Real‐time comprehension of Spanish prepositions and prepositional locutions in bilingual children with developmental language disorder: A study based on eye‐movement evidence

Abstract

Background: Function words, and more specifically prepositions and prepositional locutions, are considered to be one of the most important difficulties for children with DLD. Aims: To examine the capacity of bilingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD) to comprehend different Spanish prepositions and prepositional locutions in a simple sentence structure, for example, El gato está sobre la mesa/El gato está bajo la mesa (The cat is on the table/The cat is under the table). Methods & Procedures: We used simple sentence structures to reduce lexical difficulties in order to focus our evaluation strictly on the grammatical morphemes under study. A total of 96 Spanish and Catalan-speaking participants, divided into four groups, were evaluated in an eye-tracking psycholinguistic experiment: 24 children with DLD (average age = 7.8 years, age range = 4.6-12.6), 24 children with the same chronological age (average age = 7.8 years, age range = 4.6-12.2), 24 children with the same linguistic level (average age = 6.8 years, age range = 4.6-9.4) and 24 adults (average age = 22.5 years, age range = 18-30). Outcomes & Results: The empirical data show that, despite some differences, bilingual children with and without DLD can comprehend Spanish prepositions and prepositional locutions under the current experimental conditions. Conclusions & Implications: Our results suggest that the capacity of bilingual children with DLD to comprehend Spanish prepositions and prepositional locutions in real time and within simple sentence structures is preserved.

Insights from real-time comprehension of Spanish verbal tense in children with developmental language disorder: An eye-tracking study

“…The findings of this study introduce more empirical evidence from a relatively recent perspective which indicates the possibility of a less atypical comprehension of language by Spanish-speaking children with DLD than what is generally considered (Andreu et al, 2011;Andreu et al, 2016;Andreu et al, 2013;Christou et al, 2020;Christou et al, 2021). However, it is essential to emphasize the existence of a series of studies, also recent, in which opposite results are presented (Coloma et al, 2013;Coloma & Pavez, 2017).…”

“…Several reasons may be involved in the presence of this apparent antithesis. Interestingly, studies demonstrating more preserved comprehension capacity in children with DLD (Andreu et al, 2011(Andreu et al, , 2013(Andreu et al, , 2016Christou et al, 2020Christou et al, , 2021 are based on simpler structures of language, on eye-tracking methodology which does not require linguistic production to indicate the level of comprehension, and language is always supported by visual scenes. However, studies that demonstrate a more atypical comprehension (Coloma et al, 2013;Coloma & Pavez, 2017) do not have visual support, the comprehension is evidenced through verbal responses of the children with DLD, and the characteristics of the studied language are much closer to the real-world circumstances of day-to-day linguistic communication.…”

“…The time windows corresponded to the first critical window following the verb (2000 to 3000 ms from sentence onset), the critical noun window (3000 to 4000 ms from sentence onset), and the last critical window, which followed the noun window (4000 to 5000 ms from sentence onset). Previous studies have also used this experimental design (Andreu et al, 2011;Andreu et al, 2016;Christou et al, 2020;Christou et al, 2021).…”

“…However, more recent research using eye-tracking technology (Andreu et al, 2011;Andreu et al, 2016;Andreu et al, 2013;Christou et al, 2020;Christou et al, 2021) has raised the possibility that language comprehension among children with DLD is more preserved. The results of these authors indicate that, in terms of verbs in simple sentences, separated, or in narrative style, children with DLD present a semantic representation of the verb which is more typical than expected.…”

“…In this respect, Andreu et al (2013) suggested that the previous studies based on offline tools could have limitations when recording the real linguistic comprehension capacity of children with DLD. To date, there are relatively few studies which have specifically studied language comprehension in online sentence tasks (e.g., Andreu et al, 2012;Andreu et al, 2016;Christou et al, 2020;Christou et al, 2021;Marinis & van der Lely, 2007;Montgomery, 1995Montgomery, , 2000a. The present study is developed from the visual world paradigm (Cooper, 1974;Tanenhaus et al, 1995) which is based on the premise that eye fixation is an ideal independent response analogous to what a person is cognitively processing.…”