Relative clause comprehension in Cantonese-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder.

Publisher: Public Library of Science Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 101285081 Publication Model: eCollection Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1932-6203 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 19326203 NLM ISO Abbreviation: PLoS One Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: San Francisco, CA : Public Library of Science

Comprehension* ; Language Development Disorders*; Humans ; Child ; Language ; Linguistics ; Cognition

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), present in 2 out of every 30 children, affects primarily oral language abilities and development in the absence of associated biomedical conditions. We report the first experimental study that examines relative clause (RC) comprehension accuracy and processing (via looking preference) in Cantonese-speaking children with and without DLD, testing the predictions from competing domain-specific versus domain-general theoretical accounts. We compared children with DLD (N = 22) with their age-matched typically-developing (TD) children (AM-TD, N = 23) aged 6;6-9;7 and language-matched (and younger) TD children (YTD, N = 21) aged 4;7-7;6, using a referent selection task. Within-subject factors were: RC type (subject-RCs (SRCs) versus object-RCs (ORCs); relativizer (classifier (CL) versus relative marker ge3 RCs). Accuracy measures and looking preference to the target were analyzed using generalized linear mixed effects models. Results indicated Cantonese children with DLD scored significantly lower than their AM-TD peers in accuracy and processed RCs significantly slower than AM-TDs, but did not differ from the YTDs on either measure. Overall, while the results revealed evidence of a SRC advantage in the accuracy data, there was no indication of additional difficulty associated with ORCs in the eye-tracking data. All children showed a processing advantage for the frequent CL relativizer over the less frequent ge3 relativizer. These findings pose challenges to domain-specific representational deficit accounts of DLD, which primarily explain the disorder as a syntactic deficit, and are better explained by domain-general accounts that explain acquisition and processing as emergent properties of multiple converging linguistic and non-linguistic processes.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2023 Lai et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

J Child Lang. 2023 Jan;50(1):1-26. (PMID: 36503543)
Cognition. 1998 Aug;68(1):1-76. (PMID: 9775516)
J Child Lang. 2011 Nov;38(5):1084-95. (PMID: 21306657)
Trends Cogn Sci. 2005 Feb;9(2):53-9. (PMID: 15668097)
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 1997 Dec;40(6):1245-60. (PMID: 9430746)
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2007 Apr;50(2):408-28. (PMID: 17463238)
J Speech Hear Res. 1994 Apr;37(2):418-21. (PMID: 8028323)
J Child Lang. 2015 Mar;42(2):394-422. (PMID: 24650755)
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2010 Jun;53(3):648-69. (PMID: 20530380)
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2004 Dec;47(6):1440-53. (PMID: 15842021)
Front Psychol. 2021 Dec 23;12:679008. (PMID: 35002822)
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2005 Jun;48(3):621-34. (PMID: 16197277)
Front Psychol. 2021 Oct 04;12:705526. (PMID: 34671292)
Cogn Sci. 2006 Nov 12;30(6):995-1026. (PMID: 21702844)
Cognition. 2008 Mar;106(3):1126-77. (PMID: 17662975)
Cognition. 2020 Mar;196:104103. (PMID: 31751822)
Trends Cogn Sci. 2004 Oct;8(10):451-6. (PMID: 15450509)
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2009 Apr;52(2):269-88. (PMID: 18723601)
Hum Dev. 2011 Jan;53(5):264-277. (PMID: 22003258)
Int J Speech Lang Pathol. 2015 Dec;17(6):617-626. (PMID: 26088288)
J Mem Lang. 2013 Apr;68(3):. (PMID: 24403724)
Lingua. 2010 Sep;120(9-3):2148-2166. (PMID: 21151323)
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2006 Aug;49(4):712-28. (PMID: 16908871)
J Child Lang. 1987 Feb;14(1):23-45. (PMID: 3558524)
Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2014 Mar-Apr;49(2):255-64. (PMID: 24304939)
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2016 Nov;57(11):1247-1257. (PMID: 27184709)
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2017 Oct;58(10):1068-1080. (PMID: 28369935)
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2021 Feb 17;64(2):510-530. (PMID: 33417815)
Cognition. 2003 Nov;90(1):3-27. (PMID: 14597268)
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2021 Jun 4;64(6):1929-1943. (PMID: 33956514)
J Child Lang. 2015 Mar;42(2):239-73. (PMID: 25644408)
J Child Lang. 2008 May;35(2):325-48. (PMID: 18416862)
Appl Psycholinguist. 2006 Apr 1;27(2):267-299. (PMID: 25995528)
J Child Lang. 2018 Jan;45(1):174-203. (PMID: 28606194)
Front Psychol. 2017 Oct 06;8:1641. (PMID: 29056917)
J Child Lang. 2016 Jan;43(1):1-21. (PMID: 25661781)
J Mem Lang. 2008 Nov;59(4):434-446. (PMID: 19884961)
Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2019 May;54(3):347-361. (PMID: 30729604)
Psychol Rev. 2002 Jan;109(1):35-54; discussion 55-74. (PMID: 11863041)
PLoS One. 2013 Oct 02;8(10):e77006. (PMID: 24098575)
J Child Lang. 2014 Jan;41(1):51-83. (PMID: 23200200)
J Child Lang. 2011 Jan;38(1):141-65. (PMID: 20028598)
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2009 Apr;52(2):321-35. (PMID: 19339700)

Date Created: 20231107 Date Completed: 20231109 Latest Revision: 20231110

20231215

PMC10629646

10.1371/journal.pone.0288021

37934774