Incidental non linguistic regularities learning in Children with

Recent studies on specific language impairment (SLI) have suggested that language deficits could be partly explained by the Procedural
Deficit hypothesis (PDH; Ullman & Pierpont, 2005). Tomblin et al. (2007) and Lum et al. (2009; 2011) obtained data supporting this
interpretation with the serial reaction time (SRT) task, as well as Evans et al. (2009) and Plante et al. (2002) with artificial grammar tasks.
Recently, Gabriel et al. (2011) obtained contrasting results, showing that children with SLI were able to detect non linguistic regularities
during a SRT task. The aim of this study was to assess the PDH by using a non-linguistic artificial grammar learning tasks in order to mimic
real conditions of language acquisition. Twenty-three children with SLI and their typically developing (TD) peers are compared on a task in
which the incidental learning sequence was presented through visual shapes via a laptop.These results confirm our previous study (Gabriel et al., 2011) by showing
that children with SLI detect the rules in non-linguistic conditions.
• So, contrary to results of previous studies (Evans et al., 2009; Lum et al.,
2009; 2011; Plante et al., 2002; Tomblin et al., 2007), this study does not
confirm the PDH in children with SLI, or at least suggests that, if present, the
deficit of the procedural system in SLI is not going beyond the language
system.