INT. J. LANG. COMM. DIS.

, JULY–SEPTEMBER 2005,
VOL. 40, NO. 3, 319–332

Research Report
Spatio-visual memory of children with specific
language impairment: evidence for generalized
processing problems

Edith L. Bavin{, Peter H. Wilson{, Paul Maruff {§ and

Felicity Sleeman{
{
School of Psychological Science, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia
{
Psychology and Disability Studies, RMIT University
§
Cog State, Melbourne

(Received 18 March 2004; accepted 17 November 2004)

Abstract
Background: Children with Specific language Impairment (SLI) have problems
with verbal memory, particularly with tasks that have more processing demands.
They also have slower speeds of responding for some tasks.
Aims: To identify the extent to which young children with SLI would differ in
performance from age-matched non-impaired children on a set of spatio-visual
memory tasks. It was predicted that if memory limitations of children with SLI
extend beyond the verbal domain to other domains, their performance would be
significantly poorer on the spatio-visual tasks than that of the comparison
group. It was also predicted that they would be slower in responding.
Methods & Procedures: Six spatio-visual tasks were used to compare the
performance of 21 children with SLI, with a mean age of 54.1 months, and 21
age-matched non-impaired children. The tasks ranged in difficulty from simple
recall to a search-based working memory task. All tasks were administered
though a laptop computer and responses were non-verbal using a touch screen.
Outcomes & Results: The children with SLI were not significantly slower than the
comparison group. However, they were significantly less accurate than the
comparison group in recalling patterns, but not in recalling locations. The accuracy
for both groups was lower on spatial recall than on pattern recall. The children
with SLI were also significantly less able to learn to associate a particular pattern
with a particular location, and to have a shorter spatial span. However, on a spatial
search task testing working memory, the groups did not differ significantly.
Conclusions: The results indicate that the memory limitations of children with SLI
are not restricted to verbal memory, and this fact has implications for its

Address correspondence to: Edith L. Bavin, School of Psychological Science, La Trobe University,
Victoria 3086, Australia; e-mail: e.bavin@latrobe.edu.au

International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders

ISSN 1368-2822 print/ISSN 1460-6984 online # 2005 Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/13682820400027750
320 E. L. Bavin et al.

aetiology. Intervention programmes for young children with SLI need to extend
beyond language in order to help them develop strategies for processing
information in different situations.

Keywords: specific language impairment, memory, processing, spatio-visual skills

Introduction
Children with specific language impairment (SLI) have a language level significantly
lower than their age-matched peers, which is not attributed to a hearing deficit or
any known neurological or socio-emotional disorder (Bishop 1997, Leonard 1998,
Ahmad et al. 2001). While children with SLI have no brain lesions to account for
their impairments, characteristics of their language resemble those of some adult
aphasics, who have suffered brain damage. One hypothesis is that the impairment
of language in children with SLI may implicate widespread involvement across a
broad area of cortical tissue (Marchman et al. 2004). The disorder occurs in
approximately 7% of children and has putative genetic markers (Tomblin 1996,
Bishop 2002).
The language impairment is more often noticed in expressive language, but a
significant number of children present with impairment in receptive language or
both expressive and receptive (Bishop 1997). Depending on the nature of the
observed language deficits, children with SLI can be classified into subgroups (Aram
and Nation 1980, Conti-Ramsden et al. 1997) but, as shown by a body of literature, a
child’s classification as SLI may change over time as the child’s language skills
develop (e.g. Bishop and Adams 1990, Conti-Ramsden et al. 2001). There may be co-
morbidity with other developmental disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD) (e.g. Williams et al. 2000).
Explanations for the impairment have sometimes been based on specific
linguistic characteristics, e.g. the omission of the past tense marker and obligatory
verb agreement in tensed clauses in English (e.g. Rice and Wexler 1996), or a
difficulty with syntactic operations (Van der Lely and Stollwerck 1997). A deficit in
auditory temporal processing has also been proposed based on the reports that
children with SLI have problems discriminating rapidly presented tone or syllable
sequences (Tallal et al. 1996). Other research has reported slower processing for
children with SLI, for verbal and non-verbal information. For example, Miller et al.
(2001) administered a series of tasks to 8–9-year-olds. Of these, only one required a
verbal response; all other responses involved striking a key on a computer keyboard.
The children with SLI had longer latencies overall than non-impaired children on
language- and non-language-based tasks, supporting Kail’s (1994) hypothesis of a
general slowing in information processing for children with SLI, although Lahey et al.
(2001) found that the speed of responding was not linearly related to the severity of
the language impairment.
Findings from studies by Montgomery (2000a,b) show that children with SLI have
problems processing information when the processing load is high. Montgomery used
a list recall task with 8-year-old children with SLI. Three conditions were included,
representing different levels of processing. When children were asked to categorize the
words in a list (e.g. animal, food) and then recall them by size within each category
(‘dual-load’ condition), the children with SLI performed significantly worse than
Spatio-visual memory of children with specific language impairment 321

age-matched controls. In contrast, in a simple recall condition, the least demanding

condition, no significant group differences were found; nor were differences found in a
condition when the words were recalled by semantic category alone (‘single-load’
condition). More recently, Dodwell and Bavin (2003), using a task similar to that of
Montgomery’s, found that 4–5-year-old SLI children, i.e. children much younger than
those used in Montgomery’s study, performed significantly worse than an age-matched
comparison group even in a single-load condition, as well as a dual-load condition, but
performance was similar across groups in the simple list recall.
Such findings implicate working memory, generally characterized as the
cognitive resources required to store incoming information temporarily as analysis
and integration of information is completed. Furthermore, there seems a trade-off
between storage capacity and processing operations for children with SLI ( Just and
Carpenter 1992, Just et al. 1996), so that if resources are used for processing (as in
grouping words into categories before recall), storage capacity is reduced. Marton
and Schwartz (2003) reported a study in support of the trade-off position. Capacity
and processing limitations were found for children with SLI aged from 7 to 10 years
tested on a variety of non-word repetition tasks. One of these required the children
to answer a content question following a sentence containing a non-word, but
first they had to repeat the non-word. The results showed limitations in such
simultaneous processing for the children with SLI. Additionally, syntactically
complex sentences were more likely to result in poor performance. This suggests
that it is difficult for children with SLI to hold syntactic information on-line while
diverting other processing resources for a competing operation (i.e. simple
repetition); working memory is strongly implicated.
The non-word repetition task has been used extensively to test verbal memory
(Gathercole and Baddeley 1990, Adams and Gathercole 1995, Montgomery 1995,
Edwards and Lahey 1998, Bowey 2001). The task is an index of storage capacity
determined by the limit in the length of the non-words that can be repeated.
Children with SLI are less able to recall words of four and five syllables than
children of a similar chronological age, although shorter words present less difficulty.
That is, evidence from a number of sources shows verbal memory problems for
children with SLI. However, whether the memory problems extend to spatio-visual
memory has not been well studied.
Whether there is a link between verbal and spatio-visual memory in non-
language-impaired children was tested by Adams and Gathercole (2000), who tested
4-year-old children on a non-word repetition task and two spatio-visual tasks: Corsi
blocks and a visual pattern span. In the span task, children remembered which cells
of a matrix had been filled in and then replicated the pattern on a blank matrix. The
children who recalled more words in the non-word repetition task also tended to
recall more in the spatio-visual tasks. These results show an association between
verbal and spatio-verbal memory for non language-impaired children. Thus, of
interest is whether the impairment to verbal memory for children with SLI is
specific, or whether spatio-visual memory is also affected.
One study (Williams et al. 2000), using spatio-visual tasks that are part of the
Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) (CeNes Ltd.
1999), compared the performance of children with SLI at age 6 to age-matched non-
language impaired comparisons. The participants (SLI and comparison) included
children with and without ADHD, so forming four groups. No significant
differences on the tasks were attributed to SLI; children with ADHD, regardless of
322 E. L. Bavin et al.

SLI, showed spatio-visual memory problems. However, the inclusion criteria for SLI
were not stringent in Williams et al.’s study; children were identified as SLI with a
score of 1 SD below the mean on at least 1 standard language measure; the measures
included vocabulary and articulation, which may be a speech rather language
impairment and not necessarily a feature of SLI. A more crucial problem is that
screening was conducted when the children were aged 45 months, but testing was
undertaken some time later, when the children were aged 6. Thus, children who met
the inclusion criteria at age 45 months may not have done so at age 6. The absence
of significant findings for SLI in the Williams et al. (2000) study could be related to
these factors.
Any task selected for the assessment of memory in children should have
demonstrated validity. Furthermore, to minimize the dependence on language, non-
verbal tasks should require that individuals indicate their responses manually. In the
study reported below, children responded via a touch screen to a battery of
computerized spatio-visual tasks. These were part of the CANTAB battery. That is,
the tasks that measure the speed of responding, spatio-visual memory and working
memory (Luciana 2003) used non-verbal responses to non-verbal stimuli.
Tasks from the CANTAB battery have been shown to be appropriate for
children aged from 4 to 12 years of age. Luciana and Nelson (1998) tested nearly 400
normally developing children in this age range. Their data indicate that the
maturation of widespread neural networks that integrate the processing demands of
working memory tasks occurs gradually over childhood; clear developmental trends
were shown. The tasks present a means of identifying departure points from normal
development in children with SLI.

Aims
The focus of the current study was to compare performance between a group of
children with SLI and an age-matched comparison group on a series of tasks testing
spatio-visual memory. The purpose was to identify the extent to which children with
SLI show problems in the spatio-visual memory domain. If the memory problems
of children with SLI extend beyond the verbal domain to the spatio-visual domain,
one would expect them to show significantly worse performance than an age-
matched comparison group on tasks testing spatio-visual memory. Based on the
literature on memory limitations in the verbal domain for children with SLI, one
would expect more problems for tasks in which processing demands are high and
for tasks which test working memory.
Based on past research showing generalized slowing for children with SLI, we
hypothesized that the latencies for the children with SLI would be longer than those
of the age-matched comparison group. Our second hypothesis was that if the
memory problems of children with SLI extend beyond the verbal domain, the
accuracy of the children with SLI would be worse than that of age-matched non-
impaired children on three memory tasks (pattern memory, spatial memory and
paired associative learning) with greater differences for paired associative learning. A
span task and a search-based working memory task were also included in the test
battery. We predicted that the performance of children with SLI on these tasks
(span and search task) would not be as good as that of an age-matched comparison
group.
Spatio-visual memory of children with specific language impairment 323

Methods and procedures

Participants
Data from 42 children (22 male and 20 female) are reported. Twenty-one children
were identified as SLI; these ranged in age from 48 to 66 months with only three
reaching the age of 5 years (mean age554.1 months, range548–66 months,
SD54.8 months). The children screened for SLI were recruited from a registry of
parents interested in having their children participate in research, or were referred to
a late-talker study by local Maternal and Child Health Centre nurses, who check
development of babies and infants at regular intervals in their first years of life.
Screening for SLI was on the basis of scores on the Clinical Evaluation of Language
Fundamentals — Preschool (CELF-P) (Wiig et al. 1992), and three performance
subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence test for Preschool — Revised (WPPSI-R)
(Wechsler 1989): object assembly, block design and picture completion.
Scores from the CELF-P are scaled with a mean5100 and SD515. An
Expressive score, a Receptive score and a Total language score are calculated.
Following Tomblin et al. (1996), we used a cut-off score of 1.25 SDs below the
mean (81) on either Expressive or Receptive language scores. Tomblin et al.’s
recommendation for a 1.25 cut-off was based on a large epidemiological study of
children with SLI comparing different assessment measures. Of the children
identified as SLI in the current study, 12 met the criterion on the Expressive scale of
the CELF-P with one of these also having a low Receptive score (83); seven met the
criterion on both the Expressive and Receptive scales. The other two children met
the criterion on the Receptive scale and also had a low Expressive score (85). That is,
all children had low scores on expressive language. All were within the normal range
on the composite score of the three WPPSI-R performance subtests (8 or higher).
For the comparison group (AM) an equal number of children (n521) were
matched on gender and on age as closely as possible (¡3 months) with the children
with SLI. All had scores in the normal range on the CELF-P test (Expressive,
Receptive and Total) and WPPSI-R subtests. Independent sample t-tests were used
to determine that the groups did not differ significantly on age or any of the WPPSI-
R subscores: Age, t (40)50.06, p.0.05, Picture Completion, t (40)50.79, p.0.05,
Object assembly, t (40)51.04, p.0.05, Block design, t (40)51.51, p.0.05. In
contrast, significant differences were found between groups on both the Receptive
and Expressive scores of the CELF-P, Receptive, t (40)56.86, p,0.001, Expressive,
t (40)58.30, p,0.001. The means and standard deviations for Age, Receptive
language, Expressive language and WPPSI-R are presented in table 1.
All children were raised in English-speaking homes. The primary caregiver of
each child completed a personal history questionnaire for their child to help us
identify if there were developmental delays other than for language. No child with a

Table 1. Means for age, language and WPPSI-R scores for SLI and AM groups

SLI children, mean (SD) AM children, mean (SD)

Age (months) 54.09 (4.82) 54.00 (5.30)
Expressive language 72.57 (10.68) 100.00 (10.73)
Receptive language 85.05 (12.08) 108.52 (10.01)
WPPSI subtests 10 (2.00) 11 (1.4)
324 E. L. Bavin et al.

hearing, speech, identified neurological or social problem, or a known develop-

mental delay (other than language) was included in the study. None of the children
had reported symptoms of ADHD, that is, inattention, hyperactivity or impulsivity
(Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — Fourth Edition) and nor
did they show any of these behaviours during the two sessions of testing.

Materials and procedure

A selection of subtests from the CANTAB battery (CeNes Ltd 1999) was used to
test the children’s spatio-visual memory and working memory. These were
appropriate for 4-year-olds. They were administered on a Hewlett Packard laptop
computer attached to a touch screen. The use of a touch screen meant that the
children were not required to make any verbal responses to the stimuli. Before the
tests were administered, a motor response task was used to familiarize the children
to the touch screen. This task also provided a latency score. In other words, the task
served to show if the children with SLI were generally slower in responding than
were the AM group. In this task, a number of large coloured crosses appeared on the
screen one at a time. When a cross appeared, a beeping sound was heard and
continued until the child touched the cross (or the trial timed out); the cross then
disappeared and another cross appeared somewhere else on the screen. This was
repeated for a total of 10 stimuli. The beeping served to attract and hold attention.
All children were able to find and touch the 10 crosses. The mean response time
across trials was calculated as the motor latency score.
Three spatio-visual memory tasks followed familiarization.
N Pattern recognition memory (PR) used a forced choice approach to
determine if the child could remember and recognize a pattern previously
seen on the screen. This is a simple memory task using non-verbal material. A
series of patterns appeared on the screen for 3 seconds each. After the last
pattern disappeared and a short delay of 5 seconds, two patterns appeared,
one of which had been seen previously in the set presented. The child was
required to select the pattern that they had seen before. This was sometimes
positioned on the left and sometimes on the right of the new pattern, the
distracter. Two blocks of 12 trials each were presented giving a total
maximum score of 24. Choices and response times were recorded. Practice
trials preceded the test trials.
N Spatial recognition (SR) tests memory for spatial location. In this forced
choice task, the child must remember where a pattern had been seen.
Following practice trials, four blocks were presented with five test trials each.
A series of boxes appeared on the screen, one after the other for 3 seconds
each. Once the last box had disappeared, two boxes appeared for 5 seconds,
one of which was in the same location as a previously shown box. The child
was required to identify which of the two locations a box had appeared in
before. Choices and response times were recorded.
N Paired associates learning (PAL) tests how well a stimulus can be matched to
a particular location. The number of stimuli varied but the choice of locations
was always six. Two practice trials were given before the test trials began. For
each trial six boxes appeared on the screen. They ‘opened’ and ‘closed’ one at
a time. In the first trial (stage 1), a ‘treasure’ (shape) was found in one of the
Spatio-visual memory of children with specific language impairment 325

boxes. After all six boxes had opened and closed, the treasure appeared again,
but now in the middle of the screen; the child was required to touch the box
in which it had previously appeared. If the child touched the wrong box, the
trial was repeated up to a total of 10 attempts. The number of attempts was
recorded. After succeeding on stage 1, the child moved to stage 2. As in stage
1, only one shape had to be remembered, but for stages 3 and 4, the task
became more difficult with two shapes to be remembered. That is, one shape
appeared in one box and another in another box; after they appeared again
on the screen the child was required to touch the box each shape had
appeared in. Again the child had 10 attempts to succeed in identifying the
correct matches, that is, in which of the six boxes each shape had appeared. If
successful, the next stage could be attempted. For stages 5 and 6, there were
three shapes to match to location; for stage 7, the location of six shapes had
to be remembered, a shape for every box. If the child did not succeed at any
one stage (after the ten attempts), testing was terminated for PAL. The
number of stages completed and the number completed on the first attempt
were used as the dependent variables. The task required more processing
than PR and SR because a matching of item and location was required,
rather than remembering which of two items or locations had been seen
before.
Two other tasks were used.
N Spatial span (SSP). The task is based on the Corsi blocks task and measures
non-verbal memory capacity. A set of boxes appeared in various positions
over the screen; they then changed colour one at a time. The child was
required to touch the boxes in the same order in which they changed colour.
Test trials followed two practice trials. The set length for each trial varied
from two boxes changing colour in test trial 1 to three in test trial 2, four in
test trial 3 and five in test trial 4.
N Spatial working memory search task (SWM). The self-guided search (SWM) is
a working memory task because the child must remember which boxes have
previously been searched while making a new choice. It is more complex than
spatial span as attention must be split between conducting a search and
remembering to avoid previously searched boxes. If the child develops a
strategy rather than guessing if a box had been previously searched, the
number of errors could be reduced.
The task involved finding a hidden token in one of an array of boxes (squares) that
appeared on the screen. If there were four squares in a set, there were four searches
for the trial and if there were three squares, there were three searches. Only one
square per search had a hidden token, but by the end of a trial every square in a set
would have a token found in it. When the participant finds the first target, the target
moves to a ‘container’ on the side of the screen and the search starts again and
continues until all squares in the set have been ‘emptied’. Returning to a previously
searched square counts as an error, either within a search or between searches in a
given trial. Set lengths were three, four and six. That is the child first had three boxes
in which to find the hidden token (three searches) and then four (four searches) and
then six (six searches). The number of between-search errors and within-search
errors for the sets were recorded and then combined for a total error score.
326 E. L. Bavin et al.

At the beginning of each subtest the experimenter explained the task in a child-
friendly way, and gave the practice items for the task. Only when the child was
successful on these items did the test trials begin. Some feedback was provided by
the computer: for example, a cross or tick appeared if the correct box was identified
in PL and SL. All the children responded positively to the touch screen and their
interest was maintained throughout the tasks. The total testing time varied
depending on how quickly a child responded to the tasks but never exceeded
35 minutes. A short break halfway through was allowed.

Results
The analysis of response times for the motor screening, PR and SR are reported
first, followed by the analysis of the accuracy scores from PR, SR and PAL and then
the analysis of the results from the SSP and the SWM tasks. Descriptive statistics are
presented in table 2. Because outliers can skew group means, all data sets were
examined for outliers (that is, 3 SDs from the mean). Planned comparisons were
used to compare group performance on the tasks in order to address the specific
hypotheses.

Motor screening
Separate analyses of variance were conducted on the latency scores for the motor
screening task, PR and SR. One outlier in the SLI group was identified for motor
screening and thus the analysis on these data excluded this child and match.
Although mean response times on the task were greater for the SLI group on this
task, the difference was not significant, F(1, 40)51.74, p50.194, n250.04. For PR
and SR, the mean response times were slightly longer for the comparison group, but
the group differences were not significant (PR: F(1, 40)50.591, p50.446, n250.015;
SR, F(1, 49)50.121, p50.729, n250.003). This finding does not support the first
hypothesis that children with SLI would take significantly longer to respond.

Spatio-visual memory tasks

We predicted that the SLI children would not be as accurate as the AM comparison
group on the memory tasks (PR, SR and PAL) with lowest performance on PAL

Table 2. SLI and AM scores for motor latency, PR, SR, PAL, span and SWM tasks

SLI, mean (SD) AM, mean (SD)

Motor latency (ms) 1591.05 (630.46) 1365.71 (463.26)
PR latency (ms) 2625.48 (998.14) 2897.54 (1277.63)
SR latency (ms) 2907.62 (1832.07) 3126.14 (2213.29)
PR percentage correct 51.19 (14.08) 64.88 (15.39)
SR percentage correct 47.14 (9.82) 53.1 (10.66)
PAL stages comp (of seven) 6.43 (1.57) 6.95 (0.97)
PAL stages comp first try 3.71 (1.48) 4.95 (0.92)
Span length 2.24 (0.44) 2.62 (0.74)
SWM between errors 36.67 (26.88) 26.62 (20.46)
SWM total errors 38.14 (28.30) 27. 05 (21.17)
Spatio-visual memory of children with specific language impairment 327

because of its complexity. The mean correct scores are listed in table 2. An ANOVA
comparing group means showed a significant between-group difference on PR, F(1,
40)59.04, p50.005, n250.18. The SLI children were less able to remember which
patterns they had seen than the AM group. However, while the SLI group had a
lower mean correct score for SR, the difference was not significant, F(1, 40)53.54,
p50.067, n250.08.
Because both the PR and SR are forced choice tasks, the number correct for
each task was compared with chance. In the PR task, 13 (62%) of the SLI children
had a score greater than chance and 18 (86%) of the children in the comparison
group. The accuracy for the group as a whole on PR was greater than expected by
chance, t (41)53.23, p50.002. However, this was due only to the performance of the
comparison group, t (20)54.43, p,0.001; for the SLI group t (20)53.88, p.0.05. In
the SR task only 10 (48%) of the SLI children had scores greater than chance and 14
(67%) of the comparison group. Accuracy overall for SR was not greater than
expected by chance, t (41)51.09, p.0.05. This was true for both groups with a trend
for a difference noted for the comparison group t (20)51.87, p50.077; SLI,
t (20)53.18, p.0.05.
For PAL, the number of stages complete was compared across groups as was the
number of stages completed on the first attempt (recall that children were given up
to 10 attempts for each stage and testing stopped when a child did not successfully
complete a stage). For PAL mean number of stages completed the range was 2–8 for
the SLI group and 4–8 for the AM group. The means and SDs presented in table 2
show lower means for the SLI group. However, the difference between groups was
not significant, F(1, 40)51.69, p50.20, n250.04. For the number of stages
completed on the first attempt, one outlier was identified (not the same as in motor
screening) and thus the analysis excluded this child and the match. The difference
between groups on this variable was significant, F(1, 40)516.09, p50.002, n250.21.
This difference in how long it took for the SLI children to learn/memorize the
location of a target indicates memory problems that are not language specific.
Overall, the findings for the memory tasks of PR, SR and PAL partially support
the second hypothesis. While the children with SLI were significantly less accurate in
PR this was not so for SR. Both groups found SR harder than PR. For PAL, children
with SLI needed more attempts to learn a pattern-location association.

Span and search task

The score from the span task was obtained by identifying the highest number of
boxes to change colour that could be remembered in the correct sequence. The
means for the span and SWM tasks are given in table 2. For the span task, the
difference between groups was significant at the 0.05 level, F(1, 40)54.13, p50.049,
n250.09 with a higher span for the AM group. That is, it was more likely that the
non-impaired children could remember a non-verbal sequence longer than two
items than the SLI children. In the SLI group 16 children had a span of only two
while five had a longer span, while in the non-impaired group 11 children had a span
of two and 10 had a longer span.
The two dependent measures for SWM indicate the number of unnecessary
choices the children made in their searches. First, the between-errors were
examined. These were the errors made by returning to a box that had already been
328 E. L. Bavin et al.

emptied in a previous search in a particular trial. Far more between-errors were

made than within-errors, those made by returning to a box already searched within a
search. As indicated in table 2, the SLI group made more between-errors than the
AM, but the difference between the groups did not reach significance,
F(1.40)51.86, p50.18, n250.04. The second measure examined was the total
number of errors (between+within). Again, although the SLI group made more
errors than the AM, the difference was not significant, F(1, 40)52.07, p50.16,
n250.05. That is, the performance of the children with SLI was not significantly
worse than that of the AM group in this working memory task.

Discussion and conclusions

The results do not provide support for the first hypothesis, that children with SLI
would have significantly longer latencies than the comparison group. In none of the
three tasks in which latencies could be compared were the SLI children significantly
slower than the AM. Thus, the findings do not support Kail’s general slowing
hypothesis. The findings do provide support for hypotheses 2, that children with
SLI manifest a deficit in memory non-specific to the language domain. As predicted,
results show clear differences in performance between children with SLI and the
age-matched non-impaired children in two tasks, PR and PAL (trials to criterion),
but not SR. The SR task, remembering in which box a pattern appeared, was a
harder task than PR for both groups. Hypothesis 3 was only partly supported. There
was a group difference for spatial span but no significant differences were found for
the SWM task, although a trend in favour of the comparison group was evident. The
span task can be compared with a list recall in the verbal domain. However, SWM is
a working memory task that requires integration of information as the search
continues.
The present findings do not support those of Williams et al. (2000), who report
no differences between SLI and age-matched children using tasks from CANTAB;
no effects in that study related specifically to SLI. There are a several reasons for the
difference in findings. First, the children in the current study were younger than
those in Williams et al.’s study. Luciana and Nelson (2002) report improvement in
performance of children with normal language development on CANTAB tasks
from the age of 4 years up. Memory differences between young SLI children and
age-matched non-impaired children might be expected if children with SLI are
delayed in development. These differences may resolve to some extent with
development. Second, different screening was used. In the present study, stricter
criteria were used.
The ability to deal with task complexity explains patterns of results for PAL in
the current study. Hanson and Montgomery (2003) asked children with SLI to learn
to associate a dot with an auditory stimulus. The problems children had with the
task were argued to be related to task demands: attending to the auditory stimulus,
creating and storing an auditory template, learning to associate a dot with the
stimulus, deciding which stimulus was heard by comparing it with a stored template,
and then deciding which dot to point to and making a motor response. For the PAL
task in the present study children had to associate a visual stimulus with a location.
To make a correct response spatial information had to be encoded and stored in
memory as the series of boxes opened and closed; this might involve rehearsal of the
Spatio-visual memory of children with specific language impairment 329

fading memory trace of the location, that is, recomputing its spatial coordinates
(Smith 2000). The PAL task is complex in comparison with SR; in SR, the children
only had to remember in which of two locations a box appeared while in PAL the
children had to remember that a particular token appeared in a box in a particular
location. The choice of locations in PAL was greater than in SR. For this reason, the
PAL task involves additional processing and, as the results show, the children with
SLI required more attempts.
In addition, as predicted, the SLI children were less successful than the AM
group on PR. One strategy for remembering is to encode information verbally with
rehearsal of the verbal information as information is processed (Baddeley 1986).
Even a visual stimulus will force a phonological representation if a verbal response
to the stimulus is required (Gillam et al. 1998). In both the PR and PAL tasks, a
particular pattern had to be remembered; as the patterns were abstract, they would
be difficult to label and, hence, must be remembered without the help of verbal
rehearsal. Their performance on this task indicates a problem with non-verbal
memory for the children with SLI.
The groups differed in how many colour changes could be remembered in
sequence in the SPAN task. To some extent, this is a factor of the age group tested.
Luciana (2003, figure 1) shows a stepwise development in non-verbal memory span
measured on the span task, from two items at 4–5 years of age to three items
between the ages of 6 and 7. In the current study, the AM and SLI children all
remembered a sequence of at least two squares changing colour. Research with the
group of children with SLI as they grow older might show them lagging more
behind the non-impaired AM group.
For both groups, the SWM task proved difficult. Engle (2002) argues that working
memory represents a limitation in ability to control attention. Both attention and inhibi-
tion are needed to perform well in the SWM task. Respondents need to remember
which boxes have already been opened and attend to this information, resisting the
temptation to touch every box on the screen. Developing a search strategy (planning a
path to follow) can help reduce the number of errors of returning to already searched
boxes. As argued by Cowan (1997), such a strategy involves controlled cognitive process
that can assist memory. The process of spatial updating has also been shown to predict
performance on goal-directed location and manipulation, allowing spatial referents
to be encoded and stored in working memory as new information is encountered
on-line (Reiser 1989). The results of the SWM task in the present study suggest the
children were not developing a strategy for searching, nor successfully updating
information as they completed one search and moved to another within a trial.
That the AM group was not significantly better than the SLI group on this task
supports Luciella and Nelson (1998) who, based on their research with children
aged from 4 years of age, argue that working memory is still developing.

Advantages of using the CANTAB tasks

Gillam et al. (1998) report that SLI children older than in the current study were
better able to respond on a visual task by pointing rather than by speaking. In the
current study, children touched a screen to respond. An advantage in using a touch
screen for young children is that it seems to keep them interested in the tasks. There
is also an advantage in using a battery of tests such as CANTAB because it can be
330 E. L. Bavin et al.

used longitudinally; 4-year-olds can be tested with the same materials as older
children and adults. Because the tasks included in the battery have not been shown
to be valid for children younger than 4 years of age, we could not use language-
matched (younger) controls in the current study, as is typically used in studies of
children with SLI (although not all; Marton and Schwartz 2003). However, a follow-
up study with the same SLI children at age 6 and a younger comparison group
would reveal whether the SLI children’s performance on the tasks resembles that of
younger children than age matched. It would provide crucial information on the
development of spatial and visual memory of children with SLI in comparison with
non-impaired children.
In conclusion, the children with SLI did not perform as well as age-matched
non-impaired children on some spatio-visual memory tasks presented by computer
and requiring a non-verbal response. The PR and PAL tasks, in particular, showed
significantly poorer performance, as did spatial span. The findings from the study
support the view that impairments of children with SLI are not restricted to
language but extend to other cognitive domains. These findings have implications
for the aetiology of SLI. They also indicate that intervention programmes for young
children with SLI need to extend beyond language in order to focus on helping
children develop strategies for processing information in different situations,
including situations in which they need to rely on spatial and visual information.

Acknowledgements
Research was funded by a grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC) to
E. Bavin, R. Maruff and P. Wilson. The authors thank all the children and families
for participating in the research.

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