Word Recognition and Word Prediction in Preschoolers With (a Suspicion of) a Developmental Language Disorder: Evidence From Eye Tracking

Abilities of children with developmental language disorders in perceiving phonological, grammatical, and semantic structures

This study aims to investigate the perception of phonological, grammatical, and semantic structures by 8 children (age range: 8;2-9;5) with developmental language disorders (DLD). Another 8 age-matched (age range: 8;4-10;0) typically developing (TD) children served as controls. The results demonstrated that children with DLD had lower performance than children with TD in the phonology and grammar tests, corroborating earlier findings, which reported difficulties of children with DLD in discriminating voicing contrasts and perceiving grammatical structures. However, both groups had similar performance in the semantic test. The absence of semantic atypicality can be explained possibly due to the simplicity of the sentences included in the test. The study offers important clinical implications for the identification and treatment of the disorder.

The Language Environment at Home of Children With (a Suspicion of) a Developmental Language Disorder and Relations With Standardized Language Measures

PURPOSE

This study compares the home language environments of children with (a suspicion of) developmental language disorder (DLD) with that of children with typical development (TD). It does so by adopting new technology that automatically provides metrics about children's language environment (Language ENvironment Analysis [LENA]). In addition, relationships between LENA metrics and standardized language tests are explored in the DLD group.

METHOD

Ninety-nine 2- to 4-year-old toddlers participated: 59 with (a suspicion of) DLD and 40 with TD. LENA metrics on adult word count, conversational turn count, and child vocalization count were obtained. For all children, data on parental education and multilingualism were available. In the DLD group, data were collected on receptive and expressive vocabulary and grammar, and on nonverbal intelligence, using standardized tests.

RESULTS

We found lower adult word count, conversational turn count, and child vocalization count in the DLD group, independent of multilingualism but not of parental education. In the DLD group, receptive vocabulary was related to conversational turn count and child vocalization count, but not to adult word count. Expressive vocabulary, receptive grammar, and expressive grammar were not related to LENA metrics.

CONCLUSIONS

Toddlers with (a suspicion of) DLD vocalize less at home than children with TD. They also hear fewer adult words and experience fewer conversational turns. Children with DLD's language outcomes are to a limited extent related to language environment at home. Conversational turns and child vocalizations are in this respect more important than adult words, in line with findings for TD populations.

From Recognizing Known Words to Learning New Ones: Comparing Online Speech Processing in Typically Developing and Late-Talking 2-Year-Olds

PURPOSE

This study examines online speech processing in typically developing and late-talking 2-year-old children, comparing both groups' word recognition, word prediction, and word learning.

METHOD

English-acquiring U.S. children, from the "When to Worry" study of language and social-emotional development, were identified as typical talkers (n = 67, M age = 27.0 months, SD = 1.4; Study 1) or late talkers (n = 30, M age = 27.0 months, SD = 2.0; Study 2). Children completed an eye-tracking task assessing their ability to recognize both nouns and verbs, to use verbs to predict an upcoming noun's referent, and to use verbs to infer the meaning of novel nouns.

RESULTS

Both typical and late talkers recognized nouns and verbs and used familiar verbs to predict the referents of upcoming nouns, whether the noun was familiar ("You can eat the apple") or novel ("You can eat the dax"). Late talkers were slower in using familiar nouns to orient to the target and were both slower and less accurate in using familiar verbs to identify the upcoming noun's referent. Notably, however, both groups learned and retained novel word meanings with similar success.

CONCLUSIONS

Late talkers demonstrated slower lexical processing, especially for verbs. Yet, their success in using familiar verbs to learn novel nouns suggests that, as a group, their slower processing did not impair word learning in this task. This sets the foundation for future work investigating whether these measures predict later language outcomes and can differentiate late talkers with transient delays from those with language disorders.

Online Comprehension of Verbal Number Morphology in Children With Developmental Language Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Study

PURPOSE

Previous studies have raised the possibility of preserved language comprehension in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) in online tasks and within simple sentence structures. Consequently, we evaluated the capacity of children with DLD to comprehend verbal number agreement in simple sentence structures (i.e., verb-object-subject and verb-subject).

METHOD

Using an eye-tracking methodology, we conducted two psycholinguistic experiments with 96 Spanish- and Catalan-speaking participants. The sample was distributed into four groups: 24 children with DLD (age range: 4;6-12;6 [years;months]; average age = 7;8 [years;months]), 24 children with the same chronological age (4;6-12;2, 7;8), 24 children with the same linguistic level (4;6-9;4, 6;8), and 24 university students as language experts (18-30, 22;5).

RESULTS

The experimental data indicate that children with DLD can comprehend verbal number agreement at least under the present experimental conditions.

CONCLUSION

The empirical outcomes suggest that number morphology comprehension by children with DLD might be more typical than what it is generally considered to be.

Infants' Implicit Rhyme Perception in Child Songs and Its Relationship With Vocabulary

Rhyme perception is an important predictor for future literacy. Assessing rhyme abilities, however, commonly requires children to make explicit rhyme judgements on single words. Here we explored whether infants already implicitly process rhymes in natural rhyming contexts (child songs) and whether this response correlates with later vocabulary size. In a passive listening ERP study, 10.5 month-old Dutch infants were exposed to rhyming and non-rhyming child songs. Two types of rhyme effects were analysed: (1) ERPs elicited by the first rhyme occurring in each song (rhyme sensitivity) and (2) ERPs elicited by rhymes repeating after the first rhyme in each song (rhyme repetition). Only for the latter a tentative negativity for rhymes from 0 to 200 ms after the onset of the rhyme word was found. This rhyme repetition effect correlated with productive vocabulary at 18 months-old, but not with any other vocabulary measure (perception at 10.5 or 18 months-old). While awaiting future replication, the study indicates precursors of phonological awareness already during infancy and with ecologically valid linguistic stimuli.