A Comparative Study of Chunking Skills in Bilingual Children and Monolingual Children with and without Specific Language Impairment

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This study aimed to compare and examine the correlation between the social skills (problem solving, emotional expression, sense of order, and confidence), executive function (updating, inhibition, and shifting), and story comprehension ability of children with and without Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Also, this study investigated if social skills and executive function predict the performance in the story comprehension task in each group. Methods: A total of 33 children (14 children with SLI and 19 TD children) aged 4 to 7 years participated in this study. Parents assessed their children's social skills using the Korean-Social Skill Rating Scale for Preschoolers (K-SSRSP). Children performed the tasks of executive function and story comprehension. Results: Children with SLI received significantly lower scores than TD children on the K-SSRSP. Also, children with SLI performed significantly lower than TD children in inhibition, shifting and story comprehension tasks. In TD children, there was a positive correlation between story comprehension ability and updating ability. In children with SLI, story comprehension ability was positively correlated with problem solving and emotional expression. Moreover, in TD children, updating ability significantly predicted their story comprehension ability. On the other hand, in children with SLI, the factors predicting their story comprehension ability were found to be problem solving and emotional expression among social skills. Conclusion: These results present the necessity to look into the social skills when evaluating and intervening with children with SLI or when advising non-experts such as parents or caregivers.

The Relationship between Social Skills, Executive Functions, and Story Comprehension in Children with and without Specific Language Impairment

Mun¹,

Yim²

2021

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An Eye-Tracking Study on Reading Comprehension and Reading Processing in Children with Reading Difficulties according to Story Type and Processing Load

Baek¹,

Yim²

2022

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Objectives: This study aimed to investigate differences in reading performance between two groups of children, children with reading difficulties (RD) and typically developing children (TD), depending on story types and length of given text. To comprehensively evaluate children’s reading ability, both offline and online processing were taken into consideration, and chunking skill was measured to explore the relationship between working memory and reading comprehension. Methods: Twenty-six children (11 with RD and 15 with TD) in 3rd to 4th grade of elementary school participated in this study. Two experimental tasks were conducted: a reading comprehension task using an eye-tracker and a word list recall task. While reading the text, children’s eye movements were analyzed to identify online reading processing. After they finished reading, they were asked to answer the offline reading comprehension questions. Results: There were significant differences in reading comprehension depending on the group, the story type, and the level of processing load. For the fixation, there was an interaction effect between the group and the story type. Also, as a result of heat map analysis, the fixation of the RD group was evenly distributed throughout the texts given at low processing load. In addition, as a result of correlation analysis, there was a significant difference in patterns of using chunking skills in reading comprehension between the two groups. Conclusion: This study has a clinical implication in that it suggested that presenting reading materials concisely could be one of the ways to improve reading comprehension in the RD group.

The Relationship between Story Comprehension, Story Grammar Production, and Executive Function in Preschool-Age Korean-English Bilingual Children with and without Vocabulary Delay

Oh,

Yim

2024

Objectives: This study investigated the relationship between story comprehension and story grammar abilities, as well as executive function in preschool Korean-English bilingual children with vocabulary delay (VD) compared to typically developing (TD) children and examined predictors of their narrative abilities. Methods: A total of 30 children (13 children with VD, 17 TD children) aged from 4-6 years participated in the study. Children performed non-word repetition (NWR) and word list recall for verbal working memory, matrix for non-verbal working memory, fruit stroop for inhibition, and Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) for shifting. They also performed story comprehension and story grammar production tasks in both languages to assess their narrative abilities. For data analyses, one-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation, and stepwise multiple regression were conducted. Results: The VD group showed significantly lower performance in working memory, inhibition, shifting tasks. Moreover, VD group had significantly lower performance in story comprehension and story grammar production tasks in both languages. In the TD group, Korean story comprehension performance was correlated with English story comprehension, Korean story grammar production, English story grammar production performances. On the other hand, in the VD group, only Korean story comprehension showed a significant correlation with Korean story grammar production performance. Lastly, matrix significantly predicted English story comprehension abilities and word list recall significantly predicted Korean story grammar production abilities in the TD group. Conclusion: By examining the relationship between children’s ability to understand stories, produce story grammar and sub-factors of executive function, we can improve the narrative education and intervention for bilingual children’s literacy and academic achievement in the future.