1. Participants 81 children in second grade were divided into four sub-groups: Elicitation Task Comparing morphological errors across tasks in elementary school age children with Specific Language Impairment American Speech-Language-Hearing Association November 20-22, 2014Orlando, Florida Acknowledgments We are grateful for the participation of all children in the study. We also thank the members of the SCROLL Lab who assisted with stimulus development, data collection, and data processing: Faith Baumann, Spencer Babb, Alex Cattano. This research is supported, in part a grant from the National Institutes of Health (1R03DC013399) to S. Adlof. Children with SLI have documented deficits in morphosyntax (e.g, Bedore & Leonard, 1998; Oetting & Horohov, 1997; Rice, Wexler, & Hershberger, 1998). To date, most studies have focused on preschool age children with SLI. SLI and dyslexia commonly occur together Catts, Adlof, Hogan, & Weismer, 2005). To date, studies have not considered the partial comorbidity of SLI and dyslexia when examining morphosyntax. The purpose of this study was to explore the type and frequency of morphological errors in school-age children with SLI with and without comorbid dyslexia. Morphological errors were compared across two types of tasks: an elicitation task, and a sentence production task. Descriptive Statistics Summary and Discussion Sentence Production Task Results Method Alison Eisel Hendricks hendriak@mailbox.sc.edu Sheneka White whitess2@email.sc.edu Suzanne M. Adlof, Ph.D. sadlof@mailbox.sc.edu References Morphosyntactic Errors: Sentence Production Task Elicitation Task Coding Word Structure Sub-Test of the CELF-4 Experimenter: “This is a boy, and this ---” Child: “is a girl” 17 types of features were tested (See Figure 1). GroupTONITOWRECELF CLS CELF WS CELF FS Num. Diff Words Total Words Typical N = 34 108.09 (9.21) 102.76 (7.8) 105.53 (5.99) 9.47 (2.08) 12.35 (1.69) 123.9 (14.96) 203.9 (32.29) SLI N = 21 100.1 (8.01) 100.1 (6.45) 79.29 (5.33) 4.95 (1.99) 7.38 (1.75) 109.3 (13.06) 173.7 (28.13) Both N = 19 99.89 (8.08) 74.05 (9.09) 75.95 (7.99) 4.68 (1.95) 6.79 (2.25) 99.6 (18.88) 164.9 (36.60) Dyslexia N = 7 100.71 (4.11) 76.43 (5.03) 99.43 (4.76) 8.43 (2.44) 9.86 (1.57) 130.1 (33.73) 225.4 (81.80) Sub-Group Criteria Test of Word Reading Efficiency-2 (TOWRE-2; Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 2012) used to identify children with dyslexia using a -1 SD criterion Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-4 (CELF-4; Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 2003) used to identify children with language impairment, using a -1 SD criterion Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation (DELV; Seymour, Roeper, & deVilliers, 2003) used to rule out dialectical differences that might be confused as language impairment Examples of Non-Morphosyntactic Errors: Sentence Production Task FeatureAccurateError Irregular Past TenseMom gave me breakfast.Until I sawed the bike. CopulaThe middle dog is the longest. They is third. Auxiliary + -ingBecause there is a traffic jam and no light, the police officer is directing traffic. And I forgot to watering my plants Errors in Agreement/Tense Because the policeman give the us signal. Sentences were coded for accuracy and errors in using features targeted in the elicitation task. Only features that occurred at least an average of once per utterance for the typical children were used. Some features (e.g. Derivation of Noun) tested in the elicitation task could not be measured in production. Additional coding for general errors in tense and agreement that could not clearly be attributed as errors of Regular or Irregular Past Tense, Future Tense, or Third Person Singular. 1.Don’t Know. 2.Otherwise I will pay my food. 3.Neither you get a drink, then get a slushie. 4.Unless I finish my homework before I go to baseball game. 5.Because you don’t cross the road is that the car might run you over. These results suggest that the morphosyntactic weaknesses of children with SLI and dyslexia are similar to those of children with SLI-only. These results suggest that children with dyslexia, in the absence of SLI, may show subtle morphosyntactic weaknesses. However, more data is needed to determine if this preliminary finding holds true for a larger group of participants. Different types of tasks (e.g., elicitation tasks vs sentence production tasks) may assess different skills in school-age children with SLI. For school-age children, difficulties with a sentence production task, such as the CELF-FS, are driven by non- morphosyntactic errors as well as errors in specific morphosyntatic features. Formulated Sentences Sub-Test of the CELF-4. The child is shown a picture and given a word, and must develop a sentence about the picture using the word. Table 2: Example Coding Table 1: Participant Demographics Figure 1: Elicitation Task Accuracy Bedore, L., & Leonard, L. (1998). Specific language impairment and grammatical morphology: A discriminant function. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 41, 1185-1192. Catts, H. W., Adlof, S. M., Hogan, T. P., & Weismer, S. E. (2005). Are specific language impairment and dyslexia distinct disorders? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48(6), 1378-1396. Oetting, J., & Horohov, J. (1997). Past-tense marking by children with and without specific language impairment. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 40, 62-74. Rice, M., 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, 1412-1431. Semel, E., Wiig, E.H., & Secord, W.A. (2003). Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fourth Edition. San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment. Seymour, H. N., Roeper, T. W., deVilliers, J. (2003). Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation. San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation. Torgesen, J. K., Wagner, R. K., & Rashotte, C. A. (2012). Test of Word Reading Efficiency-Second Edition. Austin, TX: ProEd. Introduction