Assessing Italian children with a grammar judgment task: A comparison between children with Typical Development and with a history of SLI

Many children with history of specific language impairment (SLI) produce sentences that appear to conform to the adult phonology and grammar after the pre-school age. However, weakness in grammatical system seems to persist in the scholar and adult age. Few tools are available for detect in a sensible way these more subtle measures of language proficiency. The current study aims to present developmental data (accuracy and reaction time) about a grammatical judgment task (GIUGRA) proposed to Typical Developing children (TD) between 7 and 12 years and adults. In addition, the profile at the task of a subgroup of TD children (7-9 years) will be compared with that exhibited by age matched children with a history of SLI and comparable abilities on traditional task used to assess language at this age. Results show that developmental changes in the judgment ability are between 7 and 10 year. In addition, children with SLI still present subtle grammatical deficits despite their high degree of proficiency on other tasks.