Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: The objective of this dissertation was to characterize the motor deficits in children with specific language impairment (SLI). This research was motivated by the hypothesis that the motor deficits provide a window into the underlying cause of SLI, which is currently unknown. The motor abilities of children with and without SLI were explored through a broad range of tasks across three experimental studies. The first study examined childrenâ s gross, fine, oral motor and speech motor skills. The second study investigated childrenâ s motor sequence planning and execution, adaptation and retention abilities. And the last study explored temporal aspects of the manual communicative gesture productions of children with SLI. The results of these studies revealed that children with SLI had significant difficulties with novel balance, fine limb and speech motor skills. At the processing level, children with SLI exhibited impaired fine motor sequence planning and execution, while adaptation and retention appeared to be unaffected. These procedural measures were also significantly correlated with performance on grammar and vocabulary measures. Finally, the temporal relationship between speech and communicative gesture was comparable between children with and without SLI. This profile of motor impairment in SLI and its association with language ability may be best explained by deficits in procedural learning. Future studies should examine whether procedural motor measures can supplement current diagnostic protocols of SLI and whether treatment approaches that target procedural learning capacity are more effective at treating the language, motor and cognitive deficits in SLI.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Teenu Sanjeevan
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2626419210