Sensitivity to Audiovisual Temporal Asynchrony in Children With a History of Specific Language Impairment and Their Peers With Typical Development: A Replication and Follow-Up Study

Purpose

Earlier, my colleagues and I showed that children with a history of specific language impairment (H-SLI) are significantly less able to detect audiovisual asynchrony compared with children with typical development (TD; Kaganovich & Schumaker, 2014). Here, I first replicate this finding in a new group of children with H-SLI and TD and then examine a relationship among audiovisual function, attention skills, and language in a combined pool of children.

Method

The stimuli were a pure tone and an explosion-shaped figure. Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) varied from 0–500 ms. Children pressed 1 button for perceived synchrony and another for asynchrony. I measured the number of synchronous perceptions at each SOA and calculated children's temporal binding windows. I, then, conducted multiple regressions to determine if audiovisual processing and attention can predict language skills.

Results

As in the earlier study, children with H-SLI perceived asynchrony significantly less frequently than children with TD at SOAs of 400–500 ms. Their temporal binding windows were also larger. Temporal precision and attention predicted 23%–37% of children's language ability.

Conclusions

Audiovisual temporal processing is impaired in children with H-SLI. The degree of this impairment is a predictor of language skills. Once understood, the mechanisms underlying this deficit may become a new focus for language remediation.

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