Faculty of Psychology, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.
Center for Advanced Research in Education, Institute of Education, Universidad de Chile.
J Commun Disord. 2020 Sep-Oct;87:106027. doi: 10.1016/j.jcomdis.2020.106027. Epub 2020 Jul 3.
Function words and, more specifically, articles have been widely indicated as one of the main sources of difficulty for children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). The present study is the first to assess the online comprehension of Spanish articles in bilingual children with DLD. In an eye tracking experiment, we monitored participants' eye movements as they listened to Spanish articles embedded in structurally simple sentences. Ninety-six subjects from four different groups were evaluated: 24 children with DLD (average age 7;08), 24 children with the same chronological age (average age 7;08), 24 younger children matched for mean length utterance (average age 6;08), and 24 adults (average age 22;05). We calculated the proportion between the preference for the correct visual referent and a competitor object. Our results suggest that children with DLD are capable of timely comprehension of Spanish articles in real time and within simple sentence structures. However, we observed a strong effect of chronological age in the sample of interest; younger children with DLD are able to identify the correct referent, but this preference is weaker compared to the older children with DLD. We also observed local differences between the DLD group, and the other two children control groups, particularly when the chronological age group is introduced as a factor. These findings suggest a developmental trajectory that is different in the DLD group relative to children with typical language development. Notwithstanding, in spite of the article production difficulties previously reported, children with DLD in the present sample appear to be able to comprehend Spanish articles in the current experimental conditions.
功能词，更具体地说，冠词，已被广泛认为是语言发展障碍（DLD）儿童的主要困难来源之一。本研究首次评估了双语 DLD 儿童对西班牙语冠词的在线理解。在一项眼动实验中，我们监测了参与者在听嵌入在结构简单句子中的西班牙语冠词时的眼球运动。共有来自四个不同组的 96 名受试者参与评估：24 名 DLD 儿童（平均年龄 7 岁 8 个月），24 名年龄相同的儿童（平均年龄 7 岁 8 个月），24 名平均语言长度匹配的较小儿童（平均年龄 6 岁 8 个月），以及 24 名成年人（平均年龄 22 岁 05 个月）。我们计算了正确视觉参照与竞争对象之间的偏好比例。我们的结果表明，DLD 儿童能够实时及时地理解西班牙语冠词，并在简单的句子结构中理解。然而，我们在感兴趣的样本中观察到年龄的强烈影响；年龄较小的 DLD 儿童能够识别正确的参照对象，但与年龄较大的 DLD 儿童相比，这种偏好较弱。我们还观察到 DLD 组与其他两个儿童对照组之间的局部差异，特别是当将年龄组作为因素引入时。这些发现表明，DLD 组的发展轨迹与具有典型语言发展的儿童不同。尽管先前报道了冠词生产困难，但在本研究样本中，DLD 儿童似乎能够在当前实验条件下理解西班牙语冠词。
