Sources of variation in developmental language disorders: evidence from eye-tracking studies of sentence production

Abstract

Skilled sentence production involves distinct stages of message conceptualization (deciding what to talk about) and message formulation (deciding how to talk about it). Eye-movement paradigms provide a mechanism for observing how speakers accomplish these aspects of production in real time. These methods have recently been applied to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and specific language impairment (LI) in an effort to reveal qualitative differences between groups in sentence production processes. Findings support a multiple-deficit account in which language production is influenced not only by lexical and syntactic constraints, but also by variation in attention control, inhibition and social competence. Thus, children with ASD are especially vulnerable to atypical patterns of visual inspection and verbal utterance. The potential to influence attentional focus and prime appropriate language structures are considered as a mechanism for facilitating language adaptation and learning.

Look before you speak: children's integration of visual information into informative referring expressions

“…However, this did not always lead them to mention these aspects, in contrast to the more explicit adults. The authors conclude that the similar eye movement patterns yet different linguistic encoding between the two age groups reflects children's developing interface between attention and language production, or their developing linguistic production system (the latter explanation was also put forward by Norbury, 2014 with respect to children with language impairment). These findings leave open the possibility that even if children fixate a crucial aspect of a scene, they may not go on to encode it in their referring expressions.…”

Risk Factors Associated With Language in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Clues to Underlying Mechanisms

“…Estimates of the proportions of children within these subgroups vary depending on ascertainment methods, but the majority of affected children acquire spoken language but remain delayed relative to their peers (Kjelgaard & Tager-Flusberg, 2001). It has been claimed that this group of children with language impairment and ASD has comorbid SLI, but this proposal is still controversial (Norbury, 2013;Williams, Botting, & Boucher, 2008).…”

How do children learn to avoid referential ambiguity? Insights from eye-tracking

“…Perhaps the major limiting factor for developing a cognitive theory of children's referential communication is that our current understanding of the moment-by-moment mechanisms involved in children's language production is too sparse to offer much guidance. While we know an increasing amount about how children comprehend language online (Fernald, Pinto, Swingley, Weinberg & Roberts, 1998;Huang & Snedeker, 2009;Rabagliati, Pylkkänen & Marcus, 2013;Snedeker & Trueswell, 2004; and see Snedeker & Huang, 2015 for review), we know much less about how they plan and structure their own utterances (although for recent examples of investigations using eye tracking, see Bunger, Trueswell, & Papafragou, 2012;Davies & Kreysa, 2016;Norbury, 2014).…”