Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, MA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2022 Jan 12;65(1):292-302. doi: 10.1044/2021_JSLHR-21-00050. Epub 2021 Dec 3.
The purpose of the study was to evaluate implicit learning in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) by employing a visual artificial grammar learning task.
Thirteen children with DLD and 24 children with typical language development between the ages of 8 and 12 years completed a visual artificial grammar learning task. During the training phase of the task, participants were presented with strings of shapes that followed the underlying structure of a finite grammar. During the testing phase, participants were asked to judge whether new strings were grammatical or nongrammatical. Grammatical judgment of new strings served to measure generalization of the underlying grammatical structure. Endorsement based on chunk strength, or similarity to training exemplars, served to evaluate the extent to which children relied on surface features to guide their task performance.
As a group, children with typical development performed better on the artificial grammar learning task, compared with children with DLD, and accepted more grammatical strings regardless of their similarity to training exemplars. Task performance in both groups was not affected by surface features. Performance of children with DLD whose test accuracy exceeded the learning threshold of 0.5 was consistent with a generalization of the underlying grammatical structure that was unaffected by surface features.
The study found group differences in learning outcomes between children with and without DLD. Consistent with previous reports, children with typical development correctly endorsed more grammatical strings than children with DLD, suggesting a better acquisition of the grammatical structure. However, there was no evidence to suggest that children in the DLD group (learners and nonlearners) relied on surface features (i.e., familiarity to training exemplars) in their grammatical judgment. These results refute our hypothesis that children in the DLD group would show judgment based on familiarity.
本研究旨在通过采用视觉人工语法学习任务来评估发育性语言障碍（DLD）儿童的内隐学习。
13 名 DLD 儿童和 24 名年龄在 8 至 12 岁之间具有典型语言发育的儿童完成了视觉人工语法学习任务。在任务的训练阶段，参与者会看到遵循有限语法结构的形状序列。在测试阶段，参与者需要判断新字符串是否符合语法规则。对新字符串进行语法判断可衡量基础语法结构的概括程度。基于块强度的认可，或与训练范例的相似性，用于评估儿童在多大程度上依赖于表面特征来指导其任务表现。
作为一个整体，与 DLD 儿童相比，具有典型发展的儿童在人工语法学习任务上表现更好，并且无论与训练范例的相似性如何，他们都接受了更多的语法字符串。两组的任务表现都不受表面特征的影响。测试准确率超过 0.5 的学习阈值的 DLD 儿童的表现与不受表面特征影响的基础语法结构的概括一致。
本研究发现，具有 DLD 和无 DLD 的儿童在学习结果方面存在差异。与之前的报告一致，具有典型发展的儿童比 DLD 儿童更正确地认可了更多的语法字符串，这表明他们对语法结构的掌握更好。然而，没有证据表明 DLD 组的儿童（学习者和非学习者）在他们的语法判断中依赖于表面特征（即与训练范例的熟悉度）。这些结果反驳了我们的假设，即 DLD 组的儿童会根据熟悉度进行判断。
