SENTENCE PROCESSING IN LANGUAGE-IMPAIRED CHILDREN UNDER CONDITIONS OFFILTERING AND TIME COMPRESSION

Nineteen language-impaired (LI) and 20 language-normal (LN) children p articipated in an on-line word-monitoring task. Words were presented i n lists and in sentences readily comprehended by younger children. The sentences were unaltered, low-pass filtered, and time-compressed. Bot h groups had shorter mean response times (MRTs), but lower accuracy, f or words in sentences than words in lists. The LI children had signifi cantly longer MRTs under sentence conditions and lower accuracy overal l than the LN children. Filtering had an adverse effect upon accuracy and MRT for both subject groups. Time compression did not, suggesting that the reduction in high-frequency information and the rate of prese ntation exert different effects. Subject differences in attention, as well as in linguistic competence and motor control, may have influence d word-monitoring performance.