Comprehension of Welcher-Questions in German-Speaking Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder.

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Title:	Comprehension of Welcher-Questions in German-Speaking Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder.
Authors:	Roesch, Anne Dorothée¹ ad-roesch@gmx.de, Chondrogianni, Vasiliki¹
Source:	Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research. May2021, Vol. 64 Issue 5, p1683-1695. 13p. 1 Diagram, 6 Charts, 1 Graph.
Subject Terms:	Cognitive processing of language, Phonological awareness, Developmental disabilities, Comparative grammar, Children with disabilities, Language acquisition, Linguistics, Language disorders in children
Abstract:	Purpose: This study examined whether monolingual Germanspeaking preschool children with developmental language disorder (DLD) were facilitated by the presence of casemarking cues in their interpretation of German subject and object welcher ("which")-questions, as reported for their typically developing peers. We also examined whether knowledge of case-marking and/or phonological working memory modulated children's ability to revise early assigned interpretations of ambiguous questions. Method: Sixty-three monolingual German-speaking children with and without DLD aged between 4;0 and 5;11 (years; months) participated in an offline picture selection task targeting the comprehension of welcher-questions in German. We manipulated question type (subject, object), case-marking transparency, and case-marking position within the question (sentence-initial/-final). Results: The typically developing children outperformed the children with DLD across conditions, and all children performed better on subject than on object wh-questions. Transparent and early cues elicited higher accuracy than late-arriving cues. For the DLD children, their working memory capacity explained their inability to revise early assigned interpretations to ambiguous questions, whereas their knowledge of case did not. Conclusions: The results suggest that disambiguating morphosyntactic cues can only partly facilitate comprehension of German welcher-questions in children with DLD, whose poor phonological working memory rather than their knowledge of case-marking mediates performance on these structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
	Copyright of Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research is the property of American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
Database:	Education Research Complete

Description
Abstract:	Purpose: This study examined whether monolingual Germanspeaking preschool children with developmental language disorder (DLD) were facilitated by the presence of casemarking cues in their interpretation of German subject and object welcher ("which")-questions, as reported for their typically developing peers. We also examined whether knowledge of case-marking and/or phonological working memory modulated children's ability to revise early assigned interpretations of ambiguous questions. Method: Sixty-three monolingual German-speaking children with and without DLD aged between 4;0 and 5;11 (years; months) participated in an offline picture selection task targeting the comprehension of welcher-questions in German. We manipulated question type (subject, object), case-marking transparency, and case-marking position within the question (sentence-initial/-final). Results: The typically developing children outperformed the children with DLD across conditions, and all children performed better on subject than on object wh-questions. Transparent and early cues elicited higher accuracy than late-arriving cues. For the DLD children, their working memory capacity explained their inability to revise early assigned interpretations to ambiguous questions, whereas their knowledge of case did not. Conclusions: The results suggest that disambiguating morphosyntactic cues can only partly facilitate comprehension of German welcher-questions in children with DLD, whose poor phonological working memory rather than their knowledge of case-marking mediates performance on these structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
ISSN:	10924388
DOI:	10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00121