THE RELATIONSHIP OF AUDITORY AND COGNITIVE PROCESSES TO SYNTACTIC PATTERNS OF LEARNING DISABLED AND NORMAL CHILDRE

In spite of considerable attention to syntactic deficits in language learning disabled children, a clear description of these children, especially those of primary school age, is still needed. The task of providing such a description begins with two closely related questions. The first, which has to do with syntax production, is: Do language disabled children differ from normals and among themselves on the syntactic structures they actually use? The second, which has to do with the cognitive processing of language, is: How do language disabled children differ from normals among themselves on language processes related to syntactic ability?;The hypothesis of this study was that children with syntactic language disabilities would exhibit distinct profiles of syntactic usage and that these groups would also perform differently on a battery of tests assessing cognitive skills related to syntactic production.;Subjects were two groups of 15 language disordered children and one group of 15 normals, age 6-0 to 6-11. Subjects were controlled for age, non-verbal IQ, SES, and syntactic development. Level of syntactic ability was determined by the DSS: language disabled group below the 20th percentile, normals from the 40th to the 60th percentile, using a standardized language sampling procedure.;The language disordered children were further grouped according to their syntactic profile on the Language Assessment, Remediation and Screening Procedure (LARSP), (Crystal et al. 1976). Two distinct profiles were identified. Type A children exhibited normal clause structure but poor phrase and word structure. Type B children, with considerably more serious problems, exhibited difficulty with clause structure in simple sentences as well as phrase and word structure.;To investigate the cognitive processing abilities of children with different syntactic profiles as compared to normals, a battery of tests was developed which measured cognitive processes suggested by the literature to be related to syntactic development.;In a discriminant function analysis, four tests discriminated both language disabled groups from the normals (p = < 0.00). Discrimination and production of sequences of phonemes, comprehension of grammatical structures, and memory for sentences were closely related to syntactic difficulty for both groups of language disabled children. In addition, comprehension of spatial and temporal concepts and discrimination or morphological endings in context discriminated the two language disabled groups from each other (p = < 0.000). Significantly, Type B children scored lower than Type A children or normals on every measure of receptive cognitive processing in the battery.;This study concludes that among language learning disabled children there are at least two subgroups who differ from normals and from each other both in their syntactic strengths and weaknesses and their profile of related cognitive processing skills. These results suggest that clinicians should be particularly sensitive to the interaction of syntax with cognitive processes. For example, Type B children exhibit difficulty with basic, simple clause structure and have severe deficits in receptive processes related to syntactic production. Accordingly, lesson plans should take into consideration the reciprocal effects of deficits in related cognitive processes and oral syntax.