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Impoverished Language in Early Childhood Affects the Development of Complex Sentence Structure

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Title: Impoverished Language in Early Childhood Affects the Development of Complex Sentence Structure
Language: English
Authors: Mayberry, Rachel I. (ORCID 0000-0002-0819-4140), Hatrak, Marla (ORCID 0000-0003-3481-9156), Ilbasaran, Deniz, Cheng, Qi, Huang, Yaqian, Hall, Matt L.
Source: Developmental Science. 2024 27(1).
Availability: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 12
Publication Date: 2024
Sponsoring Agency: National Institutes of Health (NIH) (DHHS)
Contract Number: R01DC012797
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Descriptors: Young Children, Language Enrichment, Educationally Disadvantaged, Language Acquisition, Sentence Structure, Difficulty Level, Early Experience, Deafness, American Sign Language, Language Usage
DOI: 10.1111/desc.13416
ISSN: 1363-755X
1467-7687
Abstract: The hypothesis that impoverished language experience affects complex sentence structure development around the end of early childhood was tested using a fully randomized, sentence-to-picture matching study in American Sign Language (ASL). The participants were ASL signers who had impoverished or typical access to language in early childhood. Deaf signers whose access to language was highly impoverished in early childhood (N = 11) primarily comprehended structures consisting of a single verb and argument (Subject or Object), agreeing verbs, and the spatial relation or path of semantic classifiers. They showed difficulty comprehending more complex sentence structures involving dual lexical arguments or multiple verbs. As predicted, participants with typical language access in early childhood, deaf native signers (N = 17) or hearing second-language learners (N = 10), comprehended the range of 12 ASL sentence structures, independent of the subjective iconicity or frequency of the stimulus lexical items, or length of ASL experience and performance on non-verbal cognitive tasks. The results show that language experience in early childhood is necessary for the development of complex syntax.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2023
Accession Number: EJ1403740
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0174107242;5g501jan.24;2023Dec12.05:43;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0174107242-1">Impoverished language in early childhood affects the development of complex sentence structure </title> <p>The hypothesis that impoverished language experience affects complex sentence structure development around the end of early childhood was tested using a fully randomized, sentence‐to‐picture matching study in American Sign Language (ASL). The participants were ASL signers who had impoverished or typical access to language in early childhood. Deaf signers whose access to language was highly impoverished in early childhood (N = 11) primarily comprehended structures consisting of a single verb and argument (Subject or Object), agreeing verbs, and the spatial relation or path of semantic classifiers. They showed difficulty comprehending more complex sentence structures involving dual lexical arguments or multiple verbs. As predicted, participants with typical language access in early childhood, deaf native signers (N = 17) or hearing second‐language learners (N = 10), comprehended the range of 12 ASL sentence structures, independent of the subjective iconicity or frequency of the stimulus lexical items, or length of ASL experience and performance on non‐verbal cognitive tasks. The results show that language experience in early childhood is necessary for the development of complex syntax. Research Highlights: Previous research with deaf signers suggests an inflection point around the end of early childhood for sentence structure development.Deaf signers who experienced impoverished language until the age of 9 or older comprehend several basic sentence structures but few complex structures.Language experience in early childhood is necessary for the development of complex sentence structure.</p> <p>Keywords: American sign language; comprehension; critical period; language deprivation; language development; syntax</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-2">INTRODUCTION</hd> <p>Infants born deaf often have limited access to inter‐personal communication through language. Because speech is inaccessible to them and most families neither know nor use sign language, the default mode of communication in this situation often involves gesture. Cross‐culturally such children are known as <emph>homesigners</emph> and observed to combine gestures semantically, as in ordering based on transitivity in two‐gesture expressions (Goldin‐Meadow, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref1">24</reflink>]). These gesture patterns are observed to vary over time within individuals, from those of the mothers, and are not understood by family members (Carrigan & Coppola, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref2">10</reflink>]; Goldin‐Meadow & Mylander, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref3">25</reflink>]). The extent to which homesign can scaffold subsequent language development is unknown. As they mature, many homesigners come into regular communicative contact with signers in educational and social settings. This situation provides a unique opportunity to investigate critical period effects on language development. Investigating the effects of maturation on the development of sentence structure in particular can illuminate both the nature the critical period for language development and the sequelae of infant deafness, such as language deprivation (Hall et al., [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref4">28</reflink>]; Hecht, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref5">31</reflink>]; Mayberry & Kluender, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref6">45</reflink>]). Here we test the hypothesis that maturation affects the development of sentence structure with an inflection point around the end of early childhood for the development of complex sentence structure.</p> <p>Language development is a contingent process whereby young children learn complex sentence structures after learning basic structures and a sizeable lexicon (Anderson & Reilly, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref7">2</reflink>]; Bates & Goodman, [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref8">5</reflink>]; Brown, [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref9">9</reflink>]; Diessel, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref10">19</reflink>]; Fenson et al., [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref11">21</reflink>]; Snedeker et al., [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref12">59</reflink>]). Within this theoretical framework, two lines of research suggest that the development of complex sentence structure requires early childhood language experience: longitudinal case studies of initial language learning by adolescents, which we turn to first, and parametric studies of age of acquisition (AOA) effects on adult sign language processing. Both lines of research converge to suggest an inflection point for sentence structure development around the end of early childhood. The present study tests this hypothesis.</p> <p>Adolescents born deaf who were immersed in ASL subsequent to a highly impoverished language environment in early childhood quickly learned ASL signs and used them instead of homesign gestures (Morford, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref13">49</reflink>]) showing that the ability to distinguish gesture from signed lexical items is unaffected by maturation. Their initial rate of lexical learning was faster than that of young children reported in the literature, no doubt reflecting their greater cognitive maturity. The distribution of lexical types (nouns, verbs, adjectives) they initially learned was similar to that of much younger ASL learning children, with nouns initially outnumbering other word types (Ferjan Ramirez et al., [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref14">22</reflink>]). These findings indicate that the initial stages of language development remain a contingent process even when begun after early childhood.</p> <p>Analyses of spontaneous language samples taken longitudinally over three years of ASL immersion from three adolescent learners showed that they spontaneously produced Subject + Verb (SV) or Verb + Object (VO) patterns, primarily without morphology. The same pattern was observed in a fourth case after 5 years of immersion. Less than 13% of their ASL utterances included both a subject and object (Cheng & Mayberry, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref15">12</reflink>]) in contrast to 74% of the utterances of two‐year olds learning ASL (Berk, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref16">6</reflink>]). The capacity for lexical learning and combination clearly remains intact after restricted language experience during early childhood, consistent with case studies of social isolation in children who hear (Curtiss, [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref17">17</reflink>]). At the same time, the finding suggests that restricted language experience during early childhood affects the development of sentence structure.</p> <p>The possibility exists that adolescents who begin to learn language after early childhood are capable of comprehending complex sentence structures, even though they do not spontaneously produce them. If so, this would provide counterevidence to the hypothesis, suggesting that any maturational effects on sentence structure development are related to production factors rather than language development, per se. If, however, sentence structure development is limited in scope when language learning begins after an early childhood environment of restricted language access, the evidence for maturational effects on language would be strengthened.</p> <p>Parametric AOA studies analyzing the sign language processing of adults and pre‐college students provide additional evidence that language access in early childhood affects the development of sentence structure. Signers born deaf who self‐identified as being immersed in ASL between the ages of 8–20 after an early childhood of clinical intervention and education conducted solely through speech, performed well on SVO structures, verb‐aspect, and some semantic classifier constructions, but less accurately on a variety of complex structures on tasks including production, recognition, elicited imitation, and grammatical judgment in ASL and British Sign Language (BSL) (Boudreault & Mayberry, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref18">7</reflink>]; Cormier et al., [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref19">16</reflink>]; Henner et al., [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref20">32</reflink>]; Mayberry & Eichen, [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref21">44</reflink>]; Newport, [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref22">50</reflink>]).</p> <p>The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that the development of complex sentence structure requires access to natural language in early childhood. To test the hypothesis, signers who were born deaf and immersed in ASL after an early childhood of highly restricted access to language were recruited for the study. ASL signers whose language exposure began in infancy, either ASL or English, served as controls. To distinguish linguistic from possible non‐linguistic factors associated with restricted language experience in early childhood, the design included a set of cognitive tasks. The hypothesis predicts that signers who experienced language from infancy will comprehend the range of sentence structures targeted here, but that signers whose early childhood environments contained little accessible natural language will not, and crucially that their comprehension will be limited to simple structures.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-3">METHODS</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0174107242-4">Participants</hd> <p>Thirty‐eight adults from southern California participated in the study and were paid a small fee. The Institutional Review Board of UCSD (#111126SX) approved the experimental protocol. All the participants were ASL signers. The target group were individuals whose language experience was restricted in early childhood, or late first‐language (LI) learners and consisted of individuals born deaf whose initial language immersion began at the age of nine or older, the age they self‐ reported as first interacting with signers. Two control groups experienced language from infancy, (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref23">1</reflink>) deaf native signers of ASL and (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref24">2</reflink>) hearing (native English) second language (L2) learners of ASL (see Table 1).</p> <p>1 TABLE Participants' background characteristics and mean (standard deviation) performance on the experimental and cognitive tasks.</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead><tr><th /><th>Background</th><th>ASL tasks</th><th>Cognitive tasks</th></tr><tr><th>Group</th><th>AOA</th><th>f/n0001</th><th>Age</th><th>ASL Voc0002</th><th><p>ASL</p><p>Sent0003</p></th><th><p>Digits</p><p>Frw0004<sup>¶</sup></p></th><th>Digits Bkw0004</th><th><p>Block</p><p>Desg0005</p></th><th><p>Pic</p><p>Arng0005</p></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Native</td><td>Birth</td><td>11/17</td><td>29.59 (7.66)</td><td>81.5 (0.73)</td><td>75.35 (5.81)</td><td>5.75 (0.93)</td><td>4.25 (1.13)</td><td>14.21 (2.80)</td><td>11.29 (2.95)</td></tr><tr><td>Second Language</td><td>16.4 (2.4)</td><td>6/10</td><td>21.15 (1.79)</td><td>81.4 (0.97)</td><td>75.6 (4.74)</td><td>5.9 (0.57)</td><td>4.3 (1.13)</td><td>12.78 (2.99)</td><td>11.4 (2.67)</td></tr><tr><td>Late‐L1</td><td>13.9 (3.8)</td><td>7/11</td><td>34.27 (11.58)</td><td>79.82 (2.04)</td><td>42.82 (7.60)</td><td>3.1 (0.32)</td><td>2.2 (1.22)</td><td>7.45 (1.51)</td><td>6.6 (1.26)</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>1 a Females/n.</p> <ulist> <item>2 b Max = 82.</item> <item>3 c Max = 84.</item> <item>4 d Serial Span.</item> <item>5 e Scaled Score (average = 10; SD = 3).</item> </ulist> <hd id="AN0174107242-5">Late first‐language learners</hd> <p>The recruitment criterion for the late L1 participants was initial ASL immersion at the age nine or older based on the above‐cited research suggesting an inflection point around this age for the development of complex sentence structure. Each late‐L1 participant was raised until the age of nine or older in an environment of limited social interaction through natural language. The seven women and four men were not known to have had auditory access to spoken language due to their severe to profound hearing losses which were reported to have had a prelingual onset. They were the only deaf member of hearing families who neither knew nor used any sign language with them in early childhood. All but two of the participants reported communicating with their families through gesture as young children. Nine participants were born outside the USA where they received few or no special services or education. Language immersion for these participants began when they immigrated to the USA and enrolled in schools for deaf children where ASL was used (seven participants) or in special classes with deaf peers (two participants). One participant's adoptive family used ASL. One participant sporadically attended school until the age of 13. The Late‐L1 participants' age of initial ASL immersion ranged from 9 to 21 years with a mean age of 13.9 years (SD = 3.8). Length of ASL experience, measured in years since initial ASL immersion, ranged from 8 to 40 years with a mean length of 20.5 years (SD = 10.24). The English reading comprehension of the Late‐L1 group was first to second grade, PIAT‐R (Markwardt, [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref25">40</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-6">Native signers</hd> <p>Seventeen adults, six men and 11 women, were born severely to profoundly deaf to deaf parents who used ASL with them from birth. The native signers served as a control and show comprehension of ASL sentence structure when ASL exposure begins from birth. Each native‐signer participant was also bilingual in English (mean grade level = 7.9, SD = 2.89). Two participants had cochlear implants. The native‐signer participants were on average 30 years old (SD = 7.66) and had an average of 30 years of ASL experience.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-7">Second‐language learners</hd> <p>A second control group was second language learners of ASL. Each second‐language participant was born with normal hearing to English speaking families. This group shows the effects of learning ASL as an second language after early childhood subsequent to infant exposure to language but through another modality. The six women and four men began to learn ASL at the mean age of 16.4 years (SD = 2.22) and were on average 21.2 years old (SD = 0.68). The hearing second‐language learners, like the deaf native signers, were bilingual in English, their native language (mean grade level = 10.5, SD = 2.33), and ASL to varying degrees (results below). They had been using ASL for an average of 4.8 years with a range of 2–10 years.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-8">Materials</hd> <p>Creation of the ASL stimuli required several steps. First, we searched the literature for structures consisting of one or two verbs and attendant arguments, that is Subject and Object, following Huttenlocher et al. ([<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref26">34</reflink>]) who distinguished Simple from Complex sentence structures based on the number of verbs in the utterance. In addition to being sensitive to children's language input and development, the metric showed high cross‐coder reliability. The search yielded 12 ASL structures (see Sentence Structures below). We further identified those structures that required Grammatical Facial Expression (GFE) along with two sets of ASL question forms (Liddell, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref27">38</reflink>]; Sandler & Lillo‐Martin, [<reflink idref="bib54" id="ref28">54</reflink>]).</p> <p>Next we identified ASL signs familiar to young children (Anderson & Reilly, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref29">2</reflink>]) and late‐L1 learners (Cheng & Mayberry, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref30">12</reflink>]; Ferjan Ramirez et al., [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref31">22</reflink>]). From this pool of lexical items, we created six lexically unique stimulus trials for each target sentence structure. A final constraint was that each stimulus sentence had to be picturable with respect to its verb/s and arguments. We commissioned a professional artist to draw three pictures for each stimulus trial and piloted the stimulus sentences and alternative pictures with a group of seven native signers, making alterations to the stimulus sentences and pictures as necessary until the target picture was uniformly selected for the target sentence structure in randomized pilot test trials. We also computed the mean lexical subjective iconicity and frequency ratings for the lexical items of each stimulus sentence taken from available corpora and previous research (Caselli et al., [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref32">11</reflink>]; Matchin et al., [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref33">41</reflink>]) (Table 2).</p> <p>2 TABLE Lexical characteristics of the stimulus sentences.</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead><tr><th /><th>Iconicity0001</th><th>Freq0002</th><th>Length0003</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Simple</td><td>3.56</td><td>5.19</td><td>4.14</td></tr><tr><td>Complex</td><td>3.41</td><td>5.32</td><td>6.42</td></tr><tr><td>Question–Answer</td><td>3.28</td><td>5.41</td><td>5.25</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <ulist> <item>6 a Mean subjective iconicity ratings, n.s.</item> <item>7 b mean subjective frequency ratings, n.s.</item> <item>8 c Mean morpheme length (range), complex <emph>p</emph> < 0.0001.</item> </ulist> <hd id="AN0174107242-9">Lexical items and trials</hd> <p>To determine whether the participants were familiar with the stimulus lexical items, we created a sign recognition experiment by identifying the key nouns and verbs in each stimulus sentence. This yielded 32 nouns and 49 verbs. We filmed a deaf native signer producing each lexical item in isolation (citation form). To test for noun comprehension, we commissioned a professional artist to draw each noun object. Each noun stimulus was paired with three pictures: the correct referent and two incorrect referents (which were correct choices for other trials). A similar procedure was used for verbs. To illustrate actions, we used pictures of scenes rather than objects.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-10">Experimental design</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0174107242-11">Sentence structure learning criterion</hd> <p>From the pool of lexical items described above, we created six lexically unique trials for each of the 12 target sentence structures. Six was chosen as the required number of trials to indicate development, or significant comprehension, of the target sentence structure for each participant. When chance is one of three pictures or 0.33, accurate performance on 5/6 trials (0.83) would indicate significant comprehension (<emph>p</emph> < 0.05) of the target sentence structure. This would demonstrate comprehension of the target sentence structure across five randomly presented and unique lexical and pictorial contexts. We commissioned a professional artist to make three black and white line drawings for each stimulus: one showing the target verb and argument/s; one showing the argument/s in an alternative syntactic context; and one showing only an argument or verb of the target sentence in an unrelated syntactic context. The target ASL sentence structures varied in complexity, as described below, and were categorized as Simple or Complex based on the number of verbs and required grammaticized facial expression (GFE). A set of question structures was included to assess these complex ASL structures.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-12">Simple sentence structures</hd> <p>Six of the simple target structures consisted of a single verb and arguments and are learned by age four (Berk, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref34">6</reflink>]; Lillo‐Martin & Henner, [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref35">39</reflink>]; Mayberry & Squires, [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref36">46</reflink>]; Meier, [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref37">47</reflink>]). Five structures require no grammatical facial expression. No stimulus was less than four morphemes in length. Length was controlled by adding an adjective to either the subject or object noun phrase of the stimulus sentence. Five of the six simple sentence structures consist of a single verb and included:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> Subject‐Verb (SV). In this structure the intransitive verb requires a Subject but no Object, as in TALL MAN RUN FAST or BABY DUCK EAT OUTSIDE.[<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref38">1</reflink>]</item> <p></p> <item> Aspect and modal. In this structure the verb is modified with either an internal temporal aspect morpheme or a separate modal sign inserted before the verb (three trials each), as in SMALL BOY EAT[incessantly], or MAN FINISH FEED CAT.</item> <p></p> <item> Subject‐Verb‐Object (SVO): In this structure the transitive verb requires both a Subject and an Object, as in ANGRY CAT BITE DOG, or COW KICK SLEEPY HORSE. Both arguments were semantically reversible (i.e., animate) to eliminate semantic cues to syntactic structure.</item> <p></p> <item> Agreement: In this structure, the Object precedes the Subject and Verb which is inflected with a movement morpheme linking the Subject and Indirect Object (or recipient), as in MATH WOMAN TEACH[IX3pl], <emph>The woman teaches them math</emph>, or STORY BOY TELL[IX3] <emph>The boy told him a story</emph>. These ASL verb constructions are observed in two year olds (Meier, [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref39">47</reflink>]).</item> <p></p> <item> Classifier constructions: The classifier constructions were semantic classifiers with either path or spatial arrangement morphemes, as in TWO WHITE CAR CL:vehicle[pass‐each‐other], <emph>Two white cars pass each other</emph>, or CLOWN BIKE CL:vehicle; up‐and down], <emph>The clown rides a bike up and down hill</emph>. In previous research, late‐L1 participants recognized these structures and adolescent language learners spontaneously produced them.</item> <p></p> <item> Complement sentences: In these structures a mental verb takes a clausal complement. The mental verb functions as a 'quasi modal' modifying the verb of the clausal complement to create a single event structure, as in MONKEY WANT MAN EAT BANANA, <emph>The monkey wants the man to eat the banana</emph>, or WOMAN THINK SPIDER CUTE, <emph>The woman thinks the spider is cute</emph>. This structure has been proposed to mark a transition to the development of complex structures in children learning English or ASL (Diessel, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref40">19</reflink>]; Schick et al., [<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref41">55</reflink>]).</item> </ulist> <hd id="AN0174107242-13">Complex structures</hd> <p>ASL structures consisting of one or two verbs and attendant arguments with grammatical facial expression were classified as complex structures. Grammatical facial expressions are obligatory, auto‐segmental clause makers in ASL (Liddell, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref42">38</reflink>]) and acquired over the ages of 4—8 by children learning ASL from infancy depending upon the syntactic complexity of the structure and the <emph>hands before face</emph> principle found for ASL development (Reilly, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref43">52</reflink>]).</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> Negation: An SV or SVO sentence was negated with the sign NOT or a headshake, as in CUTE MONKEY NOT SMILE, <emph>The cute monkey is not smiling</emph>, or CAT NOT BITE DOG, <emph>The cat is not biting the dog</emph>. The sentence structure must be understood in order for it to be negated. Full use of negation is acquired at older ages in ASL and English (Anderson & Reilly, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref44">1</reflink>]; Nordmeyer & Frank, [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref45">51</reflink>]).</item> <p></p> <item> Topic Comment: In this ASL sentence structure the Object is moved to the front of the sentence and marked with a grammatical facial expression (Liddell, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref46">38</reflink>]; Sandler & Lillo‐Martin, [<reflink idref="bib54" id="ref47">54</reflink>]) and is learned after children have developed basic sentence structure (Reilly, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref48">52</reflink>]). For example, [SMALL DOG](topic) CAT BITE, <emph>The cat bites the small dog</emph>, or [SILLY CLOWN](topic) PUSH, <emph>The man pushes the silly clown</emph>.</item> <p></p> <item> Reported, or quoted, speech structures: In these multi‐clause ASL structures, the Subject and Object nouns of the first clause identify the speaker and recipient while the second clause gives the quoted speech, as in MAN TELL GIRL, XI LIKE READ, <emph>The man tells the girl, "I like to read,"</emph> or GIRL TELL WOMAN, XI HAVE FLOWER, <emph>The girl tells the woman, I have a flower</emph>.[<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref49">2</reflink>]</item> <p></p> <item> Conditional: In this multi‐clause structure, one clause expresses the contingency marked with grammatical facial expression preceded by the closed‐class sign IF, as in [IF BOY CRY](cond)[<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref50">3</reflink>] MOTHER HUG, <emph>If the boy cries the mother hugs him</emph>, or [IF RAIN](cond), PLAY HOME, <emph>We play at home if it rains</emph>. Children learning ASL from birth learn this structures from 4 to 8 years of age (Liddell, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref51">38</reflink>]; Reilly et al., [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref52">53</reflink>]).</item> <p></p> <item> Post‐nominal relative clause: In the relative clause structure sampled here, the Subject of the main clause is the Subject of the relative clause and marked with a grammatical facial expression, as in [CAT BITE DOG](rc) HAVE HAT "The cat that bites the dog wears a hat;" or [WOMAN TEACH GIRL](rc) HAVE GLASSES, "The woman teaching the girl wears glasses," (Liddell, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref53">37</reflink>]).</item> <p></p> <item> Pronominal sentences: The pronominal structure sampled here consisted of an anaphoric pronoun agreeing in number and person with a noun in the preceding sentence, as in HOUSE HAVE ONE CAT, MANY DOGS. IX3p JUMP, IX3 PLAY, "One cat and many dogs are in the house. They jump and it plays."</item> </ulist> <hd id="AN0174107242-14">Question—answer</hd> <p>Question forms in ASL are morpho‐syntactically complex and learned between the ages of 4 and 7 (Reilly, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref54">52</reflink>]). To investigate the comprehension of ASL question forms, we created question and answer pairs. Performance on the question‐answer stimuli requires the added cognitive step of answering the stimulus question with a picture selection. The question‐answer stimuli were included to investigate this more challenging aspect of language development that relates to pragmatic development. For this reason, we analyzed the question‐answer data separately. Two sets of question‐answer were created based on the general developmental sequence observed for spoken English (Clark, [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref55">15</reflink>]; Hoff, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref56">33</reflink>]): (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref57">1</reflink>) Wh1: what, who, where, as in BOY KICK GIRL. [WHO KICK](bf—furrowed brow? (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref58">2</reflink>) Wh2: when, how, and why as in WOMAN OPEN DOOR. [OPEN HOW](br—brow raise).</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-15">Cognitive screening: materials and procedure</hd> <p>We administered a set of cognitive tasks used in previous research to provide preliminary insights into the effects of accessible childhood language versus non‐linguistic cognitive skills. These tasks were administered after the sentence‐to‐picture matching experiment. A deaf native signer administered three subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, WAIS, in ASL (Wechsler & Naglieri, [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref59">62</reflink>]). Digit Span measured immediate memory for familiar words – numbers. Block Design and Picture Arrangement measured two‐ to three‐dimensional spatial skills and pictured event sequencing, respectively.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-16">Digit span task</hd> <p>We filmed a deaf native signer producing the digits of the forward and backward digit span tests of the WAIS at a rate of 1 per second. The forward digit trials ranged in length from 3 to 9 digits with two trials at each length. The test trials began at a length of three and continued up through length nine with two trials at each length. For backward digit span, testing started at length two and continued to length eight with two trials at each length. Testing stopped when a participant failed to accurately recall two trials of the same length. Digit Span scores were reported as the maximum span.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-17">Block design</hd> <p>The Block Design subtest of the WAIS consists of a series of geometric designs that the participant is asked to recreate using nine cubes colored red on two sides, white on two sides, and diagonally half red and white on two sides. After successful completion of two practice items, the timed test continued until the participant failed on three consecutive trials. The raw timed scores were converted into scaled scores.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-18">Picture arrangement</hd> <p>The Picture Arrangement subtest of the WAIS consists of a series of 10 sets of black and white pictures of event sequences presented in a mixed fashion. The participant arranges the pictures into a sensible story with a time limit. Testing was stopped after four consecutive failures. The raw timed scores were converted to scaled scores.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-19">Testing procedure</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0174107242-20">Presentation mode</hd> <p>The stimuli for the lexical comprehension and sentence‐to‐picture matching experiments were presented through a combination of PHP and Javascript running on a local web server. We used the Chrome browser on a Macintosh laptop.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-21">Sign‐to‐picture matching experiment</hd> <p>Comprehension of the lexical items used to construct the target sentences was assessed prior to the sentence‐to‐picture matching experiment. Participants received instructions via a video of a deaf native signer explaining the task. Each trial began with a fixation cross for 800 ms, followed by the stimulus video in the upper half of the screen. At the end of the video, the stimulus sign disappeared, and the three alternative pictures appeared in the lower half of the screen. Participants selected the picture depicting the sentence meaning with a key press. Participants received 1 point for each picture they chose correctly, for a maximum of 82 points. Chance performance would be 27 items.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-22">Sentence‐to‐picture matching experiment</hd> <p>The sentence‐to‐picture matching experiment began with videotaped instructions of a deaf native signer explaining the task, followed by three practice trials using a simple structure (SVO) and two trials of a complex question‐answer pair. After a final opportunity to ask questions, the participant began the 84 test trials. Each trial began with a fixation cross for 800 ms, followed by the stimulus video in the upper half of the screen. At the end of the sentence, the video disappeared, and three alternative pictures appeared in the lower half of the screen. Trials were presented randomly and hence independent of sentence structure for every participant. The sequencing of the picture alternatives from left to right was also randomized for each trial. Performance was measured by the computer's detection of a key press. Response keys were indicated by stickers on the keyboard in locations corresponding to the left, center, and right pictures on the computer monitor.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-23">RESULTS</hd> <p>The hypothesis that maturation affects the scope of sentence structure development was tested several ways. Analysis of the sign‐to‐picture matching data determined whether the lexical items of the stimulus sentences were familiar to the participants. Analyses of the sentence‐to‐picture matching data (target and alternative picture selection) tested the scope of sentence structures comprehended by the participants in relation to language background. The full statistical models included the independent participant covariates of years of ASL experience and cognitive task performance (forward and backward digit span, block design and picture arrangement). The stimulus sentence covariates were length in morphemes and mean lexical subjective frequency and iconicity ratings of the stimulus lexical. Analysis of the planned learning criterion data (accuracy on 5/6 trials) identified the target sentence structures that were significantly comprehended by each participant.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-24">Sign‐to‐picture matching</hd> <p>The total number of lexical items in the sign‐to‐picture matching experiment was 82. Mean accuracy was 81, 81, and 80 for the Native‐Signer, L2‐Signer and Late‐L1 groups, respectively (Table 1). All but one late‐L1 participant (who was tested no further and excluded from the N reported below) demonstrated familiarity with the stimulus ASL signs and could perform the task.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-25">Simple versus complex structures</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0174107242-26">Performance accuracy</hd> <p>Whether the participant selected the target picture or not was coded as 1 or 0. The data were analyzed using a generalized linear mixed model fit by maximum likelihood (Laplace Approximation), binomial (logit) family (Bates et al., [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref60">4</reflink>]). The intercept was the native‐signer performance. The fixed factors were Group (L2‐Signer and Late‐L1 participants) and Sentence Structure (Simple, Complex) and their interaction. The random factor was subjects. The full model included the participant and stimulus covariates. The model did not converge, however. To simplify the model, we ran significance testing of each covariate using nested ANOVA model comparisons, as (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref61">1</reflink>) and (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref62">2</reflink>) illustrate.</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> Base model: Target picture ∼ Group * Structure + (1|Subject).</item> <p></p> <item> Additive model: Target picture ∼ <emph>Covariate</emph> + Group * Structure + (1|Subject).</item> </ulist> <p>The results showed that backward digit span and stimulus length were significant covariates (Chisq = 6.68, <emph>p</emph> < 0.01; Chisq = 7.65, <emph>p</emph> < 0.01, respectively). The final effective model (2,664 observations and 37 subjects) was thus: <emph>Target picture ∼ DB + Length + Group * Structure +</emph> (1|Subject). The results showed significant effects for restricted language access in early childhood, Late‐L1 group (β = −1.36, SE = .31, <emph>p</emph> < 0.0001) and sentence structure (β = −0.718, SE = 0.23, <emph>p</emph> < 0.002) and their interaction (β = −0.843, SE = 0.28, <emph>p</emph> < 0.003). As predicted, the Late‐L1 group performed more accurately on the simple structures than the complex ones. By contrast the Native‐ and L2‐Signer groups performed accurately across the range of structures (Figure 1a). Stimulus length and backward digit span showed small and significant effects (β = − 0.082, SE =.03, <emph>p</emph> < 0. 01; β = 0.211, SE = 0.08, <emph>p</emph> < 0.01, respectively) and were uncorrelated with one another (<emph>r</emph> = −0.009).</p> <p> <img src="https://imageserver.ebscohost.com/img/embimages/rdk/5G5/01jan24/desc13416-fig-0001.jpg?ephost1=dGJyMNXb4kSepq84yOvqOLCmsE6epq5Srqa4SK6WxWXS" alt="desc13416-fig-0001.jpg" title="1 (a) Mean proportion of accurate trials as a function of sentence structure and early childhood language experience; (b) Proportion of group participants demonstrating significant comprehension (p < 0.05) as a function of sentence structure and early childhood language experience. (Performance on the lexical comprehension task is included for comparison." /> </p> <p></p> <hd id="AN0174107242-28">Partial accuracy</hd> <p>Recall that one alternative picture for each stimulus trial depicted the verb and arguments in alternative syntactic contexts: for example, a picture of a dog biting a cat as an alternative picture for the stimulus sentence, ANGRY CAT BITE DOG. Selection of the alternative picture would indicate that the lexical items of the stimulus sentence were recognized but that their syntactic roles were not.</p> <p>We analyzed the participants' selection of the alternate picture for each stimulus sentence (2664 observations, 37 subjects) with a generalized linear mixed model fit by maximum likelihood (Laplace Approximation), ['glmerMod'] family binomial (logit) for the fixed effects of Structure and Group and their interaction with the performance of the Native‐Signer group as the intercept and the participant and structure covariates. The full model did not converge. Significance testing of each covariate using nested ANOVA model comparisons were run as in (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref63">1</reflink>) and (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref64">2</reflink>) above and showed backward digit span to be significant. The final effective model was thus: <emph>Alternative picture ∼ DB + Group * Structure + (1|Subject)</emph>.</p> <p>As predicted, the Late‐L1 participants selected the alternative picture more often than the L2‐Signer participants (<emph>β</emph> = 1.575, SE = 0.213, <emph>p</emph> < 0.001). This result comports with the accuracy results above by showing that when the Late‐L1 group did not select the target picture, their picture selection was not random and indicated comprehension of the lexical items of the stimulus sentence just not in the relationship specified by the sentence structure. As would be predicted, the complex sentence structures elicited more alternative picture selections (β = 1.091, SE = 0.13, <emph>p</emph> < 0.001) with a marginal effect of backward digit span (β = −0.146, SE = 0.07, <emph>p</emph> = 0.03).</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-29">Question‐answer pairs</hd> <p>Because performance on the question‐answer stimuli required the added step of answering the stimulus sentence with a picture selection, we examined these data separately. We analyzed selection of the target picture for the question‐answer structures with a generalized linear mixed model fit by maximum likelihood (Laplace Approximation), binomial (logit) family. The fixed factors were Group (L2‐Signer, Late‐L1) and Question Type (Wh1, Wh2) and their interaction using Native‐Signer performance as the intercept. The random factor was subjects. The covariates were the participant and stimulus variables. However, the model did not converge. After significance testing of each variable using nested ANOVA model comparisons, we arrived at the final model: <emph>Target picture ∼ DB + Group * Structure + (1|Subject)</emph>. The results (444 observations and 37 participants) showed an effect of early childhood language experience, Late‐L1 group (β = −1.483, SE = 0.70, <emph>p</emph> < 0.05), a small effect of backward digit span (β = 0.574, SE = 0.22, <emph>p</emph> < 0.01) and no effects for Question‐Answer type or interaction with group. Given the null effect for question‐answer type, we analyzed these data no further.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-30">Learning criterion analyses</hd> <p>The analysis of the learning criterion data for each participant shows which target structures each participant significantly comprehended across the randomized lexical and pictorial contexts of the experimental trials (5/6 items accurate, <emph>p</emph> < 0.05). As predicted, participants with infant language experience showed significant comprehension across the sentence structures, except for the Pronominal structure which proved difficult for several L2‐Signer participants (Figure 1a). As predicted, the majority of the Late‐L1 participants demonstrated significant comprehension of the Simple structures of Classifier constructions, SV and Agreement‐verb and Complement sentences, but only four Late‐L1 participants significantly comprehended the SVO‐aspect‐modal structure and only two Late‐L1 participants showed significant comprehension of the SVO structure. Among the Complex structures, one Late‐L1 participant showed significant comprehension of the Negative, Topic‐Comment and Conditional sentences and no Late‐L1 participant showed significant comprehension of the Pronominal, Relative‐Clause, or Question‐Answer sentence structures (Figure 1b).</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-31">DISCUSSION</hd> <p>These results provide evidence that language experience in early childhood is necessary for the development of complex sentence structure. The results were consistent across the various statistical models, namely, target picture selection, alternate picture selection, and the planned learning criterion. Moreover, the results were not due to the subjective frequency and iconicity of the stimulus lexical items or length of the participants' ASL experience and cognitive task performance except for backward digit span, discussed below. Crucially, several Simple but few Complex sentence structures were comprehended by the participants whose language experience was restricted during early childhood. A detailed look at the sentence structures they were able to comprehend provides insights into the linguistic nature of maturational effects on the development of sentence structure.</p> <p>First, performance on the backward digit span task showed a small effect in all of the generalized linear regression models. This indicates, unsurprisingly, that the sentence‐to‐picture matching task requires remembering the comprehended sentence meaning long enough to recognize its depiction in a line drawing. By contrast, performance on the forward digit span task was not a significant variable. The finding that backward but not forward digit span related to performance on the sentence‐to‐picture‐matching task comports with the theoretical distinction between memory capacity versus processing, that is, how many items can be stored, as measured by forward digit span, contrasted with the ability to manipulate the stored items, as measured by backward digit span (Boutla et al., [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref65">8</reflink>]; Hall & Bavelier, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref66">27</reflink>]). Working memory and sentence structure learning show a reciprocal relationship over language development (Klem et al., [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref67">36</reflink>]; Schwering & MacDonald, [<reflink idref="bib56" id="ref68">56</reflink>]). Consistent with this account, all three groups comprehended sentence structures longer than their digits‐backward span. Stimulus sentence length showed a small effect in the model of target picture selection but was uncorrelated with backward digit span, indicating that sentence structure rather than length was the crucial factor in target picture selection.</p> <p>The quantitative results showed, as predicted, that the Complex and Question‐Answer structures elicited more errors overall and were corroborated by the learning criterion results (compare Figure 1a and b). The results of both types of analysis show that Complex and Question‐Answer structures were difficult for the Late‐L1 participants to comprehend. Only one Late‐L1 participant showed significant comprehension of the Complex sentence structures of Negative, Topic Comment, and Conditional, and only one Late‐L1 participant showed significant comprehension of Reported Speech, Relative Clause, and Question‐Answer structures. These results are consistent with research from French, Italian, and Catalan Sign Languages showing AOA effects on the processing of relative clause sentences (Hauser et al., [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref69">30</reflink>]) and research on deaf children's spoken Hebrew finding that childhood language experience relates to relative clause comprehension (Szterman & Friedmann, [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref70">61</reflink>]).</p> <p>The sentence structures comprehended by the Late‐L1 participants indicates the syntactic structures that are developed after early childhood. First, the Late L1 participants showed significant comprehension of the Classifier constructions, which consisted of semantic classifiers in varying paths or spatial relations, similar to the those used in previous AOA grammatical judgement studies (Boudreault & Mayberry, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref71">7</reflink>]; Cormier et al., [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref72">16</reflink>]). A study of Turkish Sign Language (TID) (Karadoller et al., [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref73">35</reflink>]) found Late‐L1 children were able to accurately produce the spatial relations of Classifier constructions indicating of "to the <emph>right</emph> of x" versus "to the <emph>left</emph> of x", suggesting that learning to use space to indicate prepositional relations remains intact after early childhood. However, these results cannot be generalized across Classifier constructions in sign languages, which vary in morphophonology and typology. For example, Newport ([<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref74">50</reflink>]) found Classifier verbs of motion were difficult for Late‐L1 participants, whose childhood language was less restricted than the present ones. In ongoing work, we find that Late‐L1 participants, with backgrounds similar to the present ones, show difficulty comprehending and producing plurality in Classifier constructions ([<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref75">57</reflink>]) and typically produce one‐argument verb structures (Miles et al., [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref76">48</reflink>]).</p> <p>Other Simple structures the Late‐L1 participants significantly comprehended were the SV and Agreement‐verb sentences. The SV structure requires only one argument, the Subject. This structure is used early in ASL development, observed in homesigners, and is one of the first structures observed in the first cohort of signers of Central Taurus Sign Language (Ergin et al., [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref77">20</reflink>]; Goldin‐Meadow, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref78">24</reflink>]; Lillo‐Martin & Henner, [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref79">39</reflink>]). Unlike the SV structure, the Agreement‐verb structure requires three arguments, the Subject and Object are both produced with lexical items, and an Indirect Object is produced with a movement morpheme on the verb (and typically inanimate). This verb construction is used by ASL learning children as young as two years of age (Meier, [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref80">47</reflink>]) and is one of the first structures to emerge among the second cohort signers of Nicaraguan Sign Language (Flaherty et al., [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref81">23</reflink>]; Senghas & Coppola, [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref82">58</reflink>]).</p> <p>Recall that the longitudinal studies of adolescent Late‐L1 learners' spontaneous ASL production observed few SVO structures (Cheng & Mayberry, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref83">12</reflink>]). One question we asked here was whether this pattern is restricted to production. The answer is no. Only two Late‐L1 participants showed significant comprehension of the SVO structure (Figure 1b), indicating that basic sentence structure does not develop in all individuals after an early childhood of restricted language access. In subsequent research we have found that Late‐L1 participants, with backgrounds similar to the present ones, use event structure and animacy to comprehend SVO sentences instead of word order (Cheng & Mayberry, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref84">13</reflink>]), a comprehension strategy used by young English learning children prior to their development of the SVO structure (Strohner & Nelson, [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref85">60</reflink>]).</p> <p>Sequential combinations of SV sentences can be used to express the Subject and Object roles of SVO. For example, when describing filmed stimuli of one person pushing another, the overwhelming tendency for second generation signers of Al‐Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) was to express this dual argument event with two consecutive, single argument events, as in WOMAN PUSH, MAN FALL, rather than with the dual argument structure of SVO, as in WOMAN PUSH MAN (Aronoff et al., [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref86">3</reflink>]).</p> <p>The learning criterion results suggest that prior to the development of complex sentence structures, structures that involve a verb with at least one internal and one external argument must be learned, as has been shown for the development of English sentence structure (Diessel, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref87">19</reflink>]). For ASL, this typically surfaces as SVO; we predict that the same principle would apply to OSV languages. For example, the two Late‐L1 participants who accurately comprehended the SVO structure also significantly comprehended the Topic Comment sentence structure where word order is switched to OSV. The two Late‐L1 participants who demonstrated comprehension of the Negative structure also demonstrated comprehension of the SVO structure. This pattern suggests that basic SVO structure needs to develop before the end of early childhood for the development of complex structures to occur. In other words, the syntactic categories of Subject, Verb, and Object must be learned prior to learning how these elements are moved, attached, and embedded in Complex sentence structures. Of course, this development likely also entails considerable morphophonological development, a hypothesis in need of further investigation.</p> <p>The finding that SVO sentence structure requires language experience in early childhood is inconsistent with previous research suggesting that SVO is resilient to AOA effects (Boudreault & Mayberry, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref88">7</reflink>]; Cormier et al., [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref89">16</reflink>]; Newport, [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref90">50</reflink>]). The discrepancy can be explained by the fact that the early childhood language environments of the present Late‐L1 participants was far more impoverished than those of previous studies, who had received early intervention and education throughout early childhood albeit with the active prohibition of gesture and sign language (Mauldin, [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref91">42</reflink>]).</p> <p>Together the present results suggest an inflection point for biological maturation effects on the development of complex syntax around the end of early childhood for the development of Complex sentence structures. As studied in detail by Diessel ([<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref92">19</reflink>]), Complex sentence structures can only be produced and comprehended by learning the combinatorial rules specifying how clauses are joined to create new meanings. The development of complex sentence structure is linguistically abstract because it is one step removed from the prototypical events comprehended by the present Late‐L1 participants and observed in emerging sign languages. The development of complex sentence structure requires that sufficient language be experienced during early childhood to learn basic SVO structure. Note that these effects are far more pronounced than those reported for L2 learners at any AOA (Hartshorne et al., [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref93">29</reflink>]). Early language experience may scaffold subsequent language development by affecting and/or guiding the brain language system via underlying white‐ and grey‐matter growth patterns (Cheng et al., [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref94">14</reflink>]; Mayberry et al., [<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref95">43</reflink>]).</p> <p>Finally, the present results can help explain the clinical sequelae of highly impoverished language access in childhood. It is important to point out that language deprivation in early childhood, however unintentional, is a common experience for individuals born severely or profoundly deaf. Indeed, the patterns of sentence structure comprehension we find here may help explain some of the language behaviors observed in deaf individuals diagnosed with <emph>language deprivation syndrome</emph>, such as difficulty establishing the "...subject, predicate, and object unambiguously, or follow[ing] the common topic structure of ASL," (p. 143) (Williams & Crump, [<reflink idref="bib63" id="ref96">63</reflink>]) all of which would stem from not having acquired basic sentence structure in early childhood, as the present results indicate. This persistent and pre‐clausal level of language development as a consequence of severe language restriction in early childhood is further consistent with the case study results of deaf individuals learning spoken language after early childhood (Curtiss, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref97">18</reflink>]; Grimshaw et al., [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref98">26</reflink>]), showing that maturational effects on sentence structure development are modality independent.</p> <p>In sum, the results of this comprehension study ASL sentence structure provide evidence that maturation affects sentence structure development such that the development of complex sentence structures requires interpersonal communication via natural language in early life.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-32">ACKNOWLEDGMENTS</hd> <p>The research reported in this publication was supported in part by NIH grant R01DC012797 to Rachel Mayberry. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. We thank Deaf Community Services and Kay Vincent for help with participant recruitment and the participants.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-33">CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT</hd> <p>The authors declare no conflict of interest.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-34">DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT</hd> <p>Reasonable requests for the data will be made available.</p> <hd id="AN0174107242-35">ETHICS STATEMENT</hd> <p>The research protocol reported here was approved by the UCSD IRB # 111126, Assessing language skills in deaf and hearing users of American Sign Language.</p> <ref id="AN0174107242-36"> <title> Footnotes </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref23" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> As is tradition in sign language research, ASL sign glosses are represented in all caps.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref7" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> IX1 refers to first‐person pronoun; IX3 refers to third person; IX3p refers to third‐person plural.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib3" idref="ref50" type="bt">3</bibl> <bibtext> Square brackets show the scope of the signs over which the GFE (here conditional) co‐occurs.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib4" idref="ref60" type="bt">4</bibl> <bibtext> [Correction made on 6 June 2023, after first online publication: The 5th author's name has been corrected in this version.]</bibtext> </blist> </ref> <ref id="AN0174107242-37"> <title> REFERENCES </title> <blist> <bibtext> Anderson, D., & Reilly, J. 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  Data: Impoverished Language in Early Childhood Affects the Development of Complex Sentence Structure
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Mayberry%2C+Rachel+I%2E%22">Mayberry, Rachel I.</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0819-4140">0000-0002-0819-4140</externalLink>)<br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Hatrak%2C+Marla%22">Hatrak, Marla</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3481-9156">0000-0003-3481-9156</externalLink>)<br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Ilbasaran%2C+Deniz%22">Ilbasaran, Deniz</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Cheng%2C+Qi%22">Cheng, Qi</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Huang%2C+Yaqian%22">Huang, Yaqian</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Hall%2C+Matt+L%2E%22">Hall, Matt L.</searchLink>
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Developmental+Science%22"><i>Developmental Science</i></searchLink>. 2024 27(1).
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  Data: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
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  Data: 12
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  Data: 2024
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  Data: National Institutes of Health (NIH) (DHHS)
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  Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Young+Children%22">Young Children</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Language+Enrichment%22">Language Enrichment</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Educationally+Disadvantaged%22">Educationally Disadvantaged</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Language+Acquisition%22">Language Acquisition</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Sentence+Structure%22">Sentence Structure</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Difficulty+Level%22">Difficulty Level</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Early+Experience%22">Early Experience</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Deafness%22">Deafness</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22American+Sign+Language%22">American Sign Language</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Language+Usage%22">Language Usage</searchLink>
– Name: DOI
  Label: DOI
  Group: ID
  Data: 10.1111/desc.13416
– Name: ISSN
  Label: ISSN
  Group: ISSN
  Data: 1363-755X<br />1467-7687
– Name: Abstract
  Label: Abstract
  Group: Ab
  Data: The hypothesis that impoverished language experience affects complex sentence structure development around the end of early childhood was tested using a fully randomized, sentence-to-picture matching study in American Sign Language (ASL). The participants were ASL signers who had impoverished or typical access to language in early childhood. Deaf signers whose access to language was highly impoverished in early childhood (N = 11) primarily comprehended structures consisting of a single verb and argument (Subject or Object), agreeing verbs, and the spatial relation or path of semantic classifiers. They showed difficulty comprehending more complex sentence structures involving dual lexical arguments or multiple verbs. As predicted, participants with typical language access in early childhood, deaf native signers (N = 17) or hearing second-language learners (N = 10), comprehended the range of 12 ASL sentence structures, independent of the subjective iconicity or frequency of the stimulus lexical items, or length of ASL experience and performance on non-verbal cognitive tasks. The results show that language experience in early childhood is necessary for the development of complex syntax.
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  Group: Date
  Data: 2023
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  Data: EJ1403740
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        Value: 10.1111/desc.13416
    Languages:
      – Text: English
    PhysicalDescription:
      Pagination:
        PageCount: 12
    Subjects:
      – SubjectFull: Young Children
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Language Enrichment
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Educationally Disadvantaged
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Language Acquisition
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Sentence Structure
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Difficulty Level
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Early Experience
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Deafness
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: American Sign Language
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Language Usage
        Type: general
    Titles:
      – TitleFull: Impoverished Language in Early Childhood Affects the Development of Complex Sentence Structure
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            NameFull: Mayberry, Rachel I.
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            NameFull: Hatrak, Marla
      – PersonEntity:
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            NameFull: Ilbasaran, Deniz
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Cheng, Qi
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Huang, Yaqian
      – PersonEntity:
          Name:
            NameFull: Hall, Matt L.
    IsPartOfRelationships:
      – BibEntity:
          Dates:
            – D: 01
              M: 01
              Type: published
              Y: 2024
          Identifiers:
            – Type: issn-print
              Value: 1363-755X
            – Type: issn-electronic
              Value: 1467-7687
          Numbering:
            – Type: volume
              Value: 27
            – Type: issue
              Value: 1
          Titles:
            – TitleFull: Developmental Science
              Type: main
ResultId 1