languages (pp. 93–124). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Singer-Harris, N. G., Bellugi, U., Bates, E., Jones, W., & Rossen, M. (1997). Contrasting profiles
of language development in children with Williams and Down syndromes. Developmental
Neuropsychology, 13(3), 345–370. doi:10.1080/87565649709540683.
Stojanovik, V. (2006). Social interaction deficits and conversational inadequacy in Williams syn-
drome. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 19(2), 157–173. doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2005.11.005.
Stojanovik, V., Perkins, M., & Howard, S. (2006). Linguistic heterogeneity in Williams syndrome.
Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 20(7–8), 547–552. doi:10.1080/02699200500266422.
Tager-Flusberg, H. (2000). A componential view of theory of mind: Evidence from Williams syn-
drome. Cognition, 76(1), 59–90. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(00)00069-X.
Thomas, M.S.C., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2003). Modeling language acquisition in atypical pheno-
types. Psychological Review, 110(4), 647–682.
Thomas, M.S.C., & Karmiloff-Smith, A. (2005). Can developmental disorders reveal the compo-
nent parts of the human language faculty? Language Learning and Development, 1(1), 65–92.
doi:10.1207/s15473341lld0101_5.
Thomas, M. S. C., Grant, J., Barham, Z., Gsödl, M., Laing, E., Lakusta, L., & Karmiloff-Smith, A.
(2001). Past tense formation in Williams syndrome. Language and Cognitive Processes, 16(2–
3), 143–176. doi:10.1080/01690960042000021.
Udwin, O., & Yule, W. (2005). Expressive language of children with Williams syndrome. American
Journal of Medical Genetics, 37(S6), 108–114. doi:10.1002/ajmg.1320370620.
Vicari, S., Brizzolara, D., Carlesimo, G. A., Pezzini, G., & Volterra, V. (1996). Memory abilities in
children with Williams syndrome. Cortex, 32(3), 503–514. doi:10.1016/
S0010-9452(96)80007-4.
Vicari, S., Caselli, M. C., Gagliardi, C., Tonucci, F., & Volterra, V. (2002). Language acquisition in
special populations: A comparison between Down and Williams syndromes. Neuropsychologia,
40(13), 2461–2470. doi:10.1016/S0028-3932(02)00083-0.
Volterra, V., Capirci, O., Pezzini, G., Sabbadini, L., & Vicari, S. (1996). Linguistic abilities in
Italian children with Williams syndrome. Cortex, 32(4), 663–677. doi:10.1016/
S0010-9452(96)80037-2.
Wang, P. P., & Bellugi, U. (1994). Evidence from two genetic syndromes for a dissociation between
verbal and visual-spatial short-term memory. Journal of Clinical and Experimental
Neuropsychology, 16(2), 317–322. doi:10.1080/01688639408402641.
Language Skills in Down Syndrome
Natalia Arias-Trejo and Julia B. Barrón-Martínez
Abstract People with Down Syndrome (DS) tend to ommit grammatical markers
indicating number, gender, time, among others. They also have production deficits
affecting function words in obligatory contexts such as prepositions, conjunctions
and pronouns. In the current chapter, we will review studies that have explored lan-
guage comprehension and production skills and their relationships with other cogni-
tive abilities. We will emphasise research on language comprehension indicating
that children with DS identify, anticipate a referent and potentially, learn novel
words based on morphological cues.
Keywords Down syndrome • Grammatical gender • Grammatical number •

Preferential looking • Language processing
1 Introduction
Language acquisition, and its development throughout childhood, is generally

understood in the context of Typical Development (TD). However, understanding
how language develops in the context of a general developmental deficit is impor-
tant to the specification of language learning under diverse circumstances, and to
our theories about how language might be learned. It is also relevant to understand
language learning within the context of intellectual disability to improve language
intervention programs. Down Syndrome (DS) is a genetic disorder caused by an
extra copy of chromosome 21, and it is the leading cause of intellectual disability
(Lubec and Engidawork 2002). It is estimated that one in every 1000 births are
infants with DS (Hassold and Sherman 2000). Cognitive deficits (Roizen 2002)
N. Arias-Trejo (*) • J.B. Barrón-Martínez

Laboratorio de Psicolingüística, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México (UNAM), Mexico City, Mexico
e-mail: nariast@unam.mx; juliabbm@comunidad.unam.mx

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_16
330 N. Arias-Trejo and J.B. Barrón-Martínez
specifically in verbal short-term memory (Næss et al. 2011); executive functions
(Carlesimo et al. 1997); and phonological processing (Brock and Jarrold 2004) have
been documented.
1.1 L
exical Comprehension and Production in Down
Syndrome Population
One of the most salient problems in DS is language production (Chapman and

Hesketh 2000). Approximately 50% of DS children under the age of 36 months
have communicative problems and limited lexical production, when compared to a
control group of Typically Developing children (TD) of the same mental age (Miller
1999). In contrast, studies that have explored language comprehension have revealed
that comprehension skills in DS are less affected (Galeote et al. 2006).
The language production profiles of people with DS vary widely, from the
absence of speech to poor intelligibility. For instance, in the majority of the cases,
content words (i.e., nouns) predominate, in the absence of function words such as
prepositions, conjunctions and personal pronouns (Diez-Itza and Miranda 2007;
Vicari et al. 2000). Gender, number and tense agreement errors are common. This
lack of agreement in languages like Spanish make the sentences produced difficult
to comprehend because gender and number agreement allows, for disambiguation,
referent tracking, anticipation, and meaning inference. Children with DS are also
inconsistent in their speech production, with over half of all words produced being
pronounced differently on repeated productions (Dodd and Thompson 2001). Also,
syllable deletion is common in the speech of people with DS. These deletions often
change the rhythmic structure of the utterance because it alters the prosodic organi-
zation of speech (Heselwood et al. 1995). Other factors involved in word production
problems in people with DS are explained by the incidence of breathing problems
which, apart from making difficult to pass the air in order to produce the speech
sounds properly, it involves frequent isolations that difficult the practice of speech
production for communicative purposes (Pandit and Fitzgerald 2012).
Some studies suggest that the production language deficit can be explained by
the cognitive delay itself, auditory problems, difficulties to articulate sounds, and
even socio-economic variables leading to poor access to education and efficient
therapies or interventions (Rondal 1995; Wulpert et al. 1975).
One of the most entertained factors as explicative of the productive language
problems in DS is related to the common auditory problems in individuals (Roizen
et al. 1993). Under normal developmental circumstances, children make regularities
and statistics with the language input to which they are exposed (Saffran 2002).
More importantly, children require a certain rate of exposition to the sounds of their
native language in order to identify, discriminate, categorize and produce them.
Frequent ear infections that cause temporal auditive loss implicates that the sound
the child perceives is unclear (Gravel and Wallace 1995). It has been proposed that
the specific auditory problems that children with DS experience, in comparison to
Language Skills in Down Syndrome 331
other intellectual disabilities of different etiology but with similar mental age, can
be the consequence of weak auditory memories that require a greater number of
expositions so that DS children can process correctly the linguistic input to which
they are exposed (Yoder et al. 2004). However, deficits in the components of the
phonological loop in working memory, which are related to planning and articulation
of systematic speech sounds, have been considered as one of the more pertinent
explanations regarding word production in DS population (Broadley et al. 1995;
Jarrold and Baddeley 2001).
The evidence about the influence of auditory deficiencies is contradictory. Some
researchers report that a significant relationship between language production and
auditory problems does not exist (e.g., Jarrold and Baddeley 1997; Marcell et al.
1995; Miller 1988). For example, Chapman et al. (1998) found that only between
4–7% of the language variability in a sample of people with DS was explained by
recurrent loss of audition. However, one of the frequent criteria for exclusion in
research with the DS population is ‘hearing loss’. For example, in a spontaneous
language production study by Laws and Gunn (2004), it is reported that the Mean
Length Utterance (MLU) –a common measure employed to indicate how many
words integrate on average the sentences produced by a person– does not correlate
significantly with the auditory levels of children and adolescents (M = 11;08 chron-
ological age, M = 4;06 mental age); nevertheless, the auditory levels determined the
children who produced an intelligible speech so as to perform a MLU calculation.
Furthermore, it was reported that the receptive and productive vocabulary scores,
but not grammatical comprehension, significantly correlated with the auditory lev-
els of the participants. Albeit the non-convergent evidence, it is necessary to detect
auditory problems from an early stage of development as well as to perform annual
checks of the ear and hearing status. This will potentially decrease the effects on
language learning.
A question that has been raised is whether the cognitive deficit present in the
etiology of DS causes part of the word production problems. The comparison of
language skills in other cognitive deficits that involve similar levels of intellectual
disability has allowed us to conclude that the language problems cannot be exclu-
sively due to the cognitive delay. Specifically, comparisons with people with
Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder caused by a deletion on chromosome
7q11.23, have suggested that the cognitive deficit per se cannot explain the language
deficits seen in DS, as people with Williams syndrome do not have a similar lan-
guage profile (Abbeduto et al. 2001; Harris et al. 1997).
It remains to be explained why DS implies a greater disorder in word production
than comprehension. This difference might be due to larger requirements for produc-
tion such as retrieval of information, storage of this information for its correct pro-
duction within an appropriate grammatical, syntactical and semantical context, and
finally its articulation. For example, in the case of a sentence like ‘My mom and I
bought black shoes and red skirts’ ‘Mi madre y yo compramos zapatos negros y fal-
das rojas’ in Spanish, it requires grammatical tense, number and gender agreement.
The verb should implicate plural as the consequence of the sum of two persons, the
adjective for ‘shoes’ must be produced in masculine, whereas that for ‘skirts’ in
feminine. As it can be appreciated from this sentence, producing such a simple sen-
tence can be very demanding as retrieving formal language rules is required.
According to the above, Lázaro et al. (2014) examined plural morphology skills,
at the production level, in children with DS matched with a mental-age group (M =
6.5 years) and a receptive-vocabulary group (M = 8.5 years). The Wug test was
employed (Berko 1958) for such purpose: an experimenter presents to participants
a novel object named with a novel label (e. g., ‘This is a wug’) then, the experi-
menter shows two copies of the same object while saying “These are…”, it is
expected that the participant would pluralize the name object using the allomorph
‘s’ (i. e., “These are wugs”). The results of this study by Lázaro et al. (2014) showed
that the group of children with DS had a lower performance, when pluralizing
objects names, compared with the two control groups; it can be concluded that plu-
ral morphology skills are specially altered in children with DS, which is not a direct
consequence of their intellectual ability or their receptive vocabulary score as the
matched TD groups –by mental age or receptive vocabulary- performed signifi-
cantly better in the plural morphology task.
At the beginning of this chapter, it was mentioned that relative to production
skills, comprehension skills are preserved. We will revise now some differences
between comprehension and production. To measure the early vocabulary of chil-
dren, two instruments are generally employed: The Peabody Picture Vocabulary
Test (Dunn et al. 1986) and the MacArthur Communicative Developmental
Inventory (Fenson et al. 1993). The first one presents four pictures per trial and the
participants are asked to point to a given target; the level of complexity increases
according to the participant’s performance. The second presents a list of words
acquired in the first years of life; parents have to mark the words that their children
understand and say. Measures of early vocabulary scores can be taken as predictor
indexes of future language development. Studies with TD children have found that
early comprehension scores are predictors of subsequent productive skills (Bates
et al. 1988; Bates 1979); also, the early comprehension scores can predict whether
a child with language delay would develop later the same language skills as their
chronological peers with no language delay (Paul et al. 1991; Thal et al. 1991).
Thus, longitudinal studies could help us to determine whether the degree of lan-
guage delay observed in the first three years of a child with DS could predict later
on the degree of language production impairment. Specifically, studies with DS
children have reported that the frequency of production of requests predicts their
subsequent language production (Mundy et al. 1995; Thal et al. 1991); similar
results have been found with other etiologies such as autism (Mundy et al. 1990).
It has been observed that children with DS have similar comprehension scores in
their vocabularies as their peers with typical development when paired according to
their mental age. In a meta-analysis by Næss et al. (2011), it was reported that chil-
dren with DS (mean mental age of 23.5 months) had a similar receptive vocabulary
score as children with TD (mental age of 28.9 months) according to the Peabody
Picture Vocabulary Test (Dunn et al. 1986). Nevertheless, the same meta-analysis
indicated significant differences between the production of children with DS and
children with TD, according to the standardized naming task. The TD group was
5 months older than the DS group, this difference may have placed the first group in
advantage; however, it is interesting to notice that this advantage, if any, was absent
for comprehension. Other studies have provided evidence about an efficient vocabu-
lary comprehension by children with DS (Galeote et al. 2006). In order to evaluate
the vocabulary knowledge by children with DS, an adaptation of the parental vocab-
ulary report has been performed. This adaptation includes a section of gestures
(Galeote et al. 2006) which is an alternative instrument of communication of the
population with DS and other developmental problems. In many cases, parents and
teachers promote the use of gestures to stimulate vocabulary acquisition and to
facilitate communication.
Research has verified the predominant use of gestures in the production of DS
children in a rate similar or higher than the number of gestures employed by TD
children (Stefanini et al. 2007). For example, the parents of Italian (Caselli et al.
1998), American (Singer Harris et al. 1997) and Spanish (Galeote et al. 2006) chil-
dren with DS report that their children under the age of 6 years produce more words
by means of gestures than oral words; the number reported is also larger than that
given by parents of TD children. Laboratory research confirms this tendency: chil-
dren between 3 and 4 years of age with DS produce a larger number of deictic and
iconic gestures when asked to produce the names of a series of images in contrast to
TD children of the same verbal mental age (Stefanini et al. 2007; Stefanini et al.
2008). Özçalışkan et al. (2015) report that the number of gestures that children with
DS produce by the age of 30 months predicts their production of oral words a year
later. Nevertheless, it has to be said that some researchers have indicated the absence
of significant differences on the number of gestures produced by children with TD
and children with DS (Iverson et al. 2003; Zampini 2008).
Investigations that report MLU (Mean Length Utterance) scores of children with
DS produce shorter sentences than TD children (Ring and Clahsen 2005; Vicari
et al. 2000). When combination of words is required, DS children tend to perform
more errors such as lack of gender and number agreement between the elements of
a sentence as it can be between the article and the noun; for example, ‘el gatos’
instead of ‘los gatos’ o ‘la gato’ instead of ‘el gato’ (Diez-Itza and Miranda 2007;
Vicari et al. 2000). The omission of prepositions, conjunctions and verbal tense end-
ing indicative of time or person has also been observed. In a study by Chapman et al.
(1998), it was found that English-speaking children with DS omitted more words
with grammatical function, like auxiliary verbs and articles, than their controls for
mental age. Does a disparity between comprehension and production of grammati-
cal markers indicating gender, number, tense, aspect and person also exist?
1.2 Morphosyntactic Abilities
A number of investigations regarding the disadvantages of children with DS in their

morphosyntactic processing, at the production and comprehension levels, have been
put forward (Rondal 1995). These deficiencies tend to be compared with respect to
a group of TD children generally paired by mental age. For example, Zampini and
D’Odorico (2011) report that DS Italian-speaking children between the ages of 3
and 5 years exhibit poor syntactic complexity -measured with frequency and types
of transitional forms, frequency of utterances with different degree of complexity,
and argument structure of verbs- in their spontaneous speech. Vicari et al. (2000)
found that Italian, 4 to 7-year-olds show various syntactic problems with respect to
TD children paired by mental age: syntactic performance was explored through
MLU and Word and Phrase Repetition Test. These problems do not seem to disap-
pear with development, as studies with English-speaking adolescents and adults
with DS (Abbeduto et al. 2003; Laws and Bishop 2003) report the persistence of the
same disadvantage, both in comprehension and production abilities. For instance,
Laws and Bishop (2003) examined comprehension, production and syntactic abili-
ties in adolescents with DS. Standardized tests were employed and the results
showed that productive language was more affected than language comprehension,
and grammar comprehension was more affected than vocabulary in both domains
comprehension and production.
How specific is the linguistic profile of people with DS in terms of their morpho-
logical processing abilities remains undetermined. Sabsay and Kernan (1993) found
that in contrast to other adults with intellectual disabilities of unknown etiology, DS
adults have problems with the use of auxiliary verbs, which suggest that these dif-
ficulties are traits of the linguistic profile in DS, specifically, they omitted the auxil-
iary verbs or misused them. Eadie et al. (2002) found that the MLU of a group of
children with TD, DS, and Specific Language Impairment was similar (from
DSM-V this impairment is named Language Disorder (F80.9)). However, when
considering the measure of development of sentences, they found that the MLU of
the TD group was longer than the other two groups. Similar findings have been
reported elsewhere; for example, there is evidence that children with SLI and chil-
dren with DS show significant deficits in their phonological working memory as
exhibited in their low scores on pseudoword and sentence repetition tasks (Laws
1998; Marcell and Armstrong 1982). Eadie et al. (2002) found that TD children
produced more the verbal morpheme –‘ed’ for the past tense in English – and the
non-verbal morpheme –‘s’ for the plural- than a group of children with DS and
SLI. Therefore, the similarity between the SLI group and the DS group in terms of
a deficit of spontaneous production of morphosyntax, as well as in the repetition of
short sentences, suggests that they have similar deficits (i. e., both have similar
omission errors).
Some studies have found specific problems in the comprehension of reflexive
pronouns in young adults with DS, speakers of diverse languages such as English,
Greek and Serbo-Croatian (e.g. Perovic 2006; Ring and Clahsen 2005; Stathopoulou
2009). We hipothetized that the problem could be due to a decrement of computa-
tional resources that DS people experience to process information, as well as to a
problem in the comprehension of co-dependent relationships in syntax (Sanoudaki
and Varlokosta 2015); for example, when understanding the agreement rules
between gender and number, as in the case of Spanish.
Recent investigations indicate a disparity between grammatical comprehension

and production in children with DS. In Arias-Trejo and Barrón-Martínez (2015)
children with DS with an average mental age of 3 years, as well as a TD group of
the same mental age, were able to employ grammatical gender information from
indefinite articles with the aim of anticipating a referent with a group of children
with DS wherein two images (target-distracter) which names were of different
grammatical gender (masculine and feminine) were shown on screen, half way
through the trial, children heard the article ‘un’ (masculine) or ‘una’ (feminine).
Participants correctly associated the article to one of the images based on their
grammatical gender. Moreover, children of both groups were able to do so in two
scenarios: one in which the target name was marked for its gender, ending ‘o’ for
masculine (‘zapato’ for shoe) and ‘a’ for feminine (‘manzana’ for apple), and a
second scenario in which the target name was unmarked (‘flor’ for flower, feminine
gender in Spanish). The results suggested a strong tendency of DS children and their
TD peers to employ phono-morphological cues of gender to infer a referent. More
importantly, the ability to use the indefinite articles in a scenario in which the refer-
ent’s name is irregular for its gender provides evidence of sophisticated knowledge
of grammatical gender, which involves at least two learning strategies. First, in
some cases children have learned gender information following the most common
rule of gender in Spanish: words ending in ‘o’ are masculine’ and therefore are
introduced by masculine articles as ‘el’ and ‘un’, and words ending in ‘a’ are femi-
nine and introduced by articles like ‘la’ and ‘una’. Second, in other cases children
have to extract the gender of unmarked words by taking information from adjacent
words such as articles and adjectives; for example, the gender of a noun like ‘pastel’
(cake) can be extracted from the sentence ‘el pastel’ as ‘el’ (the) is an article
employed only with masculine nouns.
With the two strategies previously described, grammatical gender information
could be inferred even for pseudowords. For example, for a Spanish speaker, a pseu-
doword like ‘betusa’ is feminine and ‘pileco’ is masculine; this inference is possible
according to the grammatical gender contrast between endings ‘a’/‘o’.
Approximately, 75% of the words learned in the first years of life follow this con-
trast (Jackson-Maldonado et al. 1993). In the case of unmarked pseudowords, gen-
der can also be inferred by extracting information from adjacent words; thus, in a
sentence like ‘la bliti bonita’ (the beautiful X), it can be inferred that the pseudo-
word ‘bliti’ is feminine because its precedent article is introduced by ‘la’, but also
because the adjective’s ending ‘a’ indicated feminine. In this way, the use of a mor-
phological strategy or the use of adjacent words to extract gender is flexible and
depending on whether the noun is marked or not. Thus, the results by Arias-Trejo
and Barrón-Martínez (2015) demonstrated a flexible and sophisticated use of strate-
gies to learn grammatical gender information by both DS and TD children. This
result showed that contrary to the deficits reported in production, children with DS
have developed the ability to learn the formal cues of gender information and have
also learned to extract this information for the purpose of anticipating a referent.
This ability implies a more rapid and efficient processing of upcoming information.
Moreover, this ability indicates that under certain circumstances DS children exhibit
working memory abilities: in the previous experiments, in order to match an article

with an object, children had to store the gender information from the first word and
associate it to a second word. A link between verbal short-term memory and
vocabulary, as well as with the ability to learn words in a laboratory has been stud-
ied elsewhere (Gathercole and Min 1997; Mosse and Jarrold 2008).
The efficient and rapid processing of gender-marked adjectives allows not only
to anticipate a familiar referent but also to learn words. Arias-Trejo et al. (2014)
demonstrated that 30 months-old TD children are able to form two novel associa-
tions between novel words and novel objects from a training in which two novel
objects were described with familiar adjectives. A grammatical gender contrast was
employed: one of the objects was constantly described as being masculine (e. g.,
está bonito, es rojo, está roto; is pretty, is red, is broken) and the other as being
feminine (e. g., está bonita, es roja, está rota, is pretty, is red, is broken). During the
test, children were asked to find the ‘betusa’ or the ‘pileco’. Although these two
novel labels had not been previously heard by children, they correctly associated the
novel label in feminine to the object previously described with feminine adjectives
and the opposite was also true for the masculine object. Thus, typically developing
young children learning Spanish are capable of employing gender inflections
through the contrast between ‘a’ and ‘o’ endings (i.e., betus-a/pilec-o) placed in
familiar adjectives to infer new associations.
The study previously described (Arias-Trejo et al. 2014) confirmed that reitera-
tive gender-marking in a language like Spanish supports the formation of new word-
object associations during childhood. However, the results for a group of DS
children with a mental age between 30 and 36 months showed that they were capa-
ble of forming only one association, but not two. This outcome suggested that DS
children, although capable of employing gender information to infer familiar refer-
ents, they have difficulties at using this information to learn novel words. One pos-
sibility is that rather that not being able to use grammatical gender information to
learn novel words, the difficulty is rooted in working memory deficits, future
research can be conducted in this line to obtain more information. Thus, the diffi-
culty may be to store in the relationships between gender and the objects; deficits in
memory can permeate the establishment of gender rules at the comprehension and
production level (Jarrold and Baddeley 1997; Vicari et al. 2004). In line with these
results, the population with DS show memory limitations, especially in tasks that
involved verbal short-term memory, at comprehension and, more pronounced at the
production level (Brock and Jarrold 2004; Jarrold and Baddeley 1997; Næss et al.
2011). Another complexity of the task is that children need to consider that the
pseudowords, which follow the Spanish phonotactic rules, can take a lexical value
so that they may be able to label objects. Nonetheless, children could be trained to
learn the grammatical gender contrast (a/o) with the aim of learning novel word-
object associations, an ability that is preserved in DS children. These results enrich
our knowledge of the linguistic profile of Down syndrome, which is relevant to
understand the principal linguistic strengths and weaknesses in this population.
Future research could explore others aspects of language involving morphology,
such as plural morphology skills or even the ability to inflect verbs in Romance
languages like Spanish.
Finally, it is important to emphasise that research has provided evidence regard-
ing the relevance of parental input and interaction. For example, Yoder et al. (2001)
reported that the verbal parental responses predict the receptive and productive lan-
guage, measured with CDI parental report- of children with intellectual disability.
Thus, it is important that adults interacting with a child with DS know that the type
of stimulation they provide to their children can impact significantly on their
development.
In sum, this chapter described lexical abilities in people with Down syndrome –
children and young-adults- specifically comprehension and production vocabulary,
and morphosyntactic processing. According to the findings presented throughout
this chapter: on the one hand, lexical comprehension stands out as one of the
strengths of this population (Abbeduto et al. 2007; Chapman et al. 1991; Næss et al.
2011); on the other hand, persons with DS present several difficulties with lexical
production and morphosyntactic processing (Chapman et al. 1998; Lázaro et al.
2014; Næss et al. 2011; Rondal 2005).
In conclusion, the perseveration of diverse skills in terms of understanding
encourages the continuation of this research, with the goal of building knowledge
regarding the linguistic Down syndrome profile. For instance, educational inter
ventions could benefit from teaching lexical comprehension to acquire new knowl-
edge and to extend the one that has already been acquired by a person with
DS. Improvement of communication skills and knowledge acquisition are potential
drives for a better quality of life.
Acknowledgements This chapter was supported by funds awarded to Natalia Arias-Trejo:

Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigación e Inovación Tecnológica (PAPIIT RN 309214),
and the Foundation Jérôme Lejeune years 2014–2016, Project: Language Comprehension in Down
Syndrome.
References
Abbeduto, L., Pavetto, M., Kesin, E., Weissman, M., Karadottir, S., O’Brien, A., & Cawthon, S.
(2001). The linguistic and cognitive profile of Down syndrome: Evidence from a comparison
with fragile X syndrome. Down Syndrome: Research and Practice, 7, 9–15. http://doi.
org/10.3104/reports.109.
Abbeduto, L., Murphy, M. M., Cawthon, S. W., Richmond, E. K., Weissman, M. D., Karadottir, S.,
& O’Brien, A. (2003). Receptive language skills of adolescents and young adults with Down or
fragile X syndrome. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 108, 149–160. http://doi.
org/10.1352/0895-8017(2003)108%3C0149:RLSOAA%3E2.0.CO;2.
Abbeduto, L., Warren, S. F., & Conners, F. A. (2007). Languaje development in Down syndrome:
From the prelinguistic period to the acquisition of literacy. Mental Retardation and
Developmental Disabilities, 13, 247–261. http://doi.org/10.1002/mrdd.20158.
Arias-Trejo, N., & Barrón-Martínez, J. B. (2015). Comprensión y uso de marcadores morfológicos
en personas con síndrome de Down. In F. A. Robles-Aguirre et al (Eds.), Neurociencias
Cognitivas: una aproximación interdisciplinar (Segunda ed., pp. 131–149). México: UDG.
Arias-Trejo, N., Barrón-Martínez, J. B., & Alva Canto, E. A. (2014). Aprendizaje temprano de
sustantivos a través de la extracción del género gramatical de adjetivos familiares. In E. A. Alva
Canto (Ed.), Adquisición del lenguaje: regularidades y particularidades (Primera ed., pp. 103–
118). México: UNAM.
Bates, E. (1979). The emergence of symbols: Cognition and communication in infancy. London:
Academic Press.
Bates, E., Bretherton, I., & Synder, L. (1988). From first words to grammar: Individual differences
and dissociable mechanisms. Cambridge University Press.
Berko, J. (1958). The child’s learning of English morphology. Word, 150–177.
Broadley, I. W., MacDonald, J., & Buckley, S. (1995). Working memory in children with Down
syndrome. Down Syndrome: Research and Practice, 3, 3–8.
Brock, J., & Jarrold, C. (2004). Language influences on verbal short-term memory performance in
Down syndrome: Item and order recognition. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing
Resear, 47, 1334–1134. http://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2004/100).
Carlesimo, G. A., Marotta, L., & Vicari, S. (1997). Long-term memory in mental retardation:
Evidence for a specific impairment in subjects with Down’s syndrome. Neuropsychologia,
35(1), 75–79. http://doi.org/10.1016/S0028-3932(96)00055-3.
Caselli, M. C., Vicari, S., Longobardi, E., Lami, L., Pizzoli, C., & Stella, G. (1998). Gestures and
words in early development of children with Down syndrome. Journal of Speech, Language
and Hearing Research, 41, 1125–1135. http://doi.org/10.1044/jslhr.4105.1125.
Chapman, R. S., & Hesketh, L. (2000). Behavioural phenotype of individuals with Down syn-
drome. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disability Research Reviews, 6, 84–95.
Chapman, R. S., Schwartz, S., & Bird, E. (1991). Language skills of children and adolescents with
Down syndrome: I. Comprehension. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 34, 1106–1120.
http://doi.org/10.1044/jshr.3405.1106.
Chapman, R. S., Seung, H. K., Schwartz, S. E., & Kay-Raining Bird, E. (1998). Language skills of
children and adolescents with Down syndrome: II. Production deficits. Journal of Speech,
Language, and Hearing Research, 41, 861–873. http://doi.org/10.1044/jslhr.4104.861.
Diez-Itza, E., & Miranda, E. (2007). Perfiles gramaticales específicos en el síndrome de Down.
Revista de Logopedia, Foniatría y Audiología, 4, 161–172.
Dodd, B., & Thompson, L. (2001). Speech disorder in children with Down’s syndrome. Journal of
Intellectual Disability Research, 45, 308–316. http://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2788.2001.00327.x.
Dunn, L. M., Lugo, D. E., Padilla, E. R., & Dunn, M. L. (1986). Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes
Peabody. American Guidance Service. Adaptación Hispanoamericana. Circle Pines: American
Guidance Service.
Eadie, P. A., Fey, M. E., Douglas, J. M., & Parsons, C. L. (2002). Profiles of grammatical morphol-
ogy and sentence imitation in children with specific language impairment and Down syndrome.
Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 45, 720–732. http://doi.
org/10.1044/1092-4388(2002/058).
Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Thal, D., Bates, E., Hartung, J., et al. (1993). The MacArthur
communicative development inventories: User’s guide and technical manual (2nd ed.).
Baltimore: Singular Press.
Galeote, M., Soto, P., Serrano, A., Pulido, L., Rey, R., & Martínez-Roa, P. (2006). Un nuevo instru-
mento para evaluar el desarrollo comunicativo y linguístico de niños con síndrome de Down.
Revista Síndrome de Down, 23, 20–26.
Gathercole, V. C. M., & Min, H. (1997). Word meaning biases or language-specific effects?
Evidence from English, Spanish and Korean. First Language, 17, 31–56.
Gravel, J. S., & Wallace, I. F. (1995). Early otitis media, auditory abilities, and educational risk.
American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 4, 89–94. http://doi.
org/10.1044/1058-0360.0403.89.
Harris, N., Bellugi, U., Bates, E., Jones, W., & Rossen, M. (1997). Contrasting profiles of language
development in children with Williams and Down syndromes. Developmental Neuropsychology,
13, 345–370.
Hassold, T., & Sherman, S. (2000). Down syndrome: Genetic recombination and the origin of extra
chromosome 21. Clinical Genetics, 57, 95–100. http://doi.org/10.1034/j.1399-0004.2000.
570201.x.
Heselwood, B., Bray, M., & Crookston, I. (1995). Juncture, rhythm and planning in the speech of
an adult with Down’s syndrome. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 9, 121–137. http://doi.
org/10.3109/02699209508985328.
Iverson, J. M., Longobardi, E., & Caselli, M. C. (2003). The relationship between gestures and
words in children with Down syndrome and typically-developing children in the early stages of
communicative development. International Journal of Language and Communication
Disorders, 38, 179–197.
Jackson-Maldonado, D., Thal, D., Marchman, V., Bates, E., & Gutiérrez-Clellen, V. (1993). Early
lexical development in Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers. Journal of Child Language, 20,
523–549. http://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000900008461.
Jarrold, C., & Baddeley, A. (1997). Short-term memory for verbal and visuo-spatial information in
Down’s syndrome. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 2, 101–122.
Jarrold, C., & Baddeley, A. (2001). Short-term memory in Down syndrome: Applying the working
memory model. Down Syndrome Research and Practice, 7, 17–24. http://doi.org/10.3104/
reviews.110.
Laws, G. (1998). The use of nonword repetition as a test of phonological memory in children with
Down syndrome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 39, 1119–1130.
Laws, G., & Bishop, D. (2003). A comparison of language abilities in adolescents with Down
syndrome and children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language and
Hearing Research, 14, 1324–1339. http://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2003/103).
Laws, G., & Gunn, D. (2004). Phonological memory as a predictor of language comprehension in
Down syndrome: A five-year follow-up study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45,
326–337. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00224.x.
Lázaro, M., Garayzabal, E., & Moraleda, E. (2014). Habilidades morfológicas de los niños con
desarrollo típico y síndrome de Down. Logopedia, Foniatría Y Audiología, 34, 157–162. http://
doi.org/10.1016/j.rlfa.2014.02.001.
Lubec, G., & Engidawork, E. (2002). The brain in Down syndrome (Trisomy 21). Journal of
Neurology, 249, 1347–1356. http://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00415-002-0799-9.
Marcell, M. M., & Armstrong, J. (1982). Auditory and visual sequential memory of Down syn-
drome and non-retarded children. American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 87, 86–95.
Marcell, M. M., Ridgeway, M., Sewell, D., & Whelan, M. (1995). Sentence imitation by adoles-
cents and young adults with Down’s syndrome and other intellectual disabilities. Journal of
Intellectual Disability Research, 39, 215–232. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2788.1995.
tb00504.x.
Miller, J. F. (1988). The developmental asynchrony of language development in children with
Down syndrome. In I. Nadel (Ed.), The psychobiology of Down syndrome (pp. 167–198).
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Miller, J. F. (1999). Profiles of language development in children with Down syndrome. In J. F.
Miller, M. Leddy, & L. A. Leavitt (Eds.), Improving the communication of people with Down
syndrome. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
Mosse, E., & Jarrold, C. (2008). Hebb learning, verbal short-term memory, and the acquisition of
phonological forms in children. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61. http://
doi.org/10.1080/17470210701680779.
Mundy, P., Sigman, M., & Kasari, C. (1990). A longitudinal study of joint attention and language
development in autistic children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 20, 115–
128. http://doi.org/10.1007/BF02206861.
Mundy, P., Kasari, C., Sigman, M., & Ruskin, E. (1995). Nonverbal communication and early
language acquisition in children with Down syndrome and in normally developing children.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 38, 157–167. http://doi.org/10.1044/
jshr.3801.157.
Næss, K. A. B., Halaas Lyster, S. A., Hulme, C., & Melby-Lervag, M. (2011). Language and ver-
bal short-term memory skills in children with Down syndrome: A meta-analytic review.
Research in Developmental Disabilities, 32(2225–2234.) http://doi.org/10.1016/j.
ridd.2011.05.014.
Özçalışkan, Ş., Adamson, L., Dimitrova, N., & Scmuck, L. (2015). Early gesture provides a help-
ing hand to later vocabulary development for children with autism, Down syndrome and typical
development. In 39th Boston University Conference on Language Development. Boston
University.
Pandit, C., & Fitzgerald, D. A. (2012). Respiratory problems in children with Down syndrome.
Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 48, 147–152. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.
1440-1754.2011.02077.x.
Paul, R., Looney, S., & Dahm, P. (1991). Communication and socialization skills at ages 2 and 3 in
“late-talking” young children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 34, 858–865.
Perovic, A. (2006). Syntactic deficit in Down syndrome: More evidence for the modular organiza-
tion of language. Lingua, 116, 1616–1630. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2005.05.011.
Ring, M., & Clahsen, H. (2005). Distinct patterns of language impairment in Down’s syndrome
and Williams syndrome: The case of syntactic chains. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 18, 479–
501. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2005.06.002.
Roizen, N. (2002). Down Syndrome. In M. Batshaw (Ed.), Children with disabilities (5th ed.,
pp. 361–376). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
Roizen, N., Wolters, C., Nicol, T., & Blondis, T. A. (1993). Hearing loss in children with Down
syndrome. The Journal of Pediatrics, 123, 9–12. http://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-3476(05)8
1588-4.
Rondal, J. A. (1995). Exceptional language development in Down syndrome. Implications for the
cognition-language relationship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rondal, J. A. (2005). Language development in Down syndrome. In J. A. Rondal (Ed.), Exceptional
languaje development in Down syndrome. Implications for the cognition-language relationship
(pp. 3–50). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sabsay, S., & Kernan, K. T. (1993). On the nature of the language impairment in Down syndrome.
Topics in Language Disorders, 13, 20–35. http://doi.org/10.1097/00011363-
199305000-00005.
Saffran, J. (2002). Constraints on statistical language learning. Journal of Memory and Language,
47, 172–196. http://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.2001.2839.
Sanoudaki, E., & Varlokosta, S. (2015). Pronoun comprehension in individuals with Down syn-
drome: The role of age. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 50,
176–186. http://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.12122.
Singer Harris, N. G., Bellugi, U., Bates, E., Jones, W., & Rossen, M. (1997). Contrasting profiles
of language development in children with Williams and Down syndromes. Developmental
Neuropsychology, 13, 345–370. http://doi.org/10.1080/87565649709540683.
Stathopoulou, N. (2009). The linguistic profile of Greek individuals with Down syndrome: Evidence
from syntactic and morphological phenomena. Colchester: University of Essex.
Stefanini, S., Caselli, M. C., & Volterra, V. (2007). Spoken and gestural production in a naming
task by young children with Down syndrome. Brain and Language, 101, 208–221. http://doi.
org/10.1016/j.bandl.2007.01.005.
Stefanini, S., Recchia, M., & Caselli, M. C. (2008). The relationship between spontaneous gesture
production and spoken lexical ability in children with Down syndrome in a naming task.
Gestures in Language Development, 8, 197–218. http://doi.org/10.1075/gest.8.2.05ste.
Thal, D., Tobias, S., & Morrison, D. (1991). Language and gesture in late talkers: A one year fol-
low-up. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 34, 604–612. http://doi.org/10.1044/
jshr.3403.604.
Vicari, S., Caselli, M. C., & Tonucci, F. (2000). Asynchrony of lexical and morphosyntactic devel-
opment in children with Down syndrome. Neuropsychologia, 38(5), 634–644. http://doi.
org/10.1016/S0028-3932(99)00110-4.
Vicari, S., Marotta, L., & Carlesimo, G. A. (2004). Verbal short-term memory in Down’s syn-
drome: An articulatory loop deficit? Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 48, 80–92.
http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2788.2004.00478.x.
Wulpert, M., Inglis, S., Kriegsman, E., & Mills, B. (1975). Language delay and associated mother-
child interactions. Developmental Psychology, 11, 61–70. http://doi.org/10.1037/h0076125.
Yoder, P. J., McCathren, R., Warren, S., & Watson, A. L. (2001). Important distinctions in measur-
ing maternal responses to communication in prelinguistic children with disabilities.
Communication Disorders Quarterly, 22, 135–147. http://doi.org/10.1177/
152574010102200303.
Yoder, P. S., Abderrahim, N., & Zhuzhuni, A. (2004). Female genital cutting in the demographic
and health surveys: A critical and comparative analysis. Calverton: ORC Macro.
Zampini, M. L. (2008). L2 speech production research: Findings, issues and advances. In J. G.
Hansen Edwards & M. L. Zampini (Eds.), Phonology and second language acquisition.
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Zampini, L., & D’Odorico, L. (2011). Lexical and syntactic development in Italian children with
Down’s syndrome. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 46, 386–
396. http://doi.org/10.3109/13682822.2010.508764.
Vocabulary and Cognitive Flexibility in People
with Down Syndrome
Octavio García, Beatriz Castillo-Ignacio, and Natalia Arias-Trejo
Abstract Background and rationale. Down syndrome (DS) is the most frequent
genetic cause of intellectual disability in children and adults. Deficits in language
comprehension and production, expressive language, verbal memory and cognitive
flexibility (CF) are commonly described in individuals with DS. Nonetheless, their
receptive vocabulary (RV) shows better development. Adolescents and adults with
DS have deficits on CF which have an impact over linguistic skills. Research sug-
gests a significant relationship between CF and RV in DS (Campbell et al. Am J
Intellect Dev Disabil 118(3):193–200, 2013; Landry et al. J Dev Disabil 18(2):24–
33, 2012). However, little is known regarding the factors involved in such relation-
ship. The aim of this research, is to analyze such relationship.
Results and Discussion. A significant relationship between CF and RV has been
reported, but little is known regarding the factors involved in such relationship. The
aim of this chapter is to review recent studies regarding both CF and RV in people
with DS. We will also explore the variables that, according to previous studies,
enable us to understand CF development and RV in people with DS.
Keywords Cognitive flexibility • Down syndrome • Receptive vocabulary • Typical

development • Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
O. García (*)
Laboratorio de Neurobiología del Síndrome de Down, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM),
Av. Universidad 3004, Edif. B-001, CP 04510 México City, DF, Mexico
e-mail: ogarciag@unam.mx
B. Castillo-Ignacio
Laboratorio de Neurobiología del Síndrome de Down, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM),
Av. Universidad 3004, Edif. B-001, CP 04510 México City, DF, Mexico
e-mail: ademagsk@hotmail.com
N. Arias-Trejo
e-mail: nariast@unam.mx

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53646-0_17
344 O. García et al.
1 Introduction
Executive function deficits are reported in people with Down syndrome (DS)
(Borella et al. 2013; Breckenridge et al. 2012; Brunamonti et al. 2011; Carney et al.
2013; Costanzo et al. 2013; Lanfranchi et al. 2010; Rowe et al. 2006). Executive
functions refer to a set of interrelated abilities that are thought to be associated with
the activity in the frontal parts of the brain, although it is also recognized that a
number of different brain areas may be involved (Lanfranchi et al. 2010). Executive
functions are described as a higher-order control process which regulates problem-
solving, concept formation, task switching, inhibition, initiation of rapid and fluent
processes and planning (Alvarez and Emory 2006). Moreover, executive functions
are needed to respond to the changing demands of the environment (Lezak et al.
2004).
One component of executive functions is cognitive flexibility (CF); indeed, ado-
lescents and adults with DS have deficits on this ability (Costanzo et al. 2013;
Lanfranchi et al. 2010; Rowe et al. 2006; Schapiro et al. 1999; Zelazo et al. 1996).
Meanwhile, receptive vocabulary (RV) is a linguistic skill which is better developed
in people with DS (Brock and Jarrold 2004; Chapman 2006; Facon et al. 2012a;
Galeote et al. 2011; Glenn and Cunningham 2005; Laws et al. 2015; Lázaro et al.
2013). Recent research suggests a significant relationship between CF and RV in
DS (Campbell et al. 2013; Landry et al. 2012). However, little is known regarding
the factors involved in such relationship.
2 Cognitive Flexibility
Cognitive flexibility (CF) is a component of executive function that is associated

with the taking of multiple perspectives of the single objects or events (Jacques and
Zelazo 2005; Zelazo and Müller 2011) and involves the ability to retrieve and flex-
ibly switch between task rules (Rogers and Monsell 1995). CF is also called set-
shifting (Zelazo and Müller 2011). It allows responses to environmental demands,
for example, rule changes to achieve flexible behavior and thus, solving a problem
in a novel way. Being flexible allows to cognitively learn from mistakes and gener-
ate new strategies to resolve a problem.
Thus, CF deficits are due to difficulties in any one or all of these processes: inhi-
bition, working memory and sustained attention (Chevalier and Blaye 2008). CF
relies on inhibition and working memory since it is needed to inhibit (or deactivate)
a previously relevant representation and to load (or activate) into working memory
for a different or new representation (Diamond 2013). Adequate executive function
is dependent on basic cognitive processes; thus, the alterations of these processes
can also produce CF deficits (Alvarez and Emory 2006).
Set-shifting tasks can be used to evaluate CF (Diamond 2013). Two frequently
used tasks are the Dimensional Change Card Sort (Zelano and Müller) and the
Vocabulary and Cognitive Flexibility in People with Down Syndrome 345
Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (Chelune and Baer 1986). Dimensional Change Card
Sort consists of a set of cards with different shapes and colors. First, participants are
required to sort the cards in one dimension (for example color) and then by a differ-
ent one (for example shape). In the Wisconsin Test, the participants must sort a set
of cards by color, shape or number. Without previous warning rules change as the
test progresses; however, there is feedback for each response (Ionescu 2012). The
participants must deduce the correct criterion used to sort the cards, and then be
capable of shifting the criteria flexibly (Diamond 2013).
Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) was conceived by Grant and Berg (1948)
to assess the ability of abstraction, concept formation and change of cognitive strat-
egies in response to changes that occur in environmental contingencies (Grant and
Berg 1948, Heaton and Pendleton 1981). Wisconsin test has been traditionally used
as a test for change in the overall response, helping establish this task in assessing
changes in the executive control of attention (Cepeda et al. 2000). However, several
classic studies found that the application of WCST seemed particularly affected by
frontal lobe lesions (Stuss and Levine 2002; Milner 1963; Nelson 1976; Teuber
et al. 1951). Actually, many authors question the sensitivity and specificity of the
original test, because the WCST rarely discriminates among patients with frontal
lesions, normal or damaged in other regions (Corcoran and Upton 1993; Reitan and
Wolfson 1994; Anderson et al. 1995) and that the role of working memory may be
important in this test. Besides the variability reported in the WCST, it is difficult to
draw comparisons between studies.
Successful performance on CF tasks is associated with the functioning of frontal
areas of the brain, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Eling et al. 2008),
medial prefrontal cortex and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (Nyhus and Barceló
2009). Deficits at CF could be linked to an abnormal development of the prefrontal
cortex (Rowe et al. 2006). However, only one study has evaluated directly the cere-
bral activity of people with DS during the performance of CF tasks (Schapiro, et al.
1999). In this study, the cerebral blood flow was observed during performance of a
semi-automatic version of the WCST. A group of ten adults with DS was compared
to a control group of 20 subjects with typical development (TD) of similar chrono-
logical age. The mean verbal mental age of the DS participants was 7.8 years and
the mean chronological age was 28.3 years. The performance of the adults with DS
was impaired in comparison to that of the control group. The DS subjects had fewer
categories and more perseverations (repeating a wrong criterion). However, con-
trary to expectation, both groups showed increases in blood flow in the prefrontal
cortex suggesting that prefrontal activation is not linked to the CF but increase the
cognitive effort, working memory or semantic processes (which may be factors of
the WCST performance).
Other tasks have revealed additional factors associated with CF in DS. For exam-
ple, Rowe et al. (2006) administered the Weigl Colour-Form Sort Test to a group of
26 DS adults (23–40 years) matched on receptive vocabulary to 26 adults (19–55
years) with intellectual disability of unknown etiology. Participants were asked to
sort across two dimensions, ignore one salient dimension (color) and instead cate-
gorize by a less salient dimension (shape). The results revealed that DS adults had
lower performance than adults with intellectual disability of unknown etiology and
that DS adults were able to sort by shape or color. Nevertheless, they displayed
varied performance since some participants had low scores (indicating that they
sorted only by color and did not change the criterion to shape), while other partici-
pants had the highest score (indicating that they sorted by color or shape without
being prompted, and shifted the criterion when asked). Zelazo et al. (1996) com-
pared 12 DS individuals with 12 children with TD, matched for verbal mental age,
on the Dimensional Change Card Sort. The mean chronological age of the DS group
was 22.7 years and the mean verbal mental age was 5.1 years. It is worth noting that
the verbal mental age was assessed with a RV test. The DS group scored lower than
the TD group on the Dimensional Change Card Sort: Participants either failed to
learn both sets of sorting rules or were unable to employ them; instead, they showed
a tendency to use a single set on all trials, despite the fact that they were given the
rules on every trial. The authors suggested that the results were in agreement with
attentional disengagement difficulties reported in DS.
In a study with younger participants (Lanfranchi et al. 2010), 15 DS adolescents
were compared with a control group of children with TD matched for mental age.
The mean chronological age of the DS individuals was 15.1 years and their mean
mental age was 5.7 years. CF was examined with two tests: The Modified Card
Shifting Test and the Rule Shift Card Test. Both tests required modification of the
criteria so that participants could complete the tasks: The Modified Card Shifting
Test with respect to the sorting of a set of cards by color, shape or number, and the
Rule Shift Card Test with respect to shifting from one rule to another. The adoles-
cents with DS had lower performance in both tests. They completed fewer catego-
ries and made more non-perseverative errors compared with Children with TD for
the Modified Card Shifting Test. Nevertheless, the groups did not differ in the num-
ber of perseverations.
In Costanzo et al. (2013) CF was assessed in 15 DS participants with 14.5 years
of chronological age and 6.2 years of non-verbal mental age. This group was
matched for non-verbal mental age to other two groups: 15 people with Williams
syndrome and 16 children with TD. The verbal CF was examined with a modified
version of the Category Fluency Test, in which participants were asked to generate
pairs of words belonging to two categories (animals and fruits) and then to shift
between categories. The visuospatial CF was evaluated with the Trail Making Test,
which required not only the participants’ attentional capacity but also their ability to
switch quickly from one stimulus to another (numbers and letters). “Visual catego-
rization” was assessed with the Weigl Colour-Form Sort Test (Tamkin and Kunce
1982) by which participants were asked to sort 12 objects by shape, color, size and
thickness. Thus, the Weigl Colour-Form Sort Test did not assess CF, since the par-
ticipants were not required to shift between categories. The individuals with DS
generated fewer pairs than Williams syndrome participants and children with TD in
the Category Fluency Test. Meanwhile DS participants had a longer performance
time than children with TD, but no differences emerged between the DS and
Williams syndrome group in the Trail Making Test. Finally, the number of catego-
ries did not differ in the Weigl Colour-Form Sort Test between the DS and Williams
syndrome group but both scored lower than the children with TD. In summary, the
results suggested that CF abilities were impaired for the DS participants; therefore,
these abilities are dependent on the diagnosis of the syndrome. Conversely, visual
categorization showed impairment in both groups with intellectual disability; thus,
it seems to be independent of the syndrome etiology.
An additional study (Breckenridge et al. 2012) showed that there were no statisti-
cally significant differences on CF ability between children with DS and Williams
syndrome equivalent in mental age. The groups comprised children with DS (mean
chronological age of 9.76 years, and mental age of 4.51 years) and children with
Williams syndrome (chronological age of 8.45 years; mental age of 4.89 years). In
order to assess CF, a subtask of the Early Childhood Attention Battery (Balloon
Sorting) was used. In this task, the participants were asked to sort elements by rule
shifts (color and shape). CF abilities were not correlated with chronological age or
mental age in children with DS. However, it is worth noting that the authors called
these abilities “attentional control abilities” and not CF abilities.
Overall, the data indicate that adults, young adults and adolescents with DS have
deficits when shifting strategies to solve problems. These deficits are independent of
the group match criteria (receptive vocabulary, chronological age, mental age or
non-verbal mental age) and they are present when compared to TD or even to other
conditions such as Williams syndrome or intellectual disability of unknown etiol-
ogy. However, in childhood there is no difference in CF between DS and Williams
syndrome.
There are age differences in the type of errors made in CF tasks: adolescents
predominantly make non-perseverative errors, but the adults make more persevera-
tions, which are associated with attentional disengagement deficits, since they per-
sist with a single rule for sorting. Also, people with DS are able to sort by color or
shape but they have a lower performance than children with TD. Moreover, perfor-
mance variability has been observed in adults for CF tasks: some children sort only
by one rule and others shift the rule when they are prompted. Additionally, neither
mental age nor chronological age seems to be associated with CF abilities in chil-
dren with DS.
3 Receptive Vocabulary
Individuals with DS show poor speech and language abilities, however, not all
aspects of language appear equally impaired (Abbeduto et al. 2007; Martin et al.
2009). Conflicting findings have been reported regarding the receptive vocabulary
(RV) skills of individuals with DS.
Toddlers and children with DS have delays in the development of RV (Caselli
et al. 1998; Laws et al. 2015). Some studies have reported that RV increases with
chronological age in children with DS (Alony and Kozulin 2007). However, a cor-
relation between RV and chronological age was not found in older children or
a dolescents (Cleland et al. 2010; Diez-Itza and Miranda 2007; Roch et al. 2013),
except in one study with a wide age range of participants (Chapman et al. 1991).
Some studies have found a significant correlation between RV and Non-Verbal
Mental Age in children, adolescents and young adults (Abbeduto et al. 2003;
Chapman et al. 1991; Glenn and Cunningham 2005; Goharpey et al. 2013), even
studies that have assessed boys only (Price et al. 2007; Roberts et al. 2007). In DS,
no differences have been found with regard to TD, since RV increases with non-
verbal mental age in a similar fashion (Phillips et al. 2014a). It is worth mentioning
that RV also increases as a function of MA in toddlers and children with DS (Galeote
et al. 2011; Galeote et al. 2012).
Some studies have found that the RV of children, adolescents and young adults
with DS is in line with their mental age (Cleland et al. 2010) and with their non-
verbal mental age (Abbeduto et al. 2003; Cleave et al. 2014; Chapman et al. 1991;
Cleland et al. 2010; Facon et al. 2012b; Goharpey et al. 2013; Jarrold et al. 2009;
Laws and Bishop 2003; Phillips et al. 2014a, b). For example, a meta-analysis
review of English speakers only (Næss et al. 2011), found that the RV scores of
children with DS did not differ significantly from the scores of children with TD
with the same non-verbal mental age.
Other studies with children with DS, adolescents and young adults have found
that RV is better developed than non-verbal cognitive abilities (Chapman 2006;
Glenn and Cunningham 2005; Laws et al. 2015), even in contrast to individuals with
TD (Brock and Jarrold 2004; Facon et al. 2012a). Strength in RV has also been
found with regard to mental age in toddlers, children and adolescents with DS
(Galeote et al. 2011; Lázaro et al. 2013). This result is attributed to chronological
age because there are more learning experiences with age (Chapman 2006; Glenn
and Cunningham 2005; Galeote et al. 2011).
It has been suggested that similar levels of RV among participants with DS and
children with TD matched for non-verbal mental age may be a transient feature,
since Hick et al. (2005) found that DS individuals displayed less improvement in
RV abilities over the course of one year in comparison to children with TD. Other
studies have indicated lower RV in DS boys and fragile X syndrome boys with simi-
lar non-verbal mental age, as compared to boys with TD (Price et al. 2007; Roberts
et al. 2007).
Furthermore, it has been concluded that children and adolescents with DS have
difficulties in RV in comparison to participants with intellectual disabilities of
unknown etiology or mixed etiology who had the same level of non-verbal cognitive
abilities (Chapman 2006; Fidler et al. 2005). Other studies have found that RV is
less developed in DS participants compared to TD participants with the same men-
tal age (Bello et al. 2014; Caselli et al. 2008; Ypsilanti et al. 2005).
One of the factors that may explain the divergence in results of the above-cited
studies, is the test employed; for example, RV scores were higher in DS adolescents
when using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III than when using the Test for
Auditory Comprehension of Language (Chapman 2006; Miolo et al. 2005). Indeed,
the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language Revised-3 reflects a higher con-
ceptual level of vocabulary, while the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III is an
indicator of RV size. Particularly, contrary to expectations, when paired by their

non-verbal mental age (Chapman 2006) individuals with DS and intellectual dis-
abilities of unknown etiology showed a higher RV level with the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary Test-III than with Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language
Revised-3.
Longer exposure to a variety of experiences with age influences vocabulary
based on frequency, but not vocabulary based on conceptual aspects (Miolo et al.
2005). Similar RVs between DS and TD participants paired by their non-verbal
mental age when measured with the Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language
Revised-3 have also been reported (Abbeduto et al. 2003; Chapman et al. 1991).
The differences observed seem to derive from the test employed: Peabody Picture
Vocabulary Test-III taps into frequency effects as it explores content words familiar
to children, whereas Test for Auditory Comprehension of Language taps into also
more abstract knowledge involving grammatical performance. Also, a similar result
to that of Chapman et al. (1991) and Abbeduto et al. (2003), was obtained using a
more complex test: the Boehm 3 (Facon et al. 2012b).
Using an adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development
Inventories for the developmental profile of vocabulary in children with DS (Galeote
et al. 2011) it was found that the RV scores of children with DS were larger than
those for a TD group matched for mental age. This inventory contains 21 lexical
categories.
Another factor that may explain the RV difficulties reported in DS participants is
the measure used. For example, in Bello et al. (2014), a version of the MacArthur-
Bates Communicative Development Inventories similar to that of Galeote et al.
(2011) was employed, but only nouns and predicates were included, and cognitive
abilities were not assessed with the same test for all participants, meanwhile in
Chapman (2006) and Fidler et al. (2005), these studies have a bias because they
made a comparison with intellectual disability of mixed etiology participants. With
regard to Price et al. (2007) and Roberts et al. (2007) only males were tested.
It is worth noting that the results concerning RV are different depending on the
manner of assessment. When the RV is assessed in a dynamic way, i. e., through
verbal mediation of behavior, the children with DS show better performance. Verbal
mediation refers not only to focusing the attention of the child but also to giving a
general verbal explanation or examples in relation with their personal experience
(Alony and Kozulin 2007).
Moreover, children with DS and adolescents show a better ability than expected
for their RV level to infer the meaning of new words when embedded in sentences
with semantic context (Roch et al. 2013). For this reason, it has been suggested that
standard assessment may underestimate the real capacity of vocabulary comprehen-
sion in children with DS (Alony and Kozulin 2007).
In relation to qualitative differences of vocabulary comprehension between DS
and TD, when the RV size is the same, the following results have been encountered:
English-speaking adolescents with DS showed better comprehension of words in
the household and vehicle categories. But this result is not an important difference;
rather this may be attributed to a longer experience with these categories due to
chronological age (Marcell and Croen 1989). Michael et al. (2012) did not find dif-
ferences in comprehension of nouns and verbs in adolescents and young adults with
DS.
Italian-speaking children with DS understand nouns at the same level than chil-
dren with TD despite the fact that their RV is delayed. Only the comprehension level
of verbs, adjectives and locative adverbs is lower (Bello et al. 2014). French-
speaking children and adolescents with DS do not display qualitative differences in
comparison to Children with TD matched for RV, not only with regard to basic lexi-
con (nouns and verbs) (Facon et al. 1998) but also concerning complex lexicon
(adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and determinants) (Facon et al. 2012b). Finally,
there are no qualitative differences in Slovak-speaking children with DS when RV
is assessed with the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory
(Polišenská and Kapalková 2014).
With regard to the relationship between RV and grammar comprehension, chil-
dren, adolescents and young adults with DS show better performance in vocabulary
than in grammar tests (Abbeduto et al. 2003; Chapman 2006; Chapman et al. 1991;
Cleland et al. 2010; Laws and Bishop 2003; Roch et al. 2013), this result is similar
in Specific Language Impairment populations (Laws and Bishop 2003). The out-
come can be explained by the fact that vocabulary is based on the referential knowl-
edge of the world, whereas grammar is based on linguistic formal rules (Zampini
and D’Odorico 2011).
4 R
elationship Between Cognitive Flexibility and Receptive
Vocabulary
The meaning of words requires a flexible and dynamic updating of semantic repre-
sentations with a wide range of possibilities, suggesting that language comprehen-
sion requires a flexible cognitive system (Deák 2003). However, the discrepancies
in the literature suggest that gender and age of participants, the use different tests to
measure receptive vocabulary and cognitive flexibility or changes in criteria and test
instructions can directly influence the relationship between cognitive flexibility and
RV (Frye et al. 1995, Hongwanishkul et al. 2005; Zelazo et al. 1996; Phillips et al.
2014a). Although RV is a strength in the language profile of people with DS (Brock
and Jarrold 2004; Chapman 2006; Facon et al. 2012a; Galeote et al. 2011; Glenn
and Cunningham 2005; Laws et al. 2015; Lázaro et al. 2013), the establishment of
RV as a measure of verbal intelligence it does not necessarily reflect a precise mea-
sure of intellectual ability, therefore the relationship between RV and cognitive flex-
ibility may not be clearly understood (Chapman et al. 1991; Chapman and
Kay-Raining Bird 2012; Loveall et al. 2016). Despite this, some studies suggest that
cognitive flexibility and receptive vocabulary may be a positive correlation. Landry
et al. (2012), propose that verbal development, is correlated with cognitive flexibil-
ity and working memory. These results have also been observed in individuals with
Williams syndrome people. In addition, Campbell et al. (2013), suggest that verbal
abilities might be primarily responsible for the development of cognitive flexibility
among persons with DS. On the other hand, the abstract words can have a relation
with problem-solving abilities which are needed to perform cognitive flexibility
tasks. It is possible that cognitive flexibility is associated with the comprehension of
more abstract linguistic elements than general vocabulary, for example, preposi-
tions or conjunctions (Facon et al. 2012b).
However, it is necessary to continue using different tests in order to assess exten-
sively language development in DS and thus, determine whether or not some aspects
of language have a closer association with cognitive flexibility.
5 Conclusions
Cognitive flexibility has been linked to language, which shapes the unlimited set of
mental representations. Furthermore, it has been suggested that the comprehension
of abstract words is associated with the ability to solve problems in cognitive flexi-
bility tasks.
Individuals with DS have difficulties in cognitive flexibility. Understanding these
difficulties is relevant because cognitive flexibility is needed to adapt to the changes
that occur in the environment. It is through cognitive flexibility that new strategies
to solve problems that avoid persisting in the same inefficient activity are generated.
Linguistic abilities, such as RV, are strengths in DS even if the words cannot be
produced. In this sense the cognitive flexibility could be linked to RV in DS, how-
ever further studies are needed to confirm this relationship.
Acknowledgments This work was supported by PAPIIT RN309214 Desarrollo del Lenguaje en
Niños con Síndrome de Down: La Comprensión Temprana, and the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation,
Language Comprehension in Down Syndrome (awarded to NA-T).
References
Abbeduto, L., Murphy, M. M., Cawthon, S. W., Richmond, E. K., Weissman, M. D., Karadottir, S.,
& O’Brien, A. (2003). Receptive language skills of adolescents and young adults with Down or
fragile X syndrome. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 108(3), 149–160.
doi:10.1352/0895-8017(2003)108%3C0149:RLSOAA%3E2.0.CO;2.
Abbeduto, L., Warren, S. F., & Conners, F. A. (2007). Language development in down syndrome:
From the prelinguistic period to the acquisition of literacy. Mental Retardation and
Developmental Disabilities, 13, 247–261.
Alony, S., & Kozulin, A. (2007). Dynamic assessment of receptive language in children with Down
syndrome. Advances in Speech–Language Pathology, 9(4), 323–331.
doi:10.1080/14417040701291415.
Alvarez, J. A., & Emory, E. (2006). Executive function and the frontal lobes: A meta-analytic
review. Neuropsychology Review, 1, 17–42. doi:10.1007/s11065-006-9002-x.
Anderson, C. V., Bigler, E. D., & Blatter, D. D. (1995). Frontal lobe lesions, diffuse damage, and
neuropsychological functioning in traumatic brain-injured patients. Journal Clinical
Experimental Neuropsychology, 17, 900–908.
Bello, A., Onofrio, D., & Caselli, M. C. (2014). Nouns and predicates comprehension and produc-
tion in children with Down syndrome. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 35(4), 761–
775. doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.01.023.
Borella, E., Carretti, B., & Lanfranchi, S. (2013). Inhibitory mechanisms in Down syndrome: Is
there a specific or general deficit? Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(1), 65–71.
doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2012.07.017.
Breckenridge, K., Braddick, O., Anker, S., Woodhouse, M., & Atkinson, J. (2012). Attention in
Williams syndrome and Down’s syndrome: Performance on the new early childhood attention
battery. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 31(2), 257–269. doi:10.1111/
bjdp.12003.
Brock, J., & Jarrold, C. (2004). Language influences on verbal short-term memory performance in
Down syndrome: Item and order recognition. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing
Research, 47(6), 1334–1346. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2004/100).
Brunamonti, E., Pani, P., Papazachariadis, O., Onorati, P., Albertini, G., & Ferraina, S. (2011).
Cognitive control of movement in Down syndrome. Research in Developmental Disabilities,
32(5), 1792–1797. doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2011.03.008.
Campbell, C., Landry, O., Russo, N., Flores, H., Jacques, S., & Burack, J. A. (2013). Cognitive
flexibility among individuals with Down syndrome: Assessing the influence of verbal and non-
verbal abilities. American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 118(3),
193–200. doi:10.1352/1944-7558-118.3.193.
Carney, D. P., Brown, J. H., & Henry, H. L. (2013). Executive function in Williams and Down
syndromes. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(1), 46–55. doi:10.1016/j.
ridd.2012.07.013.
Caselli, M. C., Vicari, S., Longobardi, E., Lami, L., Pizzoli, C., & Stella, G. (1998). Gestures and
words in early development of children with Down syndrome. Journal of Speech, Language,
and Hearing Research, 41(5), 1125–1135. doi:10.1044/jslhr.4105.1125.
Caselli, M. C., Monaco, L., Trasciani, M., & Vicari, S. (2008). Language in Italian children with
Down syndrome and with specific language impairment. Neuropsychology, 22(1), 27–35.
doi:10.1037/0894-4105.22.1.27.
Cepeda, N. J., Cepeda, M., & Kramer, A. F. (2000). Task switching and attention deficit hyperac-
tivity disorder. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 28, 395–403.
Chapman, R. S. (2006). Language learning in Down syndrome: The speech and language profile
compared to adolescents with cognitive impairment of unknown origin. Down Syndrome
Research and Practice, 10(2), 61–66. doi:10.3104/reports.306.
Chapman, R. S., & Kay-Raining, B. E. (2012). Language development in childhood adolescence,
and young adulthood in persons with Down syndrome. In J. A. Burack, R. M. Hodapp,
G. Iarocci, & E. Zigler (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of intellectual disability and development
(pp. 167–183). New York: Oxford University Press.
Chapman, R. S., Schwartz, S., & Kay-Raining Bird, E. (1991). Language skills of children and
adolescents with DS. I. Comprehension. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research,
34(5), 1106–1120. doi:10.1044/jshr.3405.1106.
Chelune, G. J., & Baer, R. A. (1986). Developmental norms for the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test.
Journal of clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 8(3), 219–228.
doi:10.1080/01688638608401314.
Chevalier, N., & Blaye, A. (2008). Cognitive flexibility in preschoolers: The role of representation
activation and maintenance. Developmental Science, 11(3), 339–353.
doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00679.x.
Cleave, P. L., Kay-Raining Bird, E., Trudeau, N., & Sutton, A. (2014). Syntactic bootstrapping in
children with Down syndrome: The impact of bilingualism. Journal of Communication
Disorders, 49, 42–54. doi:10.1016/j.jcomdis.2014.02.006.
Cleland, J., Wood, S., Hardcastle, W. J., Wishart, J. G., & Timmins, C. (2010). Relationship
between speech, oromotor, language and cognitive abilities in children with Down’s syndrome.
doi:10.3109/13682820902745453.
Corcoran, R., & Upton, D. (1993). A role for the hippocampus in card sorting? Cortex, 31,
405–409.
Costanzo, F., Varuzza, C., Menghini, D., Addona, F., Gianesini, T., & Vicari, S. (2013). Executive
functions in intellectual disabilities: A comparison between Williams syndrome and Down
syndrome. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(5), 1770–1780. doi:10.1016/j.
ridd.2013.01.024.
Deák, G. O. (2003). The development of cognitive flexibility and language abilities. In R. Kail
(Ed.), Advances in child development and behavior (Vol. 31, pp. 271–327). San Diego:
Academic Press.
Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168. doi:10.1146/
annurev-psych-113011-143750.
Diez-Itza, E., & Miranda, M. (2007). Perfiles gramaticales específicos en el síndrome de Down.
Revista de Logopedia, Foniatría y Audiología, 27(4), 161–172. doi:10.1016/
S0214-4603(07)70085-2.
Eling, P., Derckx, K., & Maes, R. (2008). On the historical and conceptual background of the
Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Brain and Cognition, 67(3), 247–253. doi:10.1016/j.
bandc.2008.01.006.
Facon, B., Grubar, J. C., & Gardez, C. (1998). Chronological age and receptive vocabulary of
persons with Down syndrome. Psychological Reports, 82, (3) Pt 1, 723–726. doi:10.2466/
PR0.82.3.723-726.
Facon, B., Nuchadee, M. L., & Bollengier, T. (2012a). A qualitative analysis of general receptive
vocabulary of adolescents with Down syndrome. American Journal on Intellectual and
Developmental Disabilities, 117(3), 243–259. doi:10.1352/1944-7558-117.3.243.
Facon, B., Magis, D., & Courbois, Y. (2012b). On the difficulty of relational concepts among par-
ticipants with Down syndrome. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 33(1), 60–68.
doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2011.08.014.
Fidler, D. J., Most, D. E., & Guiberson, M. M. (2005). Neuropsychological correlates of word
identification in Down syndrome. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 26(5), 487–501.
doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2004.11.007.
Frye, D., Zelazo, P. D., & Palfai, T. (1995). Theory of mind and rule-based reasoning. Cognitive
Development, 10, 483–527. doi:10.1016/0885-2014(95)90024-1.
Galeote, M., Sebastián, E., Checa, E., Rey, R., & Soto, P. (2011). The development of vocabulary
in Spanish children with Down syndrome: Comprehension, production and gestures. Journal
of Intellectual and Developmental Disability, 36(3), 184–196. doi:10.3109/13668250.2011.59
9317.
Galeote, M., Soto, P., Sebastián, E., Rey, R., & Checa, E. (2012). La adquisición del vocabulario
en niños con síndrome de Down: datos normativos y tendencias de desarrollo. Infancia y
Aprendizaje, 35(1), 111–122. doi:10.1174/021037012798977502.
Glenn, S., & Cunningham, C. (2005). Performance of young people with Down syndrome on the
Leiter-R and British Picture Vocabulary scales. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research,
49(4), 239–244. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2005.00643.x.
Goharpey, N., Crewther, D. P., & Crewther, S. G. (2013). Problem solving ability in children with
intellectual disability as measured by the Raven’s colored progressive matrices. Research in
Developmental Disabilities, 34(12), 4366–4374. doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2013.09.013.
Grant, D. A., & Berg, E. A. (1948). A behavioral analysis of degree of reinforcement and ease of
shifting to new response in a Weigl-type card-sorting problem. Journal of Experimental
Heaton, R. K., & Pendleton, M. G. (1981). Use of Neuropsyhological tests to predict adult patients’
everyday functioning. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 49, 807–821.
Hick, R. F., Botting, N., & Conti-Ramsanden, G. (2005). Short-term memory and vocabulary
development in children with Down syndrome and children with specific language impairment.
Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 47(8), 532–538. doi:10.1017/
S0012162205001040.
Hongwanishkul, D., Happaney, K. R., Lee, W. S. C., & Zelazo, P. D. (2005). Assessment of hot and
cool executive function in young children: Age-related changes and individual differences.
Developmental Neuropsychology, 28, 617–644. doi:10.1207/s15326942dn 2802_4.
Ionescu, T. (2012). Exploring the nature of cognitive flexibility. New Ideas in Psychology, 30(2),
190–200. doi:10.1016/j.newideapsych.2011.11.001.
Jacques, S., & Zelazo, P. D. (2005). On the possible roots of cognitive flexibility. In B. D. Homer
& C. S. Tamis-LeMonda (Eds.), The development of social cognition and communication
(pp. 53–81). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Jarrold, C., Thorn, A. S. C., & Stephens, E. (2009). The relationships among verbal short-term
memory, phonological awareness, and new word learning: Evidence from typical development
and Down syndrome. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102(2), 196–218.
doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2008.07.001.
Landry, O., Russo, N., Dawkins, T., Zelazo, P. D., & Burack, J. A. (2012). The impact of verbal
and nonverbal development on executive function in Down syndrome and Williams syndrome.
Journal on Developmental Disabilities, 18(2), 24–33.
Lanfranchi, S., Jerman, O., Dal Pont, E., Alberti, A., & Vianello, R. (2010). Executive function in
adolescents with Down syndrome. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 54(4), 308–319.
doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2010.01262.x.
Laws, G., & Bishop, D. (2003). A comparison of language abilities in adolescents with Down
syndrome and children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and
Hearing Research, 46(6), 1324–1339. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2003/103).
Laws, G., Briscoe, J., Ang, S., Brown, H., Hermena, E., & Kapikian, A. (2015). Receptive vocabu-
lary and semantic knowledge in children with SLI and children with Down syndrome. Child
Neuropsychology, 21(4), 490–508. doi:10.1080/09297049.2014.917619.
Lázaro, M., Garayzábal, E., & Moraleda, E. (2013). Differences on morphological and phonologi-
cal processing between typically developing children and children with Down syndrome.
Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(7), 2065–2074. doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2013.03.027.
Lezak, M. D., Howieson, D. B., & Loring, D. W. (2004). Neuropsychological assessment (4th ed.).
New York: Oxford University Press.
Loveall, S. J., Moore Channell, M., Phillips, B. A., Abbeduto, L., & Conners, F. A. (2016).
Receptive vocabulary analysis in Down syndrome. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 55,
161–172.
Marcell, M. N., & Croen, P. S. (1989, August). Vocabulary comprehension by Down syndrome
adolescents. Paper presented at the 97th Annual Convention of the American Psychological
Association, New Orleans, LA.
Martin, G. E., Klusek, J., Estigarribia, B., & Roberts, J. E. (2009). Language characteristics of
individuals with Down syndrome. Topics in Language Disorders., 29, 112–132.
Michael, S. E., Ratner, N. B., & Newman, R. (2012). Verb comprehension and use in children and
adults with Down syndrome. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 55(6),
1736–1749. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2012/11-0050).
Milner, B. (1963). Effects of different brain lesions on card sorting test. Archives of Neurology, 9,
100–110.
Miolo, G., Chapman, R. S., & Sindberg, H. A. (2005). Sentence comprehension in adolescents
with Down syndrome and typically developing children: Role of sentence voice, visual context,
and auditory-verbal short- term memory. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research,
48(1), 172–188. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2005/013).
Næss, K. B., Lyster, S. H., Hulme, C., & Melby-Lervåg, M. (2011). Language and verbal short-
term memory skills in children with Down syndrome: A meta-analytic review. Research in
Nelson, H. E. (1976). A modified card sorting test sensitive to frontal lobe defects. Cortex, 12,
313324.
Nyhus, E., & Barceló, F. (2009). The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and the cognitive assessment of
prefrontal executive functions: A critical update. Brain and Cognition, 71(3), 437–451.
doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2009.03.005.
Phillips, B. A., Loveall, S. J., Channell, M. M., & Conners, F. A. (2014a). Matching variables for
research involving youth with Down syndrome: Leiter-R versus PPVT-4. Research in
Phillips, B. A., Conners, F. A., Merrill, E., & Klinger, M. R. (2014b). Rule-based category learning
in Down syndrome. American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 119(3),
220–234. doi:10.1352/1944-7558-119.3.220.
Polišenská, K., & Kapalková, S. (2014). Language profiles in children with Down syndrome and
children with language impairment: Implications for early intervention. Research in
Price, J. R., Roberts, J. E., Vandergrift, N., & Martin, G. (2007). Language comprehension in boys
with fragile X syndrome and boys with Down syndrome. Journal of Intellectual Disability
Research, 51(4), 318–326. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2006.00881.x.
Reitan, R. M., & Wolfson, D. (1994). A selective and critical review of neuropsychological deficits
and the frontal lobes. Neuropsychology Review, 4, 161–198.
Roberts, J., Price, J., Barnes, E., Nelson, L., Burchinal, M., Hennon, E. A., & Hooper, S. R. (2007).
Receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, and speech production of boys with fragile X
syndrome and Down syndrome. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 112(3), 177–193.
doi:10.1352/0895-8017(2007)112%5B177:RVEVAS%5D2.0.CO;2.
Roch, M., Florit, E., & Levorato, C. (2013). The role of linguistic context in deriving word mean-
ings in individuals with Down syndrome. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 34(1), 605–
615. doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2012.09.014.
Rogers, D. R., & Monsell, S. (1995). Cost of a predictable switch between simple tasks. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, 124, 207–231. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.124.2.207.
Rowe, J., Lavender, A., & Turk, V. (2006). Cognitive executive function in Down’s syndrome.
British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 45(1), 5–17. doi:10.1348/014466505X29594.
Schapiro, M. B., Berman, K. F., Alexander, G. E., Weinberger, D. R., & Rapoport, S. I. (1999).
Regional cerebral blood flow in Down syndrome adults during the Wisconsin Card Sorting
Test: Exploring cognitive activation in the context of poor performance. Biological Psychiatry,
45(9), 1190–1196. doi:10.1016/S0006-3223(98)00051-1.
Stuss, D. T., & Levine, B. (2002). Adult clinical neuropsychology: Lessons from studies of the
frontal lobes. Annual Review Psychology, 40, 562–566.
Tamkin, A. S., & Kunce, J. T. (1982). Construct validity of the Weigl Color-Form Sorting Test.
Perceptual and Motor Skills, 55, 105–106.
Teuber, H. L., Battersby, W. S., & Bender, M. B. (1951). Performance of complex visual tasks after
cerebral lessions. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 114, 413–429.
Ypsilanti, A., Grouios, G., Alevriadou, A., & Tsapkini, K. (2005). Expressive and receptive vocab-
ulary in children with Williams and Down syndromes. Journal of Intellectual Disability
Research, 49(5), 353–364. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2005.00654.x.
Zampini, L., & D’Odorico, L. (2011). Lexical and syntactic development in Italian children with
Down syndrome. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 46(4), 386–
396. doi:10.3109/13682822.2010.508764.
Zelazo, P. D., & Müller, U. (2011). Executive function in typical and atypical development. In
U. Goswami (Ed.), The Wiley-Blackwell handbook of childhood cognitive development (2nd
ed., pp. 574–603). West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Zelazo, P. D., Burack, J., Benedetto, E., & Frye, D. (1996). Theory of mind and rule use in indi-
viduals with Down’s syndrome: A test of the uniqueness and specificity claims. Journal of
Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 37(4), 479–484. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.1996.tb01429.x.

2017 Book LanguageDevelopmentAndDisorder PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

2017 Book LanguageDevelopmentAndDisorder PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Literacy Studies: Perspectives from Cognitive Neurosciences,

Linguistics, Psychology and Education

Perspectives from Cognitive Neurosciences, Linguistics,

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/7206

ISSN 2214-000X ISSN 2214-0018 (electronic)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938112

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

The modern period of research language development research focused first on

New York, NY, USA Richard G. Schwartz

Part I Typical Language Development in Monolingual

Part II Children at Risk of Language Disorders

 anguage Delay and Amount of Exposure to the Language:

Part III Children with Specific Language Impairment

Part IV Children with Syndromes and other Language Disorders

Daniel Adrover-Roig Universitat de les Illes Balears, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Kerry Danahy Ebert Rush University, Chicago, IL, USA

Cecilia Rojas-Nieto Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM),

Alejandra Auza Benavides is a full-time researcher in medical sciences at Hospital

Richard G. Schwartz is a presidential professor in the Ph.D. Program in Speech-

Language-Hearing Sciences at the Graduate Center of the City University of

Abstract This chapter aims at reviewing the process of acquisition of Spanish as a

Keywords Monolinguals • Spanish-speaking children • Phonology • Morphology

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 3

In 1979 Karmiloff-Smith, a young Karmiloff-Smith, a former student of Piaget’s,

2.1 Word Order and Pronoun Dropping

(1) Pablo da la pelota a María vs. Pablo se la da

(2) María: Cálsotee. Cáso, papa. Pongo sapatitos.

Another consequence of a verb-rich morphology is that word order is much freer

2.2 Noun Morphology and Agreement

(3) la silla es blanca vs. las sillas son blancas

2.3 Sentence Type Constructions

(4) Si yo fuera una mujer rica, viajaría alrededor del mundo

Or the relative sentences:

(6) Quiero que vengas el martes

The subjunctive is also compulsory in negative imperative sentences. Thus, in

2.4 Verb System

3 Spanish Language Acquisition

3.1 Early Phonological Development

Table 2 Miguel’s first words Form Meaning and situation

segmentation in infants acquiring syllable-timed languages, such as Spanish or

3.2 Early Lexical Development

AGE mos. Understands

developmental trends of morphological development in Spanish by referring to rel-

3.4 Comprehending Words and Morphemes in Spanish

on phono-morphological gender clues present in the adjectives used during the

3.5 Acquisition of Spanish Morphology: Production Studies

The acquisition of Spanish free-standing morphemes, specifically their production,

In Romance languages, the criteria for establishing morphological productivity

3.6 The Acquisition Process for Spanish Gender Agreement

In spite of its level of abstraction, gender agreement is a linguistic subsystem that

variables, experimental designs would be necessary, although difficult to carry out

3.7 The Nominal Plural and its Development

3.8 Acquisition of Verb Morphology

The acquisition of verb morphology in Spanish, especially in the indicative mode,

3.9 Other Linguistic Categories

(7) Dile que soy un payasito

She would have to say:

(9) [P = padre (father); N = niña (girl)]

3.10 Syntactic Development

(10) Papá casa

3.10.1 Word Order

New York, NY, USA Richard G. Schwartz

Part I Typical Language Development in Monolingual

anguage Delay and Amount of Exposure to the Language:

2.1 Word Order and Pronoun Dropping

2.2 Noun Morphology and Agreement

2.3 Sentence Type Constructions

2.4 Verb System

3 Spanish Language Acquisition

3.1 Early Phonological Development

3.2 Early Lexical Development

3.4 Comprehending Words and Morphemes in Spanish

3.5 Acquisition of Spanish Morphology: Production Studies

3.6 The Acquisition Process for Spanish Gender Agreement

3.7 The Nominal Plural and its Development

3.8 Acquisition of Verb Morphology

3.9 Other Linguistic Categories

3.10 Syntactic Development

3.10.1 Word Order

3.10.2 Complex Syntax

3.10.3 Latest Morphosyntactic Acquisition

1.1 Bilingual Language Acquisition

1.3 Cognitive Differences Associated with Bilingualism

2.1 Core Difficulties in Bilingual Children with SLI

2.2 SLI in Bilingual Children: Different Languages at Play

2.3 Longitudinal Perspectives in Bilingual Children with SLI

2.4.6 Reading in Bilingual Spanish-Catalan Children with SLI

Abstract This study addresses whether monolingual and bilingual Spanish-

2.1 Variable Clitic Placement in Monolingual Adult Spanish

2.3 Bilinguals and Variable Clitic Placement

3.2 Data Compilation and Coding

4.1 Rate of Enclisis/Proclisis

4.2 Rate of Enclisis with Particular Verb Lexemes

5.4 I mplications for Bilingual Language Development