Abstract:
This study examined lexical-semantic processing in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) during visually situated comprehension of real-time spoken words. Existing evidence suggests that children with DLD may experience challenges in lexical access and retrieval, as well as greater lexical competition compared to their peers with Typical Development (TD). However, the specific nature of these difficulties remains unclear. Using eye-tracking methodology, the study investigated the real-time comprehension of semantic relationships in children with DLD and their age-matched peers. The results revealed that, for relatively frequent nouns, both groups demonstrated similar comprehension of semantic relationships. Both groups favored the semantic competitor when it appeared with an unrelated visual referent. In turn, when the semantic competitor appeared with the visual referent of the spoken word, both groups disregarded the competitor. This finding shows that, although children with DLD usually present a relatively impoverished vocabulary, frequent nouns may not pose greater difficulties for them. While the temporal course of preference for the competitor or the referent was similar between the two groups, numerical, though non-significant, differences in the extension of the clusters were observed. In summary, this research demonstrates that monolingual preschoolers with DLD exhibit similar lexical access to frequent words compared to their peers with TD. Future studies should investigate the performance of children with DLD on less frequent words to provide a comprehensive understanding of their lexical-semantic abilities.
摘要:
这项研究研究了在视觉上理解实时口语单词的过程中,患有发展语言障碍(DLD)的儿童的词汇语义处理。现有证据表明,患有DLD的儿童可能会在词汇访问和检索方面遇到挑战,与具有典型发展(TD)的同行相比,词汇竞争也更大。然而,这些困难的具体性质尚不清楚。使用眼动追踪方法,该研究调查了DLD儿童及其年龄匹配的同龄人对语义关系的实时理解。结果显示,对于相对频繁的名词,两组对语义关系的理解相似。当语义竞争者出现时,两组都偏爱语义竞争者。反过来,当语义竞争者与口语单词的视觉参照一起出现时,这两个团体都无视竞争对手。这一发现表明,尽管患有DLD的儿童通常词汇相对贫乏,频繁的名词可能不会给他们带来更大的困难。虽然两组之间对竞争对手或对象的偏好的时间过程相似,数值,虽然不重要,观察到簇的延伸差异。总之,这项研究表明,与使用TD的同龄人相比,使用DLD的单语学龄前儿童对频繁单词的词汇访问相似。未来的研究应该调查DLD儿童在频率较低的单词上的表现,以全面了解他们的词汇语义能力。