Getting to grips with grammar
19 March 2008
Grammar is a complex and uniquely human ability. Most children have mastered the basics by the age of three and can construct grammatically correct sentences. However, children with specific language impairment (SLI) face a lifelong struggle with grammar and often underachieve in education.
Now, scientists from University College London have found that some of these children have specific problems with grammar, rather than more general problems with processing language. They also found that affected children appeared to compensate for this grammatical SLI (G-SLI) by using other circuits in the brain.
Not only do these findings present new ways to help children with SLI achieve their potential, but they also suggest that grammar is a developmentally specific and specialised subsystem in the human brain.
In this study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, Dr Elisabeth Fonteneau and Professor Heather van der Lely measured, on a millisecond by millisecond basis, the electrical activity of different groups of neurons in the brain as children listened to a target word in different sentences.
In some of the sentences, the target word (here, ‘clown’) was grammatically unexpected. For example, ‘Who did Barbie push the clown into?’ is unexpected because ‘clown’ and ‘who’ refer to animate objects. What we expect, grammatically, is a mismatch, e.g. ‘What did Barbie push the clown into?’
In other sentences, the target word was unexpected in terms of meaning, e.g. ‘Barbie bakes the people in the kitchen’ instead of ‘Barbie bakes the bread in the kitchen’. Van der Lely and colleagues were interested in which language-associated brain circuits would be activated when detecting these unexpected words.
The brain responses of children with G-SLI to a variety of language processes, including those related to word meaning, were normal. However, these children did not show the activity in brain circuits associated with grammatical processing seen in unaffected seven-year-olds, age-matched teenagers and adults. Nor did this predicted activity occur ‘later’ in affected children, which goes against the idea that children with SLI simply process information more slowly.
In fact, the affected children appeared to compensate for their problems processing grammar by using different brain circuits, which are associated with world knowledge and the meaning of words.
A better understanding of the causes of the difficulties seen in different types of SLI, and the mechanisms used in the brain to cope with them, could be used to develop more effective educational support for those affected. For example, teachers could use tests to screen children for problems processing grammar. If such problems are found, teachers can help focus affected children’s attention on language structure, which will hopefully encourage the recruitment of other brain resources to deal with grammar.
The interim report of the Bercow Review, an independent review of services in England for children who have difficulties with communication, speech and language, is due out on 20 March 2008.
References
Fonteneau, E and van der Lely, H. Electrical brain responses in language-impaired children reveal grammar-specific deficits. PLoS ONE 2008;3(3):e1832.