Dataset Information

Sensitivity to Morphosyntactic Information in Preschool Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder: A Follow-Up Study.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

This study tested children's sensitivity to tense/agreement information in fronted auxiliaries during online comprehension of questions (e.g., Are the nice little dogs running?). Data from children with developmental language disorder (DLD) were compared to previously published data from typically developing (TD) children matched according to sentence comprehension test scores.

Method

Fifteen 5-year-old children with DLD and fifteen 3-year-old TD children participated in a looking-while-listening task. Children viewed pairs of pictures, 1 with a single agent and 1 with multiple agents, accompanied by a sentence with a fronted auxiliary (is + single agent or are + two agents) or a control sentence. Proportion looking to the target was measured.

Results

Children with DLD did not show anticipatory looking based on the number information contained in the auxiliary (is or are) as the younger TD children had. Both groups showed significant increases in looking to the target upon hearing the subject noun (e.g., dogs).

Conclusions

Despite the groups' similar sentence comprehension abilities and ability to accurately respond to the information provided by the subject noun, children with DLD did not show sensitivity to number information on the fronted auxiliary. This insensitivity is considered in light of these children's weaker command of tense/agreement forms in their speech. Specifically, we consider the possibility that failure to grasp the relation between the subject-verb sequence (e.g., dogs running) and preceding information (e.g., are) in questions in the input contributes to the protracted inconsistency in producing auxiliary forms in obligatory contexts by children with DLD.

Supplemental material

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.7283459.

SUBMITTER: Deevy P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6440306 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Sensitivity to Morphosyntactic Information in Preschool Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder: A Follow-Up Study.

Deevy Patricia P Leonard Laurence B LB

Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR 20181201 12

<h4>Purpose</h4>This study tested children's sensitivity to tense/agreement information in fronted auxiliaries during online comprehension of questions (e.g., Are the nice little dogs running?). Data from children with developmental language disorder (DLD) were compared to previously published data from typically developing (TD) children matched according to sentence comprehension test scores.<h4>Method</h4>Fifteen 5-year-old children with DLD and fifteen 3-year-old TD children participated in a ...[more]

PMID: 30453333

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Project description:A number of experiments support the hypothetical utility of statistical information for language learning and processing among both children and adults. However, tasks in these studies are often very general, and only a few include populations with developmental language disorder (DLD). We wanted to determine whether a stronger relationship might be shown when the measure of statistical learning is chosen for its relevance to the language task when including a substantial number of participants with DLD. The language ability we measured was sensitivity to verb bias - the likelihood of a verb to appear with a certain argument or interpretation. A previous study showed adults with DLD were less sensitive to verb bias than their typical peers. Verb bias sensitivity had not yet been tested in children with DLD. In Study 1, 49 children, ages 7-9 years, 17 of whom were classified as having DLD, completed a task designed to measure sensitivity to verb bias through implicit and explicit measures. We found children with and without DLD showed sensitivity to verb bias in implicit but not explicit measures, with no differences between groups. In Study 2, we used a multiverse approach to investigate whether individual differences in statistical learning predicted verb bias sensitivity in these participants as well as in a dataset of adult participants. Our analysis revealed no evidence of a relationship between statistical learning and verb bias sensitivity in children, which was not unexpected given we found no group differences in Study 1. Statistical learning predicted sensitivity to verb bias as measured through explicit measures in adults, though results were not robust. These findings suggest that verb bias may still be relatively unstable in school age children, and thus may not play the same role in sentence processing in children as in adults. It would also seem that individuals with DLD may not be using the same mechanisms during processing as their typically developing (TD) peers in adulthood. Thus, statistical information may differ in relevance for language processing in individuals with and without DLD.

Dataset Information

Sensitivity to Morphosyntactic Information in Preschool Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder: A Follow-Up Study.

Purpose

Method

Results

Conclusions

Supplemental material

Publications

Sensitivity to Morphosyntactic Information in Preschool Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder: A Follow-Up Study.

Similar Datasets

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