Real-time comprehension of Spanish prepositions and prepositional locutions in bilingual children with developmental language disorder: A study based on eye-movement evidence

Abstract

Background: Function words, and more specifically prepositions and prepositional locutions, are considered to be one of the most important difficulties for children with DLD.

Aims: To examine the capacity of bilingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD) to comprehend different Spanish prepositions and prepositional locutions in a simple sentence structure, for example, El gato está sobre la mesa/El gato está bajo la mesa (The cat is on the table/The cat is under the table).

Methods & procedures: We used simple sentence structures to reduce lexical difficulties in order to focus our evaluation strictly on the grammatical morphemes under study. A total of 96 Spanish and Catalan-speaking participants, divided into four groups, were evaluated in an eye-tracking psycholinguistic experiment: 24 children with DLD (average age = 7.8 years, age range = 4.6-12.6), 24 children with the same chronological age (average age = 7.8 years, age range = 4.6-12.2), 24 children with the same linguistic level (average age = 6.8 years, age range = 4.6-9.4) and 24 adults (average age = 22.5 years, age range = 18-30).

Outcomes & results: The empirical data show that, despite some differences, bilingual children with and without DLD can comprehend Spanish prepositions and prepositional locutions under the current experimental conditions.

Conclusions & implications: Our results suggest that the capacity of bilingual children with DLD to comprehend Spanish prepositions and prepositional locutions in real time and within simple sentence structures is preserved. What this paper adds What is already known on the subject The empirical literature indicates that children with DLD show important errors in the production of functional words in general, and prepositions in particular. However, unlike other grammatical morphemes (such as clitic pronouns and articles), prepositions have been less studied, and the few existing studies have focused on the dimension of language production, not comprehension. What this paper adds to existing knowledge The present study, composed of two experimental tasks, seeks to determine to what extent the observable difficulty in the linguistic production of prepositions is also present in the comprehension of children with DLD. The empirical results suggest a less atypical comprehension in comparison with our initial hypothesis, and the differences that appear between the two tasks, allow us to formulate a theoretical interpretation regarding the mechanisms of their understanding. Thus far, we are not aware of other studies that have evaluated in real time the comprehension of prepositions and prepositional locutions in parallel. Clinical implications of this study Results suggest the presence of a more preserved comprehension of prepositions and prepositional locutions, at least in real-time experimental conditions (eye-tracking) and in simple sentence structures. A less atypical comprehension raises the possibility of a better prognosis for children with DLD. Working with comprehension of simple sentences and the gradual addition of more difficult grammatical morphemes could help to enhance the comprehension of a growing complex grammar.

Keywords: children; comprehension; developmental language disorder (DLD); eye-tracking; prepositions.