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Abstract:
Abstract: While normally developing school-age children show
expertise with the English past tense, the number of errors they
produce constitutes a uniquely long developmental trajectory for
English morphology. Deficits in past tense production are also a
hallmark of language impairment (Rice, 1996; Marchman, 1999).
Little is known about the production abilities of children with
early focal brain injury. However, studies suggest that despite
remarkable recovery of language function by school-age, subtle
deficits persist (Bates, 1997; Reilly, 1998). In this study,
real-time production of the past tense was examined in normally
developing children, and children with language impairment or focal
brain lesions. Subjects (age: 5 to 16 years) were administered a
sentence-completion paradigm; accuracy, error patterns and speed of
response were analyzed. Irregular verbs constituted an area of
remarkable difficulty for the younger children, who were also
faster in producing errors than correct forms. However, results
show a developmental increase in accuracy and production speed for
all groups. Older subjects with focal lesions were accurate, but
less efficient in their production than age-matched controls.
Subjects with language impairment were both slower and less
accurate than controls, and signs of different error patterns were
observed. These results are discussed with reference to models of
brain-language relationships, plasticity and language
development.
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