Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2018 Dec 10;61(12):3064-3074. doi: 10.1044/2018_JSLHR-L-18-0038.
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.
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.
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).
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.
本研究通过在线理解疑问句（例如，这些可爱的小狗在跑吗？）测试儿童在前置助动词中对时态/一致信息的敏感性。将发育性语言障碍（DLD）儿童的数据与根据句子理解测试分数匹配的典型发育（TD）儿童的先前发表的数据进行比较。
15 名 5 岁患有 DLD 的儿童和 15 名 3 岁 TD 儿童参加了听一听看一眼任务。孩子们观看了一对图片，一张图片中有一个单一的主体，另一张图片中有多个主体，同时伴随着一个带有前置助动词（is + 单一主体或 are + 两个主体）或控制句子的句子。测量了对目标的注视比例。
患有 DLD 的儿童没有像年轻的 TD 儿童那样根据助动词（is 或 are）中包含的数量信息进行预期的注视。两组儿童在听到主语名词（例如，dogs）时都显著增加了对目标的注视。
尽管两组儿童的句子理解能力和准确响应主语名词所提供信息的能力相似，但 DLD 儿童对前置助动词的数量信息没有表现出敏感性。考虑到这些儿童在其言语中对时态/一致性形式的掌握较弱，这种不敏感性被认为是不可取的。具体来说，我们考虑了这样一种可能性，即在输入中未能理解主语-动词序列（例如，dogs running）与前面的信息（例如，are）之间的关系可能导致 DLD 儿童在强制性上下文中产生助动词形式的长期不一致。
