Electrophysiological Evidence for Sentence Comprehension - Wings

similar words or pseudo-words. Quick naming also showed lower scores, as all tests in
which time dimension was critical. Discrimination between phonologically similar words
proved to be good. At least, this is a good indication that the children included in the
study did not have perceptual problems. As the children were included in therapy, better
results on tests that did not require quick reaction indicate learned, explicit knowledge
instead of automatic acquired skills.
Morphology and syntax proved to be affected in all children, but for at least two children
problems in morphology could be explained as a consequence of poor phonological
skills, as these children were diagnosed as phonological SLI. Mixing cases was
frequently recorded for all children. In tests in which prefixes had to be added to the verb
root in order to derive perfective meaning children with SLI regularly used compensatory
mechanisms to convey the perfective meaning and avoided the target verb form:
describing a picture on which a rabbit was digging a carrot, SLI children correctly used
the imperfective form. However, when the picture showed the rabbit with the carrot dug
out, the SLI children typically answered that the rabbit finished digging, avoiding the
target form (he dug it out). All SLI children showed poor skills on sentence repetition
task. Usually, they would drop out all words that were not crucial for the basic meaning
of a sentence, in most cases adjectives and adverbs.
Lexical skills are also affected in the group of SLI children. Synonyms proved to be
especially difficult; children recognized 1 to 3 out of 9 synonyms while recognizing 5 to
8 homonyms (out of 15), for example. On Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test SLI children
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