ABSTRACT
The main idea is that the cognitive schemas for processing, organizing, and chunking language interact automatically with working memory (WM) and attentional control mechanisms to allow language users to quickly and efficiently process sounds in ways that enable them to implicitly deduce their statistical regularity. Children with specific language impairment have language-learning difficulties that cannot be attributed to clinically significant medical, neurological, sensory, or environmental factors. One problem with the studies of declarative memory is that the learning tasks that have been used have large attention, working memory, and language requirements. A number of authors have hypothesized that deficits in working memory contribute to disorders in expressive and receptive language. M. T. Ullman extended his Declarative-Procedural model of language to explain the mechanisms underlying specific language impairment. The Competing Language Processing Task, based on Just and Carpenter's reading span task, has been used to study WM in children.
