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Purpose: The nature of the relationship between memory and sentence comprehension in school-age children with developmental language disorder (DLD) has been unclear. We present a novel perspective that highlights the relational influences of fluid intelligence, controlled attention, working memory (WM), and long-term memory (LTM) on sentence comprehension in children with and without DLD. This perspective has new and important implications for theory, assessment, and intervention.
Method: We review a large-scale study of children with and without DLD that focused on the connections between cognition, memory, and sentence comprehension. We also summarize a new model of these relationships.
Results: Our new model suggests that WM serves as a conduit through which syntactic knowledge in LTM, controlled attention, and general pattern recognition indirectly influence sentence comprehension in both children with DLD and typically developing children. For typically developing children, language-based LTM and fluid intelligence indirectly influence sentence comprehension. However, for children with DLD, controlled attention plays a larger indirect role.
Conclusions: WM plays a key role in children's ability to apply their syntactic knowledge when comprehending canonical and noncanonical sentences. Our new model has important implications for the assessment of sentence comprehension and for the treatment of larger sentence comprehension deficits.
hildren with developmental language disorder (DLD) show significant difficulties mastering spoken and written language yet have broadly normal-range nonverbal intelligence, normal hearing sensitivity, articulation, and no neurological impairment (Leonard, 2014). Syntactic deficits that interfere with sentence comprehension are a major feature of the language profile of schoolage children with DLD (Dick et al., 2004; Friedmann & Novogrodsky, 2007; Leonard et al., 2013; Montgomery & Evans, 2009; Montgomery et al., 2009; Robertson & Joanisse, 2010; van der Lely & Stollwerck, 1997). These children also demonstrate a variety of memory deficits. Memory is a complex system comprising short-term memory (STM), working memory (WM), and long-term memory (LTM; Cowan, 2008). STM involves the very short-term retention of information. WM refers to the ability to temporarily store information while at the same time engaging in some kind of mental activity. LTM is the repository where all our language knowledge permanently resides (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968). Children with DLD show significant deficits, relative to their typically developing (TD) same-age peers, in verbal STM capacity (Archibald & Gathercole, 2007; R. Gillam...