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Comprehension of Ditransitive Constructions in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Developmental Language Disorder and Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder plus Language Impairment

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Title: Comprehension of Ditransitive Constructions in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Developmental Language Disorder and Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder plus Language Impairment
Language: English
Authors: Weizhe Qiu (ORCID 0000-0001-7948-9774), Xiaowei He (ORCID 0000-0002-2417-633X)
Source: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. 2025 55(4):1450-1464.
Availability: Springer. Available from: Springer Nature. One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-460-1700; e-mail: customerservice@springernature.com; Web site: https://link.springer.com/
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 15
Publication Date: 2025
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Descriptors: Children, Mandarin Chinese, Language Impairments, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Developmental Disabilities, Communication Disorders, Comorbidity, Sentence Structure, Verbs, Transformational Generative Grammar
DOI: 10.1007/s10803-024-06271-z
ISSN: 0162-3257
1573-3432
Abstract: This study examined and compared the comprehension of Mandarin ditransitive constructions in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and children with autism spectrum disorder plus language impairment (ALI). Eighteen children with DLD, 17 children with ALI, and 27 age-matched typically developing (TDA) children, participated in a sentence-picture matching task on four patterns of Mandarin ditransitive constructions. Both children with DLD and children with ALI received significantly lower accuracy than TDA children in general and their most common errors were thematic role reversals. However, while children with ALI evinced a generalized deficit in all four patterns, only the comprehension of S1 (Subj. + Vgei + IO + DO) and S3 (Subj. + gei + IO + V + DO) was affected in children with DLD, with that of S2 (Subj. + V + DO + gei + IO) and S4 (Subj. + V + IO + DO) preserved in this population. Additionally, thematic role reversal errors were more dominant in children with DLD than in children with ALI who also committed a relatively higher proportion of Wrong Theme and No Recipient errors. It is concluded that the primary deficit of children with DLD lies in representing dependent relationships between the arguments and the verb as involved in thematic role assignment, but this is less critical in children with ALI, with their performance on the comprehension task possibly also related to other factors associated with the condition. To enhance the development of ditransitive constructions, intervention efforts for children with DLD and children with ALI could focus on strengthening the connection between each argument and its thematic role.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2025
Accession Number: EJ1464245
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0183973023;aut01apr.25;2025Mar26.05:27;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0183973023-1">Comprehension of Ditransitive Constructions in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Developmental Language Disorder and Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Plus Language Impairment </title> <p>This study examined and compared the comprehension of Mandarin ditransitive constructions in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and children with autism spectrum disorder plus language impairment (ALI). Eighteen children with DLD, 17 children with ALI, and 27 age-matched typically developing (TDA) children, participated in a sentence-picture matching task on four patterns of Mandarin ditransitive constructions. Both children with DLD and children with ALI received significantly lower accuracy than TDA children in general and their most common errors were thematic role reversals. However, while children with ALI evinced a generalized deficit in all four patterns, only the comprehension of S1 (Subj. + Vgei + IO + DO) and S3 (Subj. + gei + IO + V + DO) was affected in children with DLD, with that of S2 (Subj. + V + DO + gei + IO) and S4 (Subj. + V + IO + DO) preserved in this population. Additionally, thematic role reversal errors were more dominant in children with DLD than in children with ALI who also committed a relatively higher proportion of Wrong Theme and No Recipient errors. It is concluded that the primary deficit of children with DLD lies in representing dependent relationships between the arguments and the verb as involved in thematic role assignment, but this is less critical in children with ALI, with their performance on the comprehension task possibly also related to other factors associated with the condition. To enhance the development of ditransitive constructions, intervention efforts for children with DLD and children with ALI could focus on strengthening the connection between each argument and its thematic role.</p> <p>Keywords: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD); Children with autism spectrum disorder plus language impairment (ALI); Mandarin ditransitive constructions; Thematic/semantic role assignment; Psychology and Cognitive Sciences Psychology Medical and Health Sciences Clinical Sciences</p> <p>Copyright comment Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-2">Introduction</hd> <p>Developmental language disorder (DLD), previously known as specific language impairment (SLI), refers to a language disorder with no known biomedical etiology (Bishop et al., [<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref1">5</reflink>]). Although language impairments are not the core features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD; American Psychiatric Association, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref2">2</reflink>]), some children with ASD are also reported to show deficits in complex syntactic structures, reminiscent of those in children with DLD (Durrleman & Delage, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref3">13</reflink>]; Sukenik et al., [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref4">47</reflink>]). This subgroup of children with ASD with additional language impairment is referred to in the literature as children with ALI. The grammatical parallelisms between children with DLD and children with ALI, along with those in other areas (e.g., in pragmatics; Kjelgaard & Tager-Flusberg, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref5">27</reflink>]), have sparked an intense debate on whether DLD and ASD are different ends on a continuum of the same disorder (Bishop, [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref6">4</reflink>]; Georgiou & Spanoudis, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref7">18</reflink>]; Tager-Flusberg, [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref8">50</reflink>]) or two distinct disorders (Prévost et al., [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref9">39</reflink>]; Sukenik & Friedmann, [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref10">46</reflink>]). Moreover, these similarities have posed great challenges to clinicians in making a differential diagnosis between DLD and ASD (Hus & Segal, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref11">24</reflink>]; McGregor et al., [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref12">34</reflink>]). Recently, a growing number of studies have been dedicated to identifying plausible markers in the differential diagnosis (Chen et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref13">7</reflink>]; Dai et al., [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref14">9</reflink>]; Huang et al., [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref15">22</reflink>]; Moreno-Pérez et al., [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref16">35</reflink>]).</p> <p>Argument structure complexity has been found to influence the acquisition of grammatical morphemes in children with DLD, with deficits in the latter a hallmark of DLD (Grela & Leonard, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref17">20</reflink>]; Pizzioli & Schelstraete, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref18">38</reflink>]). However, although difficulties in verbs and verb argument structures have been reported for children with DLD since the earliest studies of the population (de Jong, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref19">10</reflink>]; Ingham et al., [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref20">25</reflink>]), limited research has been conducted on these aspects in children with DLD opposed to the detailed examination of their morphosyntactic deficiencies (de Jong & Fletcher, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref21">11</reflink>]; Leonard, [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref22">29</reflink>]). Ditransitive verbs, which are complex in terms of the number of arguments they take (Shapiro & Levine, [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref23">44</reflink>]; Thompson, [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref24">51</reflink>]), are found to be particularly difficult for children with DLD in comparison with intransitive and transitive verbs with fewer arguments (Grela, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref25">19</reflink>]; Sanz-Torrent et al., [<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref26">43</reflink>]; Thordardottir & Weismer, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref27">52</reflink>]). Nevertheless, only a few studies have been conducted to examine the acquisition of ditransitive constructions by children with DLD (Adams, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref28">1</reflink>]; Ebbels, [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref29">15</reflink>]; van der Lely & Harris, [<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref30">57</reflink>]; He, unpublished). Furthermore, notwithstanding the great resemblance between children with DLD and children with ASD, the acquisition of ditransitive constructions by children with ASD is even more unclear, with only one study in this respect (Stockbridge et al., [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref31">45</reflink>]), and no studies have compared the performance of the two groups in the constructions.</p> <p>In this study, we examined the extent to which children with DLD and children with ALI would overlap in the comprehension of ditransitive constructions. More specifically, we focus on those children acquiring Mandarin Chinese (hereafter, Mandarin), a language that is underrepresented in the DLD and ASD research. It was intended that the present task would help us to have a better understanding of the language profiles of children with DLD and children with ALI and also contribute to the debate on the relationship between DLD and ALI.</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-3">Ditransitive Constructions and Their Development in TD Children</hd> <p>Ditransitive constructions typically denote the transfer of one entity from one person to another, in which three arguments, namely a subject, a direct object (DO), and an indirect object (IO), are associated with the verb. The three arguments play different semantic roles in the transfer event. The subject, who initiates the action of transfer, is the Agent; the DO, i.e., the entity being transferred, is the Theme; and the IO, i.e., the receiver of the transferred object, is the Recipient.</p> <p>There are two patterns of ditransitive constructions in English. In double object constructions (DOC), as exemplified in (1a), the two objects appear in the order of V- IO-DO, whereas in dative constructions (DC), the DO precedes the IO, giving rise to the V-DO-<emph>to</emph>-IO order shown in (1b). Moreover, there is a preposition '<emph>to</emph>' before the IO in DC, which explicitly signals the Recipient role of the IO (O'Grady, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref32">36</reflink>]).</p> <p></p> <p> <ephtml> <table frame="hsides" rules="groups"><tbody><tr><td align="left"><p>(1)</p></td><td align="left"><p>a. John gave Mary a book</p></td><td align="left"><p>(DOC)</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left" /><td align="left"><p>b. John gave a book to Mary</p></td><td align="left"><p> (DC)</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>(2)</p></td><td align="left"><p>a. <italic>Jiejie song-gei mama yi-duo hua</italic></p><p> sister give-GEI Mum one-CL flower</p><p> 'The sister gave Mum a flower.'</p></td><td align="left"><p>(S1)</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left" /><td align="left"><p>b. <italic>Jiejie song le yi-duo hua gei mama</italic></p><p>sister give LE one-CL flower to mum</p><p>'The sister gave a flower to Mum.'</p></td><td align="left"><p>(S2)</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left" /><td align="left"><p>c. <italic>Jiejie gei mama song le yi-duo hua</italic></p><p>sister to mum give LE one-CL flower</p><p>'The sister gave a flower to Mum.'</p></td><td align="left"><p>(S3)</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left" /><td align="left"><p>d. <italic>Jiejie song le mama yi-duo hua</italic></p><p>sister give LE Mum one-CL flower</p><p>'The sister gave Mum a flower.'</p></td><td align="left"><p>(S4)</p></td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>Compared with English, Mandarin specifies more varieties of ditransitive constructions, as illustrated in (2a-d). S4 and S2 are the counterparts of English DOC and DC, respectively. Additionally, S1 is another sub-pattern of Mandarin DOC, and S3 is another sub-pattern of Mandarin DC (He, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref33">21</reflink>]; Zhu, [<reflink idref="bib61" id="ref34">61</reflink>]). However, the two sub-patterns of Mandarin DOC and DC vary slightly. According to He ([<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref35">21</reflink>]), with the absence of the preposition to denote the direction of transfer, a functional category "G" is projected in DOC, which is overtly realized as <emph>gei</emph> behind the verb in S1 but it is covert, i.e., without an observable form, in S4. Besides, S3 is argued to be syntactically more complex than S2 in that the postverbal preposition phrase <emph>gei mama</emph> "to mum" in S2 is moved to the preverbal position in S3, resulting in the order "Subj. + <emph>gei</emph> + IO + V + DO". Moreover, it should be noted that there are two possible directions of transfer in Mandarin DOC, namely one from the subject to the IO with giving verbs like <emph>gei</emph>/<emph>song</emph> "give" and <emph>ji</emph> "send" (called giving-type ditransitive constructions), and the other from the IO to the subject with obtaining verbs like <emph>tou</emph> "steal", <emph>mai</emph> "buy" and <emph>qiang</emph> "rob" (called obtaining-type ditransitive constructions; He, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref36">21</reflink>]). Nevertheless, English DOC only expresses transfer events of the former type (He, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref37">21</reflink>]).</p> <p>Previous acquisitional studies have reported that although DOC emerges earlier in children's spontaneous production and appears at higher frequency in child-directed speech (Campbell & Tomasello, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref38">6</reflink>]), preschool English-speaking TD children fare better on DC than on DOC in comprehension tasks (Cook, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref39">8</reflink>]; Osgood & Zehler, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref40">37</reflink>]; Rowland & Noble, [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref41">41</reflink>]; Arunachalam, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref42">3</reflink>]). The most frequent errors for children in interpreting ditransitive constructions is reversing the role between the two objects, i.e., assigning the Theme to the IO and the Recipient to the DO, in particular in DOC when the two objects were both animate and/or marked as full noun phrases (e.g., give the boy the girl).</p> <p>By contrast, few studies have been conducted on the acquisition of ditransitive constructions in Mandarin-speaking children, and these studies were limited to the analysis of children's spontaneous speech. Typical acquisition of Mandarin ditransitive constructions normally begins with the verb <emph>gei</emph> "give" (Zhang et al., [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref43">58</reflink>]; Zhou, [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref44">59</reflink>]; Zou, [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref45">62</reflink>]). By the age of four, productions of all four forms of Mandarin ditransitive constructions have been observed in children's spontaneous speech (Li, [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref46">30</reflink>]; Zhang et al., [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref47">58</reflink>]). Compared with giving-type ditransitive constructions, obtaining-type ditransitive constructions are much rarer in input and are acquired later by children (Zhou, [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref48">60</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-4">Acquisition of Ditransitive Constructions by Children with DLD</hd> <p>Children with DLD have been found to frequently omit the obligatory arguments in their limited productions of ditransitive constructions (Sanz-Torrent et al., [<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref49">43</reflink>]; Thordardottir & Weismer, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref50">52</reflink>]). However, mixed results have been obtained in previous studies, though small in number, regarding whether they have deficits in the comprehension of ditransitive constructions.</p> <p>Adams ([<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref51">1</reflink>]) identified no significant differences between English-speaking children with DLD (mean age = 4.94 years old) and the age-matched TD children in the comprehension of DOC (e.g., give her dog the food). On the contrary, deficits were shown by the 6-year-old English-speaking children with DLD in van der Lely and Harris ([<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref52">57</reflink>]) in the comprehension of reversible DOC and DC (e.g., DC: give the girl to the boy; DOC: give the boy the girl) as compared with the language- or age-matched controls. No difference between DOC and DC was observed in children with DLD in their study, while the two control groups scored much higher in DC than in DOC. The majority of errors for most children with DLD were reversing the semantic roles between the two animate objects, while few semantic errors of the verb or the arguments were committed. Those thematic role reversal errors were ascribed to their deficits in representing the hierarchical relationship between the arguments and the verb in ditransitive constructions, as proposed in the <emph>Representational Deficit for Dependent Relations Model</emph> (RDDRM) later in van der Lely ([<reflink idref="bib54" id="ref53">54</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref54">55</reflink>]), and its more recent development, the <emph>Computational Grammatical Complexity Hypothesis</emph> (CGCH; van der Lely, [<reflink idref="bib56" id="ref55">56</reflink>]).</p> <p>However, an advantage of DC over DOC was noted in the three adolescents with DLD in Ebbels ([<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref56">15</reflink>]), who interpreted DOC as DC, for example, making the cow give the pig to the sheep when hearing the sentence 'the cow is giving the pig the sheep'. After the shape-coding therapy, during which the three adolescents were taught to interpret the two forms with the arguments explicitly marked with different shapes to represent the different roles they play, two adolescents experienced a great improvement in DOC, demonstrating perfect interpretation of both structures. By contrast, no intervention effect was observed in the other participant and he continued to show impairments in both structures. This was attributed to his poor auditory memory, more specifically, the difficulty in remembering the three arguments reliably in sequence.</p> <p>He (unpublished) provides preliminary evidence for the deficits of Mandarin-speaking children with DLD in ditransitive constructions. In his study, children with DLD (mean age = 59.75 months old) received significantly lower scores than the age-matched TD children (mean age = 59.67 months old) and the MLU-matched younger TD children (mean age = 44.08 months old) in the production and comprehension of ditransitive constructions. Moreover, children with DLD exhibited a sensitivity to syntactic complexity in their production of the four patterns of ditransitive constructions with giving verbs, producing more S4 than S1 and more S2 than S3. This was interpreted to be concordant with the <emph>Derivational Complexity Hypothesis</emph> (DCH, Jakubowicz, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref57">26</reflink>]), which specifies that structures that involve more times of merging (internal or external) in derivation are of higher syntactic complexity and are less preferred by children in production. Besides, in the picture-sentence matching task, children with DLD were more likely to choose the distractor picture with thematic role reversal between Agent and Recipient than the TD controls. While the age-matched controls obtained similar accuracies in DOC and DC with giving and obtaining verbs (98.81% and 100% respectively) in the comprehension task, DC yielded higher scores than DOC in children with DLD (83.33 vs 72.62%) and the MLU-matched controls (95.83 vs 83.33%). However, it was unclear (a)whether children with DLD differ significantly from the TD controls in both DOC and DC and more specifically, in the four specific patterns; (b) whether children with DLD were equally likely to commit thematic role reversal errors in the giving-type and obtaining-type ditransitive constructions. Additionally, as only one distractor (i.e., role reversal) was designed in this task, this may have restricted the possible difficulties displayed by children with DLD in ditransitive construction comprehension.</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-5">Acquisition of Ditransitive Constructions by Children with ASD</hd> <p>Compared to pertinent studies on children with DLD, the acquisition of ditransitive constructions by children with ASD is less investigated, with the only exception of Stockbridge et al. ([<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref58">45</reflink>]). They found that school-aged English-speaking children with ASD (mean age = 12.51 years old) were generally on par with the younger vocabulary TD controls (mean age = 8.31 years old) in identifying the indirect object (i.e., the Recipient) of ditransitive constructions, with an advantage on DC over DOC in both groups. However, as no age-matched controls were included in this study, it remains unknown whether children with ASD would perform as well as their peers. Besides, with the use of passive questions to elicit the identification of the indirect object of DOC and DC (e.g., "Who was thrown the ball"; "Who was the ball thrown to"), the performance of both the ASD and TD groups on ditransitive constructions may have been confounded by that on passives and <emph>wh</emph>-questions.</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-6">The Present Study</hd> <p>As mentioned above, most of the previous studies on the acquisition of ditransitive constructions by children with DLD and children with ASD are limited to those speaking English, and no studies have compared the comprehension of ditransitive constructions in the two affected groups. Although He (unpublished) has investigated the comprehension of ditransitive constructions in Mandarin-speaking children with DLD, no detailed analyses have been performed on their ability in different patterns and types of ditransitive verbs, and the potential deficits in the population have not been fully investigated. The present study intended to extend the previous studies on the language deficits of DLD and ALI by examining the comprehension of the four patterns of ditransitive constructions in Mandarin-speaking children with DLD and children with ALI with a sentence-picture matching task. To ease the burden of children with language impairment, the comprehension of the prototypical giving-type ditransitive constructions with an animacy contrast between the two objects (i.e., with an inanimate Theme and an animate Recipient) was tested. Specifically, we wanted to answer the following two questions:</p> <p>First, do children with DLD and children with ALI demonstrate impairments in the comprehension of ditransitive constructions as compared with the age-matched controls? Considering their impaired language abilities, we expect that children with DLD and children with ALI would demonstrate comprehension of ditransitive constructions that are not appropriate for their age, but possibly with differences among the various patterns.</p> <p>Second, to what extent do children with DLD and children with ALI differ in the comprehension of ditransitive constructions? While children with DLD and children with ALI are predicted to perform comparably in general, we are also interested in whether they would differ in their performance patterns across various structures and error distribution as it is unclear whether children with ALI would also be affected by any other factors associated with the condition.</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-7">Methods</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0183973023-8">Participants</hd> <p>Sixty-two preschool Mandarin-speaking children participated in this study, including 18 children with DLD, 17 children with ALI, and 27 TDA children.</p> <p>The DLD group consisted of 2 girls and 16 boys, ranging in age from 48.65 to 80.00 months (mean = 62.32 months). They were recruited from special schools and normal kindergartens. During the screening phase, parents or teachers were invited to help identify the suspected children with DLD according to the criteria described in Leonard ([<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref59">29</reflink>], pp.14–15). Specifically, those children who exhibited language impairments but had no history of hearing defectiveness, no neurological or psychiatric disorders, no autistic symptoms, etc. were selected. Then, in participant recruitment, the nonverbal IQ and general language abilities of the suspected children were measured with standardized tests. The Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-Fourth Edition (WPPSI-IV; Li & Zhu, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref60">31</reflink>]) was used to assess children's nonverbal IQ. Besides, two language tests were administered to measure participants' general language abilities: (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref61">1</reflink>) the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R; Sang & Miao, [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref62">42</reflink>]) was carried out to measure children's receptive vocabulary; (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref63">2</reflink>) the Rating Scale for Preschool Children with Language Disorder-Revised (RSPLD-R; Lin et al., [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref64">32</reflink>]) or the Rating Scale for School Children with Language Disorder-Revised (RSSCLD-R; Lin et al., [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref65">33</reflink>]) was adopted to evaluate the language comprehension, language production, and language development of children under or above 6 years old respectively. Only those children who scored within the normal range in nonverbal IQ (> 70, Swillen et al., [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref66">49</reflink>]) and scored 1.25 standard deviations (SD) below their age norms in at least two out of the four language indexes (Tomblin et al., [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref67">53</reflink>]) were recruited into the DLD group.</p> <p>Since one of the purposes of the present study was to identify any plausible markers in the differential diagnosis between ASD and DLD, children with ALI who were matched with children with DLD on language abilities and nonverbal IQ were of more interest, among whom misdiagnoses are more likely to be made. Because of the more frequent occurrence of ASD among boys than girls (Lai et al., [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref68">28</reflink>]), 16 boys but only one girl, ranging in age from 47.00 to 77.94 months (mean = 65.26 months) were enrolled in the ALI group. All children with ALI were recruited from hospitals, rehabilitation centers, or special schools. They had received formal diagnoses by a psychiatrist or pediatrician of ASD according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref69">2</reflink>]) and the diagnoses were further confirmed by an experienced clinical psychologist through behavioral observation at the time of assessment for this study. Like the children in the DLD group, the children in the ALI group scored 1.25 SD below their age norms in at least two out of the four language indexes and were higher than 70 in nonverbal IQ. Those children with ASD with normal language abilities and/or a nonverbal IQ lower than 70 were not included in the present study.</p> <p>To have a better understanding of the language abilities of children with DLD and children with ALI, we also recruited from normal kindergartens a group of TDA children, including 9 girls and 18 boys (age range = 46.30–75.20 months; mean = 61.97 months). All children in this group demonstrated age-appropriate performance on all four language indexes and their nonverbal IQ was within the normal range. Descriptive characteristics of the three groups are summarized in Table 1.</p> <p>Table 1 Descriptive characteristics of the three groups</p> <p> <ephtml> <table frame="hsides" rules="groups"><thead><tr><th align="left" /><th align="left" colspan="2"><p>ALI (<italic>N</italic> = 17)</p></th><th align="left" colspan="2"><p>DLD (<italic>N</italic> = 18)</p></th><th align="left" colspan="2"><p>TDA (<italic>N</italic> = 27)</p></th></tr><tr><th align="left" /><th align="left"><p>M(SD)</p></th><th align="left"><p>range</p></th><th align="left"><p>M(SD)</p></th><th align="left"><p>range</p></th><th align="left"><p>M(SD)</p></th><th align="left"><p>range</p></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td align="left"><p>Age(Months)</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>65.26 (8.80)</p></td><td align="left"><p>47.00–77.94</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>62.32 (10.09)</p></td><td align="left"><p>48.52–80.00</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>61.97 (8.02)</p></td><td align="left"><p>46.30–75.20</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>PPVT</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>53.82 (14.01)</p></td><td align="left"><p>27–76</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>47.06 (10.29)</p></td><td align="left"><p>30–71</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>72.30 (19.33)</p></td><td align="left"><p>40–116</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>LC</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>19.24 (4.70)</p></td><td align="left"><p>9–28</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>21.67 (3.88)</p></td><td align="left"><p>13–26</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>31.67 (2.63)</p></td><td align="left"><p>27–37</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>LP</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>24.76 (4.87)</p></td><td align="left"><p>15–31</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>26.50 (5.44)</p></td><td align="left"><p>16–36</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>39.89 (2.56)</p></td><td align="left"><p>35–45</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>LD</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>43.76 (7.18)</p></td><td align="left"><p>32–56</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>48.17 (6.26)</p></td><td align="left"><p>36–57</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>71.41 (4.05)</p></td><td align="left"><p>62–78</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>Nonverbal IQ</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>93.24 (10.75)</p></td><td align="left"><p>79–108</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>94.00 (10.75)</p></td><td align="left"><p>72–107</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>110.93 (9.93)</p></td><td align="left"><p>93–129</p></td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>The scores of PPVT were raw scores from the PPVT-R test (Max. = 175). LC(Max. = 37), LP (Max. = 46), and LD (the sum of LC and LD, Max. = 83) were the raw scores from the RSPCLD-R/RSSCLD-R test. Nonverbal IQ was the standardized score of the corresponding index in WPPSI-IV <emph>LC</emph> language comprehension, <emph>LP</emph> language production, <emph>LD</emph> language development</p> <p>Results of one-way ANOVA and the Bonferroni post hoc analyses showed that the three groups were matched on age (F(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref70">2</reflink>, 59) = 0.784, <emph>p</emph> = 0.461), but children with DLD and children with ALI were significantly outperformed by TDA children in the four language indexes and nonverbal IQ (all <emph>p</emph>s < 0.05). By contrast, the ALI and DLD groups did not significantly differ from each other in all language indexes and nonverbal IQ (all <emph>p</emph>s > 0.05).</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-9">Materials</hd> <p>A sentence-picture matching task was employed in this study. Five giving-type ditransitive verbs were chosen, namely <emph>song</emph> "send", <emph>jie</emph> "lend", <emph>huan</emph> "return", <emph>jiangli</emph> "reward" and <emph>fa</emph> "distribute", which have been acquired by preschool children (Zhou, [<reflink idref="bib59" id="ref71">59</reflink>]) and are permitted in all four patterns of Mandarin ditransitive constructions (Fu et al., [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref72">17</reflink>]).</p> <p>Five test items with each of the five verbs were created for the four patterns of Mandarin ditransitive constructions, totaling 20 items in the task (see the Appendix). The subject and the indirect object of these items were appellations such as <emph>gege</emph> "brother", <emph>jiejie</emph> "sister", and <emph>mama</emph> "mum", while the direct object was commonly-seen toys and articles for daily use in the form of "Numeral + Classifier + Noun" such as <emph>yi-ge qiu</emph> "a ball", and <emph>yi-ba yusan</emph> "an umbrella".</p> <p>For each item, one target picture and three distractors were invented, as exemplified in Fig. 1, for which the test sentence was <emph>Mama jiangli yi-ge fengzheng gei gege</emph> "Mum is rewarding the brother with a kite". The target picture (P3) depicted a transfer event denoted by the test sentence, based on which the three distractors were created. One distractor (P2) was generated by reversing the roles of the Agent and the Recipient in the target picture, while in another foil picture (P4), these two roles were appropriate, but the Theme, i.e., the transferred object, was replaced by a markedly different one (i.e., a balloon). Moreover, in light of the observation of argument omission in children's production of ditransitive constructions, a third distractor (P1) was designed by rubbing out the Recipient in the target picture to see whether children would accept this picture with one of the three participants of the transfer event unexpressed.</p> <p>Graph: Fig. 1 Example pictures used in the comprehension task</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-10">Procedure</hd> <p>Participants were tested individually in a quiet room and the whole process was recorded for future analysis.</p> <p>To avoid frequently transitioning from one structure to another, the test items were divided into four blocks based on their target structures. Each block began with a practice trial in the target structure to familiarize the participants with the task procedure. Then, the five test items in the same structure were administered, with filler items of other irrelevant constructions between every one or two test items, totaling 15 items in each block. The four blocks were presented to the children following the same order, namely S1, S2, S3, and S4, and two blocks were administered in one session. There were also a few filler items between blocks. Overall, each session lasted for less than 20 min for each participant and there was a one- to two-hour interval between the two sessions.</p> <p>For both the practice and test items, the target picture and the three distractors were presented simultaneously on the screen of a tablet or laptop computer using PowerPoint. The position of the four pictures was counterbalanced across trials. Moreover, the direction of transfer in all pictures across items was uniform, with the Agent on the left and the Recipient on the right. Participants were instructed to look at the four pictures carefully and point to one picture that matched the test sentence spoken by the experimenter. For example, for the specific test item shown in Fig. 1, the experimenter asked in Mandarin "Which picture is 'Mum is rewarding the brother with a kite'". No contexts were offered in the test items to avoid additional challenges posed by comprehending the background information. However, as the verb <emph>jie</emph> has two possible interpretations in S4, either <emph>jie-gei</emph> "lend" or <emph>jie-chu</emph> "borrow", it was said before the specific item (i.e., <emph>Mama jie nainai yi-ge penzi</emph> "Mum is lending grandma a basin") that "Grandma is going to do some laundry" to provide a suitable context for the 'lending' interpretation of the verb. In the practice trials, if the children make a mistake or give no response, correction or guidance would be provided. No response-contingent feedback was given during the test phase, but encouragement and praise were allowed.</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-11">Scoring and Data Coding</hd> <p>The pointing to the target picture (e.g., P3 in Fig. 1) was coded as correct and scored one, while a zero score was assigned to the pointing to any one of the three distractors, which was further labeled as No Recipient (NR) errors (e.g., P1 in Fig. 1), Agent and Recipient Reversal (AR) errors (e.g., P2 in Fig. 1), or Wrong Theme (WT) errors (e.g., P4 in Fig. 1). One child in the DLD group pointed to more than one picture in three test items even after being reminded to choose one only and these would not be analyzed in the next section being not representative enough.</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-12">Data Analysis</hd> <p>The accuracy of each group in the comprehension task were calculated in three different levels, including (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref73">1</reflink>) in all patterns in general, (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref74">2</reflink>) in DOC (S1 and S4 combined) and DC (S2 and S3 combined), and (<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref75">3</reflink>) in each of the four specific patterns. Then, for each of the three types of accuracy data, a generalized linear mixed-effects model was fitted using the <emph>lmerTest</emph> package in R (version 4.2.1, R Core Team, [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref76">40</reflink>]), with Group and in the last two models, also Structure, as the fixed factors and random intercepts for participants and items. Moreover, we also counted the number and proportion of each error type in each pattern in the three groups. Lastly, individual analysis was carried out to examine the performance level of each child in the four patterns. For simplicity, we mainly report the results of the main effects and interactions and those of post hoc pairwise comparisons.</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-13">Results</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0183973023-14">Accuracy in General and Specific Patterns</hd> <p>The accuracy of the three groups in the comprehension task were summarized in Table 2. Firstly, a generalized linear mixed-effects model, including Verb as the fixed factor and by-participant and by-item random intercepts, revealed no significant effect of the five different verbs on children's accuracy in ditransitive construction comprehension (<emph>F</emph>(<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref77">4</reflink>) = 4.770 <emph>p</emph> = 0.312).</p> <p>Table 2 Accuracy and standard deviation (SD) of the three groups in the comprehension task</p> <p> <ephtml> <table frame="hsides" rules="groups"><thead><tr><th align="left" rowspan="2" /><th align="left" colspan="2"><p>ALI</p></th><th align="left" colspan="2"><p>DLD</p></th><th align="left" colspan="2"><p>TDA</p></th></tr><tr><th align="left"><p>%</p></th><th align="left"><p>SD</p></th><th align="left"><p>%</p></th><th align="left"><p>SD</p></th><th align="left"><p>%</p></th><th align="left"><p>SD</p></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td align="left"><p>DOC</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>70.00</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.27</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>79.44</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.25</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>97.41</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.05</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>S1</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>72.94</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.32</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>71.11</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.31</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>97.78</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.06</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>S4</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>67.06</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.27</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>87.78</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.26</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>97.04</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.07</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>DC</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>74.71</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.24</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>86.67</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.18</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>97.78</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.04</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>S2</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>72.94</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.24</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>90.00</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.16</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>98.52</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.05</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>S3</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>76.47</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.28</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>83.33</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.25</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>97.04</p></td><td align="left"><p>0..07</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>All</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>72.35</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.24</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>83.06</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.21</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>97.95</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.04</p></td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p> <emph>S1</emph> Subj. + V<emph>gei</emph> + IO + DO; <emph>S2</emph> Subj. + V + DO + <emph>gei</emph> + IO; <emph>S3</emph> Subj. + <emph>gei</emph> + IO + V + DO; <emph>S4</emph> Subj. + V + IO + DO. <emph>DOC</emph> S1 and S4 combined; <emph>DC</emph> S2 and S3 combined</p> <p>In overall scores, the three groups differed significantly (F(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref78">2</reflink>) = 30.456, <emph>p</emph> < 0.001). Post hoc analysis revealed that children with ALI and children with DLD both scored significantly lower than TDA children (ALI vs. TDA: β = − 3.117, SE = 0.574, Wald Z = − 5.425, <emph>p</emph> < 0.001; DLD vs. TDA: β = − 2.240, SE = 0.574, Wald Z = − 3.899, <emph>p</emph> = 0.003), while the performance of two impaired groups was generally on par with each other (ALI vs. DLD: β = − 0.877, SE = 0.536, Wald Z = − 1.637, <emph>p</emph> = 0.305). Similar results were obtained when the nonverbal IQ was included in the model as a covariate.</p> <p>For the accuracy in DOC (S1 and S4 combined) and DC (S2 and S3 combined), a significant main effect of Group was also observed (F(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref79">2</reflink>) = 25.1193, <emph>p</emph> < 0.001), but not a significant structure effect (F(<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref80">1</reflink>) = 0.073, <emph>p</emph> = 0.787), nor the interaction between Group and Structure (F(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref81">2</reflink>) = 1.034, <emph>p</emph> = 0.596). The ALI and DLD groups were both outperformed by the TDA group in both patterns (ALI vs. TDA: DOC: β = − 3.182, SE = 0.648, Wald Z = − 4.911, <emph>p</emph> < 0.001, DC: β = − 3.027, SE = 0.669, Wald Z = − 4.527, <emph>p</emph> < 0.001; DLD vs. TDA: DOC: β = − 2.471, SE = 0.649, Wald Z = − 3.808, <emph>p</emph> = 0.004, DC: β = − 1.932, SE = 0.681, Wald Z = − 2.835, <emph>p</emph> = 0.014), while the difference between the two affected groups did not reach the significance level (DOC: β = − 0.711, SE = 0.569, Wald Z = − 1.249, <emph>p</emph> = 0.635; DC: β = − 1.095, SE = 0.593, Wald Z = − 1.847, <emph>p</emph> = 0.194). Similar results were also obtained when participants' nonverbal IQ was controlled for.</p> <p>Concerning the accuracy in the four specific patterns, the generalized linear mixed-effects model showed a significant group effect (F(<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref82">2</reflink>) = 18.259, <emph>p</emph> < 0.001) and interaction between Group and Structure (F(<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref83">6</reflink>) = 13.780, <emph>p</emph> = 0.032), but not a structure effect (F(<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref84">3</reflink>) = 0.835, <emph>p</emph> = 0.841). The DLD group only obtained significantly lower accuracies than the TDA group in S1 (β = − 3.278, SE = 0.818, Wald Z = − 4.010, <emph>p</emph> < 0.001) and S3 (β = − 1.952, SE = 0.785, Wald Z = − 2.486, <emph>p</emph> = 0.039) but were comparable with the TDA group in S2 and S4 (<emph>p</emph>s > 0.05). In contrast, the ALI group were significantly outperformed by the TDA group in all patterns (S1: β = − 3.169, SE = 0.823, Wald Z = − 3.850, <emph>p</emph> < 0.001; S2: β = − 3.596, SE = 0.920, Wald Z = − 3.910, <emph>p</emph> < 0.001; S3: β = − 2.609, SE = 0.773, Wald Z = − 3.374, <emph>p</emph> = 0.002; S4: β = − 3.245, SE = 0.766, Wald Z = − 4.236, <emph>p</emph> < 0.001). These results were consistently true when participants' nonverbal IQ was controlled for. Moreover, the ALI group significantly fell behind the DLD group in S4 (β = − 1.783, SE = 0.691, Wald Z = − 2.578, <emph>p</emph> = 0.030) and their difference in S2 was approaching significance (β = − 1.696, SE = 0.715, Wald Z = − 2.371, <emph>p</emph> = 0.053). Within-group comparisons revealed no significant differences among the four patterns in the ALI and TDA groups (all <emph>p</emph>s > 0.05), while the DLD group scored significantly lower in S1 than in S2 (β = -0.181, SE = 0.554, Wald Z = − 3.263, <emph>p</emph> = 0.007) and S4 (β = − 1.509, SE = 0.529, Wald Z = − 2.850, <emph>p</emph> = 0.026).</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-15">Error Analyses</hd> <p>Table 3 presents the number and proportion (out of the total responses) of each error type in the four structures in the three groups. Few errors were noted in the TDA group because of their ceiling performance. For children with DLD, the largest proportion of errors in the comprehension of the four patterns of ditransitive constructions, in particular S1 and S3, were reversing the role between the Agent and the Recipient, while only occasional or even no errors of the other two types were observed. Although thematic role reversal errors also took up the highest proportion of the nontarget responses of children with ALI in all patterns in the comprehension task, the Wrong Theme and No Recipient errors were of higher frequency and more prevalent in this group compared with those in the DLD group.</p> <p>Table 3 Number and proportion (out of the total responses) of each error type in the four structures in the three groups</p> <p> <ephtml> <table frame="hsides" rules="groups"><thead><tr><th align="left" rowspan="2" /><th align="left" colspan="4"><p>AR</p></th><th align="left" colspan="4"><p>WT</p></th><th align="left" colspan="4"><p>NR</p></th></tr><tr><th align="left"><p>%</p></th><th align="left"><p>N</p></th><th align="left"><p>M</p></th><th align="left"><p>SD</p></th><th align="left"><p>%</p></th><th align="left"><p>N</p></th><th align="left"><p>M</p></th><th align="left"><p>SD</p></th><th align="left"><p>%</p></th><th align="left"><p>N</p></th><th align="left"><p>M</p></th><th align="left"><p>SD</p></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI</p></td><td char="." align="char" /><td align="left" /><td char="." align="char" /><td char="." align="char" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left"><p> S1</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>24.71</p></td><td align="left"><p>21/85</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>1.24</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>1.44</p></td><td align="left"><p>1.18</p></td><td align="left"><p>1/85</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.06</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.24</p></td><td align="left"><p>1.18</p></td><td align="left"><p>1/85</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.06</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.24</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p> S2</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>17.65</p></td><td align="left"><p>15/85</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.88</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.86</p></td><td align="left"><p>4.71</p></td><td align="left"><p>4/85</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.24</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.56</p></td><td align="left"><p>3.53</p></td><td align="left"><p>3/85</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.18</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.53</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p> S3</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>16.47</p></td><td align="left"><p>14/85</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.82</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>1.24</p></td><td align="left"><p>2.35</p></td><td align="left"><p>2/85</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.12</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.49</p></td><td align="left"><p>4.71</p></td><td align="left"><p>4/85</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.24</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.66</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p> S4</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>27.06</p></td><td align="left"><p>23/85</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>1.35</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>1.22</p></td><td align="left"><p>2.35</p></td><td align="left"><p>2/85</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.12</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.33</p></td><td align="left"><p>3.53</p></td><td align="left"><p>3/85</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.18</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.53</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>DLD</p></td><td char="." align="char" /><td align="left" /><td char="." align="char" /><td char="." align="char" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left"><p> S1</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>23.33</p></td><td align="left"><p>21/90</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>1.17</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>1.38</p></td><td align="left"><p>2.22</p></td><td align="left"><p>2/90</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.11</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.47</p></td><td align="left"><p>2.22</p></td><td align="left"><p>2/90</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.11</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.32</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p> S2</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>8.89</p></td><td align="left"><p>8/90</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.44</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.70</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>1.11</p></td><td align="left"><p>1/90</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.06</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.24</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p> S3</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>15.56</p></td><td align="left"><p>14/90</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.78</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>1.17</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>1.11</p></td><td align="left"><p>1/90</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.06</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.24</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p> S4</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>5.56</p></td><td align="left"><p>5/90</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.28</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.57</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>4.44</p></td><td align="left"><p>4/90</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.22</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.65</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>TDA</p></td><td char="." align="char" /><td align="left" /><td char="." align="char" /><td char="." align="char" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /></tr><tr><td align="left"><p> S1</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>1.48</p></td><td align="left"><p>2/135</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.07</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.27</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.74</p></td><td align="left"><p>1/135</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.04</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.19</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p> S2</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.74</p></td><td align="left"><p>1/135</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.04</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.19</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.74</p></td><td align="left"><p>1/135</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.04</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.19</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p> S3</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>2.96</p></td><td align="left"><p>4/135</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.15</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.36</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p> S4</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.74</p></td><td align="left"><p>1/135</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.04</p></td><td char="." align="char"><p>0.19</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.74</p></td><td align="left"><p>1/135</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.04</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.19</p></td><td align="left"><p>1.48</p></td><td align="left"><p>2/135</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.07</p></td><td align="left"><p>0.27</p></td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p> <emph>AR</emph> agent-recipient reversal errors, <emph>WT</emph> Wrong Theme errors, <emph>NR</emph> No Recipient errors, <emph>S1</emph> Subj. + V<emph>gei</emph> + IO + DO, <emph>S2</emph> Subj. + V + DO + <emph>gei</emph> + IO, <emph>S3</emph> Subj. + <emph>gei</emph> + IO + V + DO, <emph>S4</emph> Subj. + V + IO + DO</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-16">Individual Performance</hd> <p>According to the binomial distribution, the performance on each pattern was considered above chance when four out of the five items were correct. All TDA children (27/27) scored at four or above in all four patterns. The score of each child in the ALI and DLD groups in each pattern is displayed in Table 4. The proportion of children with ALI who performed at above-chance levels in the four patterns was 58.82% (10/17), 58.82% (10/17), 64.71% (11/17), and 52.94% (9/17) respectively. For children with DLD, a proportion of 55.56% (10/18), 83.33% (15/18), 72.22% (13/18), and 88.89% (16/18) scored at four or above in the four patterns respectively.</p> <p>Table 4 Score of each child in the ALI and DLD groups in comprehending the four patterns of ditransitive constructions</p> <p> <ephtml> <table frame="hsides" rules="groups"><thead><tr><th align="left" /><th align="left"><p>S1</p></th><th align="left"><p>S2</p></th><th align="left"><p>S3</p></th><th align="left"><p>S4</p></th><th align="left" /><th align="left"><p>S1</p></th><th align="left"><p>S2</p></th><th align="left"><p>S3</p></th><th align="left"><p>S4</p></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI1</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD1</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI2</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>2</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p>2</p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD2</p></td><td align="left"><p>2</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p>1</p></td><td align="left"><p>1</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI3</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD3</p></td><td align="left"><p>1</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p>2</p></td><td align="left"><p>1</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI4</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>2</p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD4</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI5</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p>1</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD5</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI6</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD6</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI7</p></td><td align="left"><p>2</p></td><td align="left"><p>1</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p>1</p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD7</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI8</p></td><td align="left"><p>1</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p>2</p></td><td align="left"><p>1</p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD8</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI9</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p>2</p></td><td align="left"><p>1</p></td><td align="left"><p>2</p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD9</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI10</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD10</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI11</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD11</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI12</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD12</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI13</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD13</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI14</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD14</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI15</p></td><td align="left"><p>2</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD15</p></td><td align="left"><p>2</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI16</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD16</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>ALI17</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>DLD17</p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>5</italic></bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left" /><td align="left"><p>DLD18</p></td><td align="left"><p>0</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td><td align="left"><p>3</p></td><td align="left"><p><bold><italic>4</italic></bold></p></td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>The maximum score for each pattern was 5. The performance on each pattern was considered above chance with a score of 4 or above, as marked in bold and italics in the table <emph>S1</emph> Subj. + V<emph>gei</emph> + IO + DO, <emph>S2</emph> Subj. + V + DO + <emph>gei</emph> + IO, <emph>S3</emph> Subj. + <emph>gei</emph> + IO + V + DO, <emph>S4</emph> Subj. + V + IO + DO</p> <p>Results of a series of Pearson's Chi-squared or Fisher's Exact Test showed that consistent with the group analysis, there was a significantly lower number of passers in the ALI group than in the TDA group in all four patterns (S1: <emph>p</emph> < 0.001; S2: <emph>p</emph> < 0.001; S3: <emph>p</emph> = 0.002; S4: <emph>p</emph> < 0.001), while the DLD group was only outnumbered by the TDA group in S1 (<emph>p</emph> < 0.001) and S3 (<emph>p</emph> = 0.007). Moreover, significantly more children with DLD than children with ALI succeeded in S4 (<emph>p</emph> = 0.027).</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-17">Discussion</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0183973023-18">Performance in Various Patterns of Ditransitive Constructions</hd> <p>The present study examined the comprehension of ditransitive constructions in Mandarin-speaking children with DLD and children with ALI using a sentence-picture matching task. Children with DLD, in general, evinced deficits in comprehending ditransitive constructions as compared to TDA children. Moreover, the comprehension of DOC and DC was equally impaired in the DLD group. This is in contradiction to those children in He (unpublished), who demonstrated a larger discrepancy between DOC and DC, though not knowing whether it was statistically significant. However, the poorer performance on DOC than DC in that study could result from the additional obtaining verbs in DOC, verbs that are acquired late and with lower frequency in input (Zhou, [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref85">60</reflink>]). Children with ALI in the present study resembled children with DLD in their significantly lower accuracy than TDA children in general and also in the absence of an asymmetry between DOC and DC.</p> <p>Considering that there are two sub-patterns of Mandarin DOC and DC, in which S2 (Subj. + V + DO + <emph>gei</emph> + IO) and S4 (Subj. + V + IO + DO) are the counterparts of English DC and DOC, we also compared children's performance on each specific pattern. TDA children (mean age = 61.97 months) performed at ceiling level in all patterns, which is not surprising provided that typical acquisition of the four patterns of ditransitive constructions has been finished by the age of four (Li, [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref86">30</reflink>]; Zhang et al., [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref87">58</reflink>]). Despite their similarity of generally lower-than-expected performance as compared to TDA children, children with ALI and children with DLD differed from each other in their performance across the various patterns of ditransitive constructions.</p> <p>On the one hand, children with DLD were found to be selectively impaired in S1(Subj. + V<emph>gei</emph> + IO + DO) and S3(Subj. + <emph>gei</emph> + IO + V + DO) but spared in S2 and S4 as compared to TDA children, which was further confirmed by the comparable proportion of passers between the two groups in the individual analysis. This is in contrast to the results reported in van der Lely and Harris ([<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref88">57</reflink>]), in which 6-year-old children with DLD were significantly outperformed by the age controls in the comprehension of English DOC and DC. The difference could be due to the absence of an animacy contrast between the two objects in their study, which would be particularly difficult for children with and without language impairment (Cook, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref89">8</reflink>]; Osgood & Zehler, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref90">37</reflink>]).</p> <p>Conversely, children with ALI in the present study showed generalized low performance on all four forms, with their performance significantly below that of TDA children. Furthermore, children with ALI significantly lagged behind children with DLD in the comprehension of S4, with the difference between the two groups in S2 marginally significant. This converges with the results of Sukenik and Friedmann ([<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref91">46</reflink>]). They reported that in spite of the generally comparable performance of children with ASD and children with DLD in the syntactic tasks, children with ASD tended to exhibit difficulties across the board, whereas children with DLD were sensitive to the syntactic complexity of the structures investigated, for example, faring better on subject than object relative clauses.</p> <p>No difference between S2 and S4 was noted in children with ALI in the present study, which was in contrast to children with ASD in Stockbridge et al. ([<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref92">45</reflink>]), who exhibited a superiority of DC over DOC in comprehension as their younger vocabulary-matched TD controls did. However, since impairments in comprehending passives have been reported in children with ASD (Durrleman et al., [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref93">14</reflink>]), children with ASD in their study may have more difficulty with the passive questions without the preposition 'to' (e.g., "Who was thrown the ball" vs. "Who was the ball thrown to") in the identification of the indirect object. For instance, they may have interpreted the passive question "Who was thrown the ball" as "Who threw the ball".</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-19">Difficulties in Ditransitive Construction Comprehension in DLD and ALI</hd> <p>To further explore the difficulties children experienced in the comprehension of ditransitive constructions, we also analyzed the nontarget responses of the two impaired groups. A majority of the errors of children with DLD in S1 and S3 were selecting the picture with the roles of the Agent and the Recipient reversed (AR errors), which accounted for 23.33% and 15.56% of their total responses and 84% (21/25) and 93.33% (14/15) of their total errors, respectively. There were fewer AR errors in S2 and S4 (8.89% and 5.56% of their total responses respectively) in the DLD group, who performed comparably to the TDA group in the two patterns. In contrast, children with DLD in previous studies mainly displayed difficulty in assigning thematic roles to the two objects (Ebbels, [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref94">15</reflink>]; van der Lely & Harris, [<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref95">57</reflink>]). The different methodologies used in these studies may explain their contrasting results, more specifically, the possible 'first mentioned first moved' strategy in the act-out task in Ebbels ([<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref96">15</reflink>]) and the absence of relevant distractors in the comprehension of subjectless ditransitive constructions (e.g., <emph>give the girl to the boy</emph>) in van der Lely and Harris ([<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref97">57</reflink>]).</p> <p>While He (unpublished) has examined the ability of children with DLD to assign thematic roles to the Agent and the Recipient, it is unclear whether the errors were restricted to obtaining verbs, which are less frequent than giving verbs in Mandarin (Zhou, [<reflink idref="bib60" id="ref98">60</reflink>]). The present study indicates that children with DLD are also likely to reverse the roles between the Agent and the Recipient in the comprehension of giving-type ditransitive constructions with an animacy contrast between the two objects, in which the roles of the two objects are more easily distinguished with the help of the animacy cue and also their different forms. Indeed, deficits in thematic role assignment have been detected in children with DLD not only in ditransitive constructions but also in simple active transitive sentences (van der Lely & Harris, [<reflink idref="bib57" id="ref99">57</reflink>]). It is proposed that children may have difficulties in representing the hierarchical relationship between the arguments and the verb, as specified in the RDDRM (van der Lely, [<reflink idref="bib54" id="ref100">54</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref101">55</reflink>]) or CGCH (van der Lely, [<reflink idref="bib56" id="ref102">56</reflink>]), which would have a detrimental effect on assigning appropriate semantic roles to the arguments.</p> <p>Why did children with DLD experience more difficulties in S1 and S3 than in S2 and S4 in the present study? Firstly, children with DLD may have demonstrated better performance in S2 for the facilitation of the preposition 'to', which explicitly signals the direction of the transfer, i.e., the Recipient role of the following object (O'Grady, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref103">36</reflink>]). However, the marked deficiency in S3 as compared with S2 in children with DLD could be accounted for by the additional movement of the prepositional phrase in S3, which, according to the Derivational Complexity Hypothesis (Jakubowicz, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref104">26</reflink>]), was more difficult for children with language impairment. Secondly, children with DLD exhibited no impairments in S4 possibly because of its high frequency in daily life, more precisely, the familiarity of the mapping between the arguments and the corresponding semantic roles in the structure (Li, [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref105">30</reflink>]; Zhang et al., [<reflink idref="bib58" id="ref106">58</reflink>]). Nevertheless, S1, another sub-pattern of Mandarin DOC, is much less frequent in daily life (Zou, [<reflink idref="bib62" id="ref107">62</reflink>]). Therefore, the comprehension of S1 is more difficult than that of S4 for children with DLD, despite that both patterns, as the two sub-patterns of DOC, involve a functional category "G" to denote the direction of transfer (He, [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref108">21</reflink>]) and may pose a challenge to children with DLD with deficits in functional categories (Chen et al., [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref109">7</reflink>]).</p> <p>Although AR errors were also the most frequent nontarget responses in children with ALI, such errors were less dominant than those in children with DLD. This was particularly the case in the two sub-patterns of DC in the ALI group, with a proportion of 68.18% (15/22) and 70% (14/20) AR errors out of their total nontarget responses in S2 and S3 respectively, but a higher proportion in the two sub-patterns of DOC (S1: 21/23 = 91.30%; S4: 23/28 = 82.14%). In a fair number of cases of DC comprehension, children with ALI also chose the other two distractors, namely, the picture with no Recipient and the one with a wrong Theme, which led to comparably low performance in the four structures regardless of the facilitation of the preposition <emph>gei</emph> "to" in thematic role assignment in DC.</p> <p>No Recipient errors took up a larger proportion of the total errors of children with ALI in the four patterns (S1: 1/23 = 4.34%; S2: 3/22 = 13.64%; S3: 4/20 = 20%; S4: 3/28 = 10.71%) as compared to those in children with DLD in the defective S1 and S3 (2/25 = 8% and 1/15 = 6.67%, respectively) in the present study. While pragmatic factors, such as the givenness of the arguments in the context, may have resulted in the omission of arguments in production (Campbell & Tomasello, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref110">6</reflink>]), the occurrence of No Recipient errors in the present study possibly supports the claim that children with DLD, and also children with ALI, have an incomplete semantic representation of ditransitive verbs, which prevents children from rapidly identifying the arguments that accompany the verb (Sanz-Torrent et al., [<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref111">43</reflink>]; Thordardottir & Weismer, [<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref112">52</reflink>]). Future research employing a production task with a neutral context may help elucidate the nature of argument omission and the semantic representation of ditransitive verbs in the two affected groups.</p> <p>A more noticeable difference between children with DLD and children with ALI lies in the incidence of Wrong Theme errors. Whereas Wrong Theme errors were observed in the DLD group only in S1 (2/25 = 8% of their total errors), such errors were prevalent across structures in the ALI group, taking up a proportion of 4.34% (1/23), 18.18% (4/22), 10% (2/20), 7.14% (2/28) out of their total nontarget responses in the four patterns respectively. In the present task, the referents of the Theme were all commonly-seen toys and articles for daily use, which were assured by parents or teachers to be familiar to young children. Therefore, it is unlikely that children with ALI committed Wrong Theme errors because of their semantic deficits (Sukenik & Tuller, [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref113">48</reflink>]). Rather, owing to the great resemblance of the four pictures and the relatively smaller size of the Theme, these errors could be the consequence of a lapse of attention. Huang and Finestack ([<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref114">23</reflink>]) pointed out that children with ALI were more affected than children with DLD by the heavy demand for attentional and behavioral compliance involved in their morphosyntactic tests, which resulted in an overall tendency of lower performance in children with ALI as compared to children with DLD.</p> <p>Alternatively, Wrong Theme errors in children with ALI could be due to their limitations in working memory (Edmunds et al., [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref115">16</reflink>]), more precisely, the difficulty in memorizing the referents of all three arguments of ditransitive constructions. In the same vein, thematic role reversal errors in children with ALI could also be partly explained by their deficits in working memory. Since sequencing the referents for thematic role assignment asked for more working memory resources than memorizing all mentioned referents, there were more role reversal errors than Wrong Theme errors in children with ALI. Nevertheless, it is less likely that the thematic role reversals in children with DLD are related to their working memory limitations, as argued for one adolescent with DLD in Ebbels ([<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref116">15</reflink>]). If this were the case, we would not expect to see the relatively perfect interpretation of S2 and S4, in which the storage and sequencing of the same number of arguments as in S1 and S3 was involved.</p> <p>To conclude, although children with DLD and children with ALI both displayed deficits in their general performance on the comprehension of ditransitive constructions at the group level, the two groups differed in performance across various structures and in error distribution, which possibly indicates distinct causes of their difficulties. Children with DLD exhibited a primary deficit in thematic role assignment, more precisely, in representing the dependent relationship between the arguments and the ditransitive verbs, particularly in those structures with higher syntactic complexity. By contrast, considering the less dominant proportion of thematic role reversals and the fair number of Wrong Theme and No Recipient errors in the ALI group, we argue that the deficits of children with ALI in all four patterns of ditransitive constructions could not solely be explained by their deficient syntactic representation. Other factors, such as deficits in working memory, may also impact the performance of children with ALI in the comprehension task. Future studies could investigate the comprehension of a simpler structure (e.g., transitive constructions) to have a clearer understanding of the underlying causes of thematic role reversals in the two populations. Moreover, the considerable heterogeneity within the two groups also deserves further exploration.</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-20">Limitations and Implications</hd> <p>Four limitations of the present study are acknowledged. First, no language-matched TD controls were included to examine whether the two populations follow the same developmental trajectory as the younger TD children. Second, no distractors of reversed roles between the two objects were involved in the present study because of the use of the prototypical ditransitive constructions, which denied direct comparison with previous studies in English-speaking children. Third, the presentation order of the four patterns of ditransitive constructions was not counterbalanced across participants. Although none of the three groups displayed an increasing or decreasing trend on the accuracy of the four structures, future studies with the presentation order of the four structures counterbalanced would avoid the possible influence of children's familiarity with the task demand and/or attention sustainability on their performance on any structure. Fourth, the severity of autism symptoms of children with ALI was not measured. Given the distinct performance of children with ALI as compared to that of children with DLD in the present study, future studies could further examine the correlation between the autistic traits of children with ALI and their language abilities.</p> <p>Despite these limitations, the results of the present study suggest some distinctions in the language profiles of ASD and DLD, which are possibly against the view that ASD and DLD are on different ends of the same disorder. Additionally, the difficulties children with DLD and children with ALI displayed in the present study have some implications for language intervention in the two conditions. In light of their problem in thematic role assignment, intervention efforts targeting ditransitive constructions should focus on helping children identify and differentiate each argument position in the sentence template and also strengthen the connection between each argument and its semantic role. For instance, these could be achieved by following the shape-coding method proposed by Ebbels ([<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref117">15</reflink>]), who successfully improved the grammatical abilities of children with DLD by marking each sentence element with various shapes or colors and providing multiple visual exemplars of the corresponding transfer events. Moreover, to achieve better effects, the intervention could start with the structures with lower syntactic complexity (i.e., S2 and S4) and gradually move on to the other two more complex structures (i.e., S1 and S3). Besides, attention could be called to the different order of the two postverbal objects in S2 (i.e., with the DO before the IO) in contrast to that in the other three patterns where the IO precedes the DO instead, to raise children's awareness of the differences among these structures. Lastly, given that there were also a few instances of Wrong Theme errors in children with ALI, working memory training would also possibly improve their performance on ditransitive construction comprehension (Delage et al., [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref118">12</reflink>]).</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-21">Acknowledgments</hd> <p>We are grateful to all the children and families who participated in this study. We would also like to thank all the research assistants who aided us in data collection.</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-22">Author Contributions</hd> <p>Both authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by the first author. The first draft of the manuscript was written by  the first author and both authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-23">Funding</hd> <p>The study was funded by grants from the Chinese National Funding of Social Sciences (Grant No. 17AYY08).</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-24">Data Availability</hd> <p>The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors upon reasonable request.</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-25">Declarations</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0183973023-26">Competing interest</hd> <p>There is no conflict of interest to report.</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-27">Ethical Approval</hd> <p>This study involving human participants was reviewed and approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Xi'an TCM Hospital of Encephalopathy. The children participated with informed consent gained from their parents/guardians.</p> <hd id="AN0183973023-28">Appendix</hd> <p> <bold> <emph>General instruction</emph> </bold>: XX, let's play a game. I will say something about the pictures that will appear on the screen. Please point at the picture that you think I am talking about, OK?</p> <hd1 id="AN0183973023-29">Test sentences:</hd1> <p></p> <p> <ephtml> <table frame="hsides" rules="groups"><tbody><tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><p><bold>S1</bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>1.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>shushu huan-gei ayi yiding maozi</italic></p><p>uncle return-GEI aunt one-CL cap</p><p>'The uncle is returning a cap to the aunt.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>2.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>mama jiangli-gei gege yiliang che</italic></p><p>mum reward-GEI brother one-CL car</p><p>'Mum is rewarding the brother with a car.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>3.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>laoshi fa-gei jiejie yiben shu</italic></p><p>teach distribute-GEI sister one-CL book</p><p>'The teacher is distributing a book to the sister'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>4.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>didi song-gei jiejei yifu hua</italic></p><p>brother give-GEi sister one-CL picture</p><p>'The brother is giving the sister a drawing.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>5.</p></td><td align="left"><p>5. <italic>gege jie-gei jiejie yiba chizi</italic></p><p>brother lend-GEI sister one-CL ruler</p><p>'The brother is lendind the sister a ruler.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><p><bold>S2</bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>6.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>ayi fa yilan taozi gei nainai</italic></p><p>aunt distribute one-CL peach to grandma</p><p>'The aunt is distributing a basket of peach to grandma.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>7.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>jieje jie yige qiu gei gege</italic></p><p>sister lend one-CL ball to brother</p><p>'The sister is lending a ball to the brother.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>8.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>mama jiangli yige fengzheng gei gege</italic></p><p>mum reward one-CL kite to brother</p><p>'Mum is rewarding the brother with a kite.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>9.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>shushu huan yitiao yu gei yeye</italic></p><p>uncle return one-CL fish to grandpa</p><p>'The uncle is returning a fish to the grandpa.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>10.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>jiejie song yiduo hua gei mama</italic></p><p>sister give one-CL flower to mum</p><p>'The sister is giving a flower to mum.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><p><bold>S3</bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>11.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>mama gei shushu jie yige xiangzi</italic></p><p>mum to uncle lend one-CL box</p><p>'Mum is lending a box to the uncle.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>12.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>mama gei jiejie jiangli yige wawa</italic></p><p>mum to sister reward one-CL doll</p><p>'Mum is rewarding the sister with a doll.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>13.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>ayi gei gege huan yijian yifu</italic></p><p>aunt to brother return one-CL clothes</p><p>'The aunt is returning a piece of clothes to the brother.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>14.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>shushu gei nainai fa yilan xiangjiao</italic></p><p>uncle to grandma distribute one-CL banana</p><p>'The uncle is distributing a box of banana to grandma.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>15.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>nainai gei jiejie song yishuang wazi</italic></p><p>grandma to sister give one-CL sock</p><p>'Grandma is giving a pair of socks to the sister.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left" colspan="2"><p><bold>S4</bold></p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>16.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>shushu huan mama yizhang zhuozi</italic></p><p>uncle return mum one-CL table</p><p>'The uncle is returning a table to mum.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>17.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>nainai yao qu xi yifu, mama jie nainai yige penzi</italic></p><p>grandma want go wash clothes, mum lend grandma one-CL basin</p><p>'Grandma want to go wash some clothes, mum is lending grandma a basin.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>18.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>gege jiangli didi yibei guozhi</italic></p><p>elder brother reward younger brother one-CL juice</p><p>'The elder brother is rewarding his younger brother with a glass of juice.'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>19.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>mama song yeye yijian maoyi</italic></p><p>mum give grandpa one-CL sweater</p><p>'Mum is giving the grandpa a sweater'</p></td></tr><tr><td align="left"><p>20.</p></td><td align="left"><p><italic>laoshi fa gege yige baozi</italic></p><p>teach distribute brother one-CL steamed bun</p><p>'The teacher is distributing a steamed bun to the brother.'</p></td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <hd id="AN0183973023-30">Publisher's Note</hd> <p>Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional 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Items – Name: Title
  Label: Title
  Group: Ti
  Data: Comprehension of Ditransitive Constructions in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Developmental Language Disorder and Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder plus Language Impairment
– Name: Language
  Label: Language
  Group: Lang
  Data: English
– Name: Author
  Label: Authors
  Group: Au
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Weizhe+Qiu%22">Weizhe Qiu</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7948-9774">0000-0001-7948-9774</externalLink>)<br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Xiaowei+He%22">Xiaowei He</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2417-633X">0000-0002-2417-633X</externalLink>)
– Name: TitleSource
  Label: Source
  Group: Src
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Journal+of+Autism+and+Developmental+Disorders%22"><i>Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders</i></searchLink>. 2025 55(4):1450-1464.
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  Label: Availability
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  Data: Springer. Available from: Springer Nature. One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-460-1700; e-mail: customerservice@springernature.com; Web site: https://link.springer.com/
– Name: PeerReviewed
  Label: Peer Reviewed
  Group: SrcInfo
  Data: Y
– Name: Pages
  Label: Page Count
  Group: Src
  Data: 15
– Name: DatePubCY
  Label: Publication Date
  Group: Date
  Data: 2025
– Name: TypeDocument
  Label: Document Type
  Group: TypDoc
  Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research
– Name: Subject
  Label: Descriptors
  Group: Su
  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Children%22">Children</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Mandarin+Chinese%22">Mandarin Chinese</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Language+Impairments%22">Language Impairments</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Autism+Spectrum+Disorders%22">Autism Spectrum Disorders</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Developmental+Disabilities%22">Developmental Disabilities</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Communication+Disorders%22">Communication Disorders</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Comorbidity%22">Comorbidity</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Sentence+Structure%22">Sentence Structure</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Verbs%22">Verbs</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Transformational+Generative+Grammar%22">Transformational Generative Grammar</searchLink>
– Name: DOI
  Label: DOI
  Group: ID
  Data: 10.1007/s10803-024-06271-z
– Name: ISSN
  Label: ISSN
  Group: ISSN
  Data: 0162-3257<br />1573-3432
– Name: Abstract
  Label: Abstract
  Group: Ab
  Data: This study examined and compared the comprehension of Mandarin ditransitive constructions in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and children with autism spectrum disorder plus language impairment (ALI). Eighteen children with DLD, 17 children with ALI, and 27 age-matched typically developing (TDA) children, participated in a sentence-picture matching task on four patterns of Mandarin ditransitive constructions. Both children with DLD and children with ALI received significantly lower accuracy than TDA children in general and their most common errors were thematic role reversals. However, while children with ALI evinced a generalized deficit in all four patterns, only the comprehension of S1 (Subj. + Vgei + IO + DO) and S3 (Subj. + gei + IO + V + DO) was affected in children with DLD, with that of S2 (Subj. + V + DO + gei + IO) and S4 (Subj. + V + IO + DO) preserved in this population. Additionally, thematic role reversal errors were more dominant in children with DLD than in children with ALI who also committed a relatively higher proportion of Wrong Theme and No Recipient errors. It is concluded that the primary deficit of children with DLD lies in representing dependent relationships between the arguments and the verb as involved in thematic role assignment, but this is less critical in children with ALI, with their performance on the comprehension task possibly also related to other factors associated with the condition. To enhance the development of ditransitive constructions, intervention efforts for children with DLD and children with ALI could focus on strengthening the connection between each argument and its thematic role.
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  Label: Abstractor
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  Data: As Provided
– Name: DateEntry
  Label: Entry Date
  Group: Date
  Data: 2025
– Name: AN
  Label: Accession Number
  Group: ID
  Data: EJ1464245
PLink https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=eric&AN=EJ1464245
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  BibEntity:
    Identifiers:
      – Type: doi
        Value: 10.1007/s10803-024-06271-z
    Languages:
      – Text: English
    PhysicalDescription:
      Pagination:
        PageCount: 15
        StartPage: 1450
    Subjects:
      – SubjectFull: Children
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Mandarin Chinese
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Language Impairments
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Autism Spectrum Disorders
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Developmental Disabilities
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Communication Disorders
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Comorbidity
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Sentence Structure
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Verbs
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Transformational Generative Grammar
        Type: general
    Titles:
      – TitleFull: Comprehension of Ditransitive Constructions in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Developmental Language Disorder and Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder plus Language Impairment
        Type: main
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            NameFull: Weizhe Qiu
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            NameFull: Xiaowei He
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              M: 04
              Type: published
              Y: 2025
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            – Type: issn-print
              Value: 0162-3257
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              Value: 1573-3432
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            – TitleFull: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
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