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The trajectory of language impairments is important to study in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of this disorder. Therefore, this study examined behavioral and neural indices of sentence processing in adolescents with different language trajectories. Specifically, we compared accuracy performance and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) from adolescents who participated in a sentence processing task that included correctly agreeing verbs and violations of verb agreement (omission or commission of third person singular -s). Groups consisted of adolescents with normal language development (NL), adolescents with a history of language impairment (SLI-Recovered), and adolescents with persistent language impairment (SLI-Persistent). The NL and SLI-Recovered groups performed significantly better than the SLI-Persistent group. ERP data revealed that the SLI-Persistent group tended to have a smaller amplitude P600 elicited by verb-agreement violations, relative to the other groups. Additionally, each group had a unique neural pattern during the commission violation condition. Although behavioral data did not differentiate the NL and SLI-Recovered groups, ERPs suggest that adolescents in the SLI-Recovered group displayed less efficient neural processing of syntactic errors.
Funding: P50 DC02746, T32 DC00030 |
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