How do Italian-speaking children handle wh-questions? A comparison between children with hearing loss and children with normal hearing

In this paper, we analyse how Italian-speaking children with cochlear implants produce subject and object questions introduced by who and which+NP. The aim of the study is to analyse whether a correlation exists between the accuracy of the responses of an elicitation task of wh-questions and clinical variables (i.e. age of hearing aid fitting; age of cochlear implantation; duration of hearing experience) in a group of children with cochlear implants, in order to provide new evidences in support of the efficacy of early intervention in Italian-speaking children with hearing loss. The experimental group was composed of 10 children fitted with a cochlear implant, who were diagnosed and promptly fitted with hearing aids within the first year of life. All these participants received a cochlear implant when hearing aids did not provide enough auditory input anymore. Indeed, while the hearing aids only amplify sounds, cochlear implants directly stimulate the auditory nerve providing better auditory perception. Results were compared with those of two control groups. The first group was composed of 10 children with normal hearing and comparable chronological age, while the second group was composed of 10 children with normal hearing matched on comparable hearing experience. Children were assessed with a test for the elicitation of subject and object who and which+NP questions. Results show that the two control groups performed better than the experimental group. Moreover, some correlations were found between the accuracy of the production of complex structures and the age of fitting of the hearing aids and the hearing experience.

The production of wh-questions in Italian-speaking children with SLI

We aim at determining whether 7-year-old Italian-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI): (1) have problems with the production of wh- questions; (2) display a subject/object asymmetry in producing which- and who questions; (3) attempt to simplify questions, especially which- questions; (4) have difficulties with movement and verbal agreement in wh- questions. We elicited subject and object who and which NP questions in 10 children with SLI (M = 7;2), in 10 chronological age (CA)-matched controls (M = 7;2) and 10 language-matched controls (M = 5;2). Results showed that (1) children with SLI produced fewer questions than both control groups; (2) a subject/object asymmetry was observed in who questions but not in which NP questions; (3) which NP questions were more problematic than who questions; (4) children with SLI produced more agreement errors and resorted to simplification strategies to avoid wh- question production. Results point to a grammatical deficit due to the computation of complex grammatical relations and suggest that there is a misalignment among pieces of linguistic competence needed to form Italian wh- questions (wh- movement and agreement computation). Outcomes have implications for clinical assessment recommending the production of wh- questions to be considered in the evaluation of SLI in Italian.

Developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment: distinct syntactic profiles?

Recent work exploring syntax in developmental dyslexia (DD) has identified morphosyntactic deficits, striking parallelisms between children with DD and specific language impairment (SLI). The question remains open if the underlying causes for such deficits are related to difficulties in phonology, which is affected in DD, or to working memory, as has been previously reported for SLI. We focus on the production of third person accusative clitic pronouns (ACC3) and of homophonous definite determiners in French-speaking children with DD and SLI as well as typically developing (TD) controls. If syntactic complexity modulates performance of DD children, as has already been shown for SLI, we predict children with DD to perform significantly worse on ACC3 compared to definite determiners, which are homophonous but syntactically simpler. In addition, if impairment in ACC3 stems from phonology or working memory difficulties, we expect ACC3 performance in both clinical groups to relate to performance on non-word repetition or forward/backward digit spans. We studied 2 groups of 21 children and adolescents, with DD and SLI (7-15 years) and age-matched TD controls. Results reveal significant weaknesses with ACC3 in DD and SLI groups compared to TD controls, but no difficulty for homophonous definite determiners, confirming a deficit relating specifically to syntactic complexity. As for links to phonology and working memory, a single correlation emerged between ACC3 and the backward digit span in SLI, but not in DD, suggesting different underlying sources for syntactic deficits in these populations. Clinical implications of these results are discussed.