When the Past Is Backward and the Future Is Forward: An Embodied Cognition Intervention in Preschoolers with Developmental Language Disorder

Abstract

This quasi-experimental study investigates the impact of an embodied intervention on the semantics of transitive verbs in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), grounded in the "TIME IS SPACE" conceptual metaphor-where the future is mapped as forward and the past as backward. The intervention involved a pretest and a posttest design, using the induced plasticity technique to saturate motor areas through repetitive arm movements (either forward or backward). Then, we determined the influence of this saturation on the auditory comprehension of past- and future-tense sentences. Fifty-seven children (ages 5 years and 6 months to 6 years and 9 months) participated in the experiment. Participants were divided into four groups: two groups of children with DLD-14 Chilean students from speech therapy institutions who received the intervention and 15 who did not-and two groups of chronologically matched typically developing (TD) peers, with 14 children in each intervention condition. The hypothesis proposed that a psychoeducational intervention would enhance the comprehension of time-space conceptual metaphors in children with DLD, reflected by greater interference effects (higher RTs and lower ARs in matching vs. mismatching conditions). A 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 mixed ANOVA was used to identify significant differences in reaction times and accuracy rates. Results showed significant differences in the posttest for the DLD group with intervention versus the same group without intervention, particularly in the semantics of future tense with forward motion. Furthermore, the study found that the impact of the intervention depended on the level of narrative discourse comprehension. These findings suggest that embodied interventions leveraging metaphorical mappings of time and space can enhance verb tense comprehension, particularly in preschoolers with narrative comprehension challenges.

Keywords: conceptual metaphor; developmental language disorder; embodied cognition; induced plasticity technique; motor training.

Figure 1

Summary of the study’s methodology. Note: The summary shows the phases of the study. Phases 1 and 2 are initial phases, before the implementation of the experiment and the intervention. The experiment with the induced plasticity technique took place in phases 3 and 5, including the pretest and posttests, respectively. The questionnaire assessing narrative discourse comprehension (EDNA test) was also applied in phases 3 and 5 in order to analyze the effect of the mobile application on this covariate. This took 15 min per participant. The psychoeducational intervention (phase 4) took place in 6 modules. Source: prepared by the authors.

Figure 2

Motor training task and experimental setting.

Figure 3

Experimental design from the Ruiz et al. (2021) study.

Figure 4

Example of the motor training module using augmented reality (AR).

Figure 5

Graph of RT results in the posttest for the DLD group.

Figure 6

Graph chart of RT results in the posttests for the TD group.

Figure 7

Graph of AR results in the posttests for the DLD group.

Figure 8

Graph of AR results in the posttests for the TD group.