Declarative and Sequential learning in Spanish-speaking children with Language Impairment

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1 Neurocience Project, School of Higher Studies (F.E.S.) Iztacala, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico, Estado de México, México
2 Faculty of Language and Literature, Autonomous University of Querétaro, Querétaro, Querétaro, México
3 Department of Neuropsychology, School of Higher Studies (F.E.S.) Zaragoza, México, Distrito Federal, México
4 Neuroscience of Language Laboratory, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.1675v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Cognitive Disorders, Neurology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Psychology
Keywords
Specific Language Impairment, Language Impairment, Sequential learning, Declarative learning, Working memory, Syntax, Semantics
Copyright
© 2016 Roa-Rojas et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Roa-Rojas P, Silva-Pereyra J, Jackson-Maldonado D, Villa-Rodríguez MMA, Gillon-Dowens M. 2016. Declarative and Sequential learning in Spanish-speaking children with Language Impairment. PeerJ PrePrints 4:e1675v1

Abstract

Language Impairment (LI) is a developmental disorder that mainly manifests impaired language learning and processing. Evidence, largely from English-speaking population studies, has shown that children with LI compared to typically developing (TD) children have low scores in sequential learning tasks but similar performance in declarative learning tasks. According to the declarative/procedural model, LI children compensate for their deficiency in syntactic skills (i.e., deficits in the procedural memory system) by using the declarative memory system (indispensable for vocabulary acquisition). Although there are specific deficits in children with LI depending on the language they speak, it is assumed that this model can explain the shortcomings of such pathology regardless of the language spoken. In the current study, we compared the performance of fifteen school-aged Mexican Spanish-speaking children with LI and twenty TD children during sequential and declarative learning tasks and then analyzed the relationship between their performance in these tasks and their abilities in syntax and semantics. Children with LI displayed lower scores than normal children in the sequential learning task, but no differences were found in declarative learning performance with verbal or visual stimuli. No significant correlations were observed in children with LI between their performance in sequential learning and their abilities in semantics and no significant correlations were observed in TD children between their performance in sequential learning and their abilities in syntax. In contrast, for children with LI, a significant correlation between their performance in declarative learning and their abilities in semantics was observed and for the group of TD children a significant correlation between their performance in declarative learning and their abilities in syntax was observed. This study shows that Spanish-speaking children with LI display a pattern of learning impairment that supports the declarative/procedural model hypothesis. However, they display poor verbal declarative learning skills, probably due to low verbal working memory capacity.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.

Supplemental Information

Raw Data

Data from neuropsychological tests. Scores

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.1675v1/supp-1