Interaction of language processing and motor skill in children with specific language impairment

To examine how language production interacts with speech motor and gross and fine motor skill in children with specific language impairment (SLI).

Eleven children with SLI and 12 age-matched peers (4-6 years) produced structurally primed sentences containing particles and prepositions. Utterances were analyzed for errors and for articulatory duration and variability. Standard measures of motor, language, and articulation skill were also obtained.

Sentences containing particles, as compared with prepositions, were less likely to be produced in a priming task and were longer in duration, suggesting increased difficulty with this syntactic structure. Children with SLI demonstrated higher articulatory variability and poorer gross and fine motor skills compared with aged-matched controls. Articulatory variability was correlated with generalized gross and fine motor performance.

Children with SLI show co-occurring speech motor and generalized motor deficits. Current theories do not fully account for the present findings, though the procedural deficit hypothesis provides a framework for interpreting overlap among language and motor domains.