Analogical mapping across modalities in children with specific language impairment (SLI).
Kids with SLI need visible or audible anchors to see how things relate—strip the cues and the analogy falls apart.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Leroy et al. (2014) watched kids with Specific Language Impairment do analogy games.
Some games used pictures or sounds. Other games used words alone.
The team wanted to know if missing visual cues would hurt the kids more than their peers.
What they found
The SLI group scored lower than peers on every analogy task.
When the task used only words, their scores dropped even more.
Taking away perceptual cues widened the gap.
How this fits with other research
Dispaldro et al. (2015) saw the same kids get lost when two pictures flashed close together.
Moav-Scheff et al. (2015) found the kids also fail to “lock” new words in memory if repeats are too plain.
Together the three papers show one theme: kids with SLI need extra sights, sounds, or repeats to grasp patterns.
Desmottes et al. (2016) add that even when they learn a pattern one day, most of it is gone the next—so quick booster drills matter.
Why it matters
When you teach categories, same-different, or metaphor, keep pictures, gestures, or color cues on the table.
Fade the visuals slowly, not all at once.
Add brief next-day reviews so the fragile link has a second chance to stick.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Analogical mapping is a domain-general cognitive process found in language development, and more particularly in the abstraction of construction schemas. Analogical mapping is considered as the general cognitive process which consists in the alignment of two or several sequences in order to detect their common relational structure and generalize it to new items. The current study investigated analogical mapping across modalities in children with specific language impairment (SLI). Nineteen children with SLI and their age-matched peers were administered two tasks: a linguistic analogical reasoning task (composed of syllables) and a similar non-linguistic analogical reasoning task (composed of pictures). In the two tasks, the items presented were divided into two groups: items with perceptual cues and items without perceptual cues. Children had to complete a sequence sharing the same relational structure as previously presented sequences. Results showed an expected group effect with poorer performance for children with SLI compared to children with typical language development (TLD). Results corroborate hypotheses suggesting that children with SLI have difficulties with analogical mapping, which may hinder the abstraction of construction schemas. Interestingly, whereas no interaction effect between group and modality (linguistic vs. non-linguistic) was revealed, a triple interaction Group*Modality*Perceptual support was observed. In the non-linguistic task, the performance of children with SLI was the same for items with and without perceptual clues, but in the linguistic task they performed more poorly for items without perceptual cues compared to items with perceptual cues. The results and limits of the study are discussed.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2014 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.05.005