Statistical Word Learning in Catalan-Spanish and English-Speaking Children with and without Developmental Language Disorder

Autor/inn/en	Ahufinger, Nadia; Ferinu, Laura; Sanz-Torrent, Mònica; Andreu, Llorenç; Evans, Julia L.
Titel	Statistical Word Learning in Catalan-Spanish and English-Speaking Children with and without Developmental Language Disorder
Quelle	In: International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 57 (2022) 1, S.42-62 (21 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Ahufinger, Nadia) ORCID (Evans, Julia L.)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1368-2822
DOI	10.1111/1460-6984.12673
Schlagwörter	Children; Developmental Disabilities; Language Impairments; Vocabulary Development; Spanish; English; Contrastive Linguistics; Tone Languages; Memory; Foreign Countries; Spain + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Child; Kind; Kinder; Entwicklungsstörung; Speech disorder; Speech disorders; Speech disabilities; Speech disability; Speech handicap; Speech handicaps; Speech impairment; Speech impairments; Language handicaps; Sprachbehinderung; Wortschatzarbeit; Spanisch; English language; Englisch; Linguistics; Kontrastive Linguistik; Tonsprache; Gedächtnis; Ausland; Spanien
Abstract	Background: A growing body of work shows that children with developmental language disorder (DLD) perform poorly on statistical word learning (SWL) tasks, consistent with the predictions of the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis that predicts that procedural memory is impaired in DLD. To date, however, SWL performance has not been compared across linguistically heterogeneous populations of children with DLD. Aims: To compare SWL performance in a group of age, sex and non-verbal IQ-matched Catalan-Spanish and English-speaking children with and without DLD. Methods & Procedures: Two cohorts of children: (1) 35 Catalan-Spanish-speaking children with DLD (M[subscript age] = 8;7 years) and 35 age/sex-matched typical developing (TD) children (M[subscript age] = 8;9 years), and (2) 24 English-speaking children with DLD (M[subscript age] = 9;1 years) and 19 age/sex matched TD controls (M[subscript age] = 8;9 years) completed the tone version of a SWL task from Evans et al. (2009). Children listened to a tone language in which transitional probabilities within tone words were higher than those between words. Outcomes & Results: For both Catalan-Spanish and English cohorts, overall performance for the children with DLD was poorer than that of the TD controls regardless of the child's native language. Item analysis revealed that children with DLD had difficulty tracking statistical information and using transitional probability to discover tone word boundaries within the input. For both the Catalan-Spanish and English-speaking children, SWL accounted for a significant amount of unique variance in Receptive and Expressive vocabulary. Likelihood ratio analysis revealed that for both Catalan-Spanish and English cohorts, children having performance [less than or equal to] 45% on the SWL task had an extremely high degree of likelihood of having DLD. The analysis also revealed that for the Catalan-Spanish and English-speaking children, scores of [greater than or equal to] 75% and [greater than or equal to] 70%, respectively, were highly likelihood to be children with normal language abilities. Conclusions & Implications: The findings add to a pattern suggesting that SWL is a mechanism that children rely on to acquire vocabulary. The results also suggest that SWL deficits, in particular when combined with other measures, may be a reliable diagnostic indicator for children with DLD regardless of the child's native language, and whether or not the child is bilingual or monolingual. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01