SLI Diagnostics in narrative tasks. Exploring the CLARIN-NL VALID Data Archive

In 2014 the Vulnerability in Acquisition: Language Impairments in Dutch (VALID)  Data Archive for pathological language data (CLARIN-NL-12-010 grant) was launched. The aim of the VALID Data Archive is to unite various available datasets ranging from metadata, experimental results, and test outcomes to spontaneous speech data, including video recordings, and to develop unambiguous protocols to ascertain the interpretation of research outcomes. In this paper we report a study that we carried out using the VALID Data Archive. In an earlier project the language development of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) had indeed been investigated using a narrative task (retelling of a picture story); the VALID database thus contains transcripts and audio files of the speech of 50 children with SLI and 24 age-matched typically developing (TD) children in the age range between 5;6 to 12;0 years, who all participated in this earlier project. Our study focused on morphosyntactic and lexical accuracy and complexity, in order to determine which language measures are diagnostic indicators of SLI on the basis of this narrative data. Results showed that SLI children performed less well than TD children for morphosyntactic and lexical accuracy and complexity. Interestingly, the results obtained can be compared to results found in three other studies on narratives performed by SLI and TD children. The similarities and differences in the outcomes reveal the urgency to have identical, precise protocols in handling and analysing complex data.