Taboh Analí Rosa, Shalom Diego Edgar, Alvares Belén, Gattei Carolina Andrea
Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Escuela de Negocios, Centro de Inteligencia Artificial y Neurociencia, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Instituto de Física Interdisciplinaria y Aplicada (INFINA), CONICET - Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2025 Feb 4;68(2):602-617. doi: 10.1044/2024_JSLHR-24-00444. Epub 2024 Dec 18.
Children with hearing loss (CHL) who use hearing devices (cochlear implants or hearing aids) and communicate orally have trouble comprehending sentences with noncanonical order. This study explores sentence comprehension strategies in Spanish-speaking CHL, focusing on their ability to integrate morphosyntactic cues (word order, morphological case marking) with verbs differing in their syntax-to-semantics configuration.
Fifty-eight Spanish-speaking CHL and 58 children with typical hearing (CTH) with a hearing age of 3;5-7;8 (years;months; i.e., time of adequate access to sound, in the case of CHL since effective fitting or implantation) were recruited in Argentina. A sentence comprehension task using the truth-value judgment paradigm was designed, including sentences with activity verbs and object-experiencer psych verbs in subject-verb-object (SVO) and object-verb-subject (OVS) orders, thus varying in canonicity.
Both groups showed good comprehension of SVO sentences with activity verbs but had difficulties with structures that deviated from canonicity. Comprehension was at chance level in both groups and at all hearing ages for sentences with activity verbs in OVS order and sentences with object-experiencer psych verbs in SVO order (both are noncanonical for the verb type). Sentences with object-experiencer psych verbs in OVS order were also comprehended at chance level by CHL and by the youngest CTH.
These results suggest that Spanish-speaking CTH aged 7 years prioritize semantic information over case marking in sentences with a noncanonical syntactic structure. In CHL, difficulties with noncanonical structures seem to extend to semantic deviations, at least until hearing age 7 years. CHL might also struggle with the semantic structures of object-experiencer psych verbs beyond the age when CTH do. These findings are relevant for the linguistic assessment and education of CHL.
使用听力设备（人工耳蜗或助听器）并通过口语交流的听力损失儿童（CHL）在理解非规范语序的句子时存在困难。本研究探讨说西班牙语的CHL的句子理解策略，重点关注他们将形态句法线索（词序、形态格标记）与句法-语义配置不同的动词进行整合的能力。
在阿根廷招募了58名说西班牙语的CHL和58名听力正常的儿童（CTH），听力年龄为3;5 - 7;8（岁;月；即，对于CHL来说，自有效佩戴或植入以来有足够声音接触时间）。设计了一个使用真值判断范式的句子理解任务，包括主语 - 动词 - 宾语（SVO）和宾语 - 动词 - 主语（OVS）语序的含有动作动词和客体 - 体验者心理动词的句子，因此在规范性上有所不同。
两组对含有动作动词的SVO句子都有较好的理解，但对偏离规范的结构存在困难。对于OVS语序的含有动作动词的句子以及SVO语序的含有客体 - 体验者心理动词的句子（这两种对于动词类型来说都是非规范的），两组在所有听力年龄的理解都处于随机水平。CHL和最年幼的CTH对OVS语序的含有客体 - 体验者心理动词的句子的理解也处于随机水平。
这些结果表明，7岁的说西班牙语的CTH在具有非规范句法结构的句子中优先考虑语义信息而非格标记。在CHL中，非规范结构的困难似乎延伸到了语义偏差，至少在听力年龄7岁之前是这样。CHL在超过CTH出现困难的年龄之后，可能仍会在客体 - 体验者心理动词的语义结构上存在困难。这些发现与CHL的语言评估和教育相关。
