Department of Special Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan.
Res Dev Disabil. 2014 Jan;35(1):10-20. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2013.10.010. Epub 2013 Nov 8.
Children with SLI exhibit overall deficits in novel word learning compared to their age-matched peers. However, the manifestation of the word learning difficulty in SLI was not consistent across tasks and the factors affecting the learning performance were not yet determined. Our aim is to examine the extent of word learning difficulties in Mandarin-speaking preschool children with SLI, and to explore the potent influence of existing lexical knowledge on to the word learning process. Preschool children with SLI (n=37) and typical language development (n=33) were exposed to novel words for unfamiliar objects embedded in stories. Word learning tasks including the initial mapping and short-term repetitive learning were designed. Results revealed that Mandarin-speaking preschool children with SLI performed as well as their age-peers in the initial form-meaning mapping task. Their word learning difficulty was only evidently shown in the short-term repetitive learning task under a production demand, and their learning speed was slower than the control group. Children with SLI learned the novel words with a semantic head better in both the initial mapping and repetitive learning tasks. Moderate correlations between stand word learning performances and scores on standardized vocabulary were found after controlling for children's age and nonverbal IQ. The results suggested that the word learning difficulty in children with SLI occurred in the process of establishing a robust phonological representation at the beginning stage of word learning. Also, implicit compound knowledge is applied to aid word learning process for children with and without SLI. We also provide the empirical data to validate the relationship between preschool children's word learning performance and their existing receptive vocabulary ability.
患有特定语言损伤（SLI）的儿童在新颖单词学习方面整体上表现出缺陷，与他们年龄匹配的同龄人相比。然而，在 SLI 中，单词学习困难的表现并不在所有任务中都一致，并且影响学习表现的因素尚未确定。我们的目的是检查患有 SLI 的普通话学龄前儿童在单词学习方面的困难程度，并探讨现有词汇知识对单词学习过程的潜在影响。我们让患有 SLI（n=37）和具有典型语言发展（n=33）的学龄前儿童接触嵌入在故事中的陌生物体的新颖单词。设计了包括初始映射和短期重复学习的单词学习任务。结果表明，患有 SLI 的普通话学龄前儿童在初始形式-意义映射任务中表现得与他们年龄相仿的儿童一样好。只有在产生需求的短期重复学习任务中，他们的单词学习困难才明显表现出来，并且他们的学习速度比对照组慢。患有 SLI 的儿童在初始映射和重复学习任务中，都更好地学习了具有语义头的新颖单词。在控制了儿童的年龄和非语言智商后，发现标准词汇得分与单词学习表现之间存在中等相关性。结果表明，患有 SLI 的儿童的单词学习困难发生在单词学习初始阶段建立强大的语音表示的过程中。此外，隐式复合知识被应用于帮助患有和不患有 SLI 的儿童进行单词学习过程。我们还提供了实证数据来验证学龄前儿童的单词学习表现与其现有接受性词汇能力之间的关系。
