Declarative and procedural memory in Danish speaking children with specific language impairment

It has been proposed that the language problems in specific language impairment (SLI) arise from basal ganglia abnormalities that lead to impairments with procedural and working memory but not declarative memory. In SLI, this profile of memory functioning has been hypothesized to underlie grammatical impairment but leave lexical knowledge relatively unaffected. The current study examined memory and language functioning in 13 Danish-speaking children with SLI and 20 typically developing (TD) children. Participants were administered tasks assessing declarative, procedural and verbal working memory as well as knowledge of past tense and vocabulary. The SLI group performed significantly poorer than the TD group on the measure of verbal working memory. Non-significant differences between groups were observed on the measure of declarative memory, after controlling for verbal working memory. The groups were found to perform at comparable levels on the procedural memory task. On the language measures, the SLI group performed significantly poorer than the TD group on the past tense and vocabulary tasks. However, the magnitude of the difference was larger on the task assessing past tense. These results indicate grammatical knowledge is relatively more affected than lexical knowledge in Danish speaking children with SLI. However, the results were not consistent with the proposal linking impaired grammar to impairments with procedural memory. At the same time, the study does not rule out that other aspects of procedural learning and memory contribute to the language problems in SLI.Learning outcomes: The reader will be introduced to (1) different memory systems, in particular the declarative, procedural and working memory systems and (2) also research examining the relationship between these different memory systems and language in children with SLI.

► Declarative, procedural and working memory are different memory systems.
► We examined these systems in Danish children with SLI.
► Declarative memory problems in SLI appear to be secondary to working memory problems.
► No differences with procedural memory were observed.
► Multiple memory systems may be implicated in SLI.