Due Friday March 5
Approximately five percent of all children are born with the disorder known as specific language impairment (SLI). These children show a significant deficit in spoken language ability with no obvious accompanying condition such as mental retardation, neurological damage, or hearing impairment. That is, the cause of SLI is, by definition, unexplained.
< Recent studies have shown that children who are late in acquiring language do not show a shape bias in the Novel Word Generalization Task.
2. What might this fact (SLI children lack shape bias) suggest to a nativist theorist about the nature of SLI as a disorder? Why would SLI children lack a shape bias according to their view?
3. What might this fact suggest to an interactionist theorist or a connectionist theorist about the nature of SLI as a disorder? Why would SLI children lack a shape bias according to their view?
4. Given this information and what we discussed today in class about the origin of biases, can you think of a possible intervention that might help children with SLI acquire language?