Sentence Prediction for Language Developmental Disorders
What You Need to Know Before You Apply
What is the purpose of this trial?
Millions of children - 7-12% of the school-age population - have developmental language disorder (DLD), a disorder that affects language learning, comprehension, and use. These children have difficulty with sentence production and comprehension at every stage of their development. These difficulties have major implications for the educational attainment of children with DLD compared to children with typical development (TD). Children with TD and adults make rapid predictions of upcoming words following verbs (e.g., predicting the patient in The dog eats the bone or the agent in The bone is eaten by the dog). Extensive work in children and adults indicates that prediction facilitates sentence comprehension by inducing a state of preparedness and contributes to language development by tuning the language system to the input. Children with DLD have a poorer ability to make sentence predictions, which may compound and result in sentence-comprehension deficits. Prior work on prediction deficits in DLD has focused on broad sentence characteristics like typicality or broad participant characteristics like vocabulary test scores. However, studies with typical individuals have identified more specific sentence- and participant-level contributors to sentence prediction. These factors have not been systematically explored in children with DLD. The investigators explore three separate hypotheses concerning factors that affect prediction in DLD. First, sentence- and participant-level properties affect prediction in children with DLD. Second, children with DLD lack robust representations of the underlying linguistic knowledge needed to predict, particularly abstract semantic features. Third, children with DLD have differences in event processing that relate to sentence prediction skill. The investigators investigate these hypotheses in 5-7-year-old school-age children with DLD across three Aims. Aim 1: Measure the effect of sentence- and participant-level properties on sentence prediction. The investigators will measure two participant-level cognitive factors (processing speed, verbal working memory) and their effect on prediction of agents and patients in sentences varying across two properties (syntactic complexity, semantic competition). Aim 2: Measure linguistic knowledge that underlies sentence prediction. The investigators will measure knowledge of agent-verb and verb-patient cooccurrences (e.g., dog-bite, eat-apple) and knowledge of verb-specific semantic features (e.g., throw-\<round object\>). Aim 3: Measure event-processing skills that underlie sentence prediction. The investigators will measure how children with DLD categorize and attend to agents/patients in visual scenes. Impact: This project has the promise to be highly impactful. First, it bridges disparate literatures on language processing in adults, children with TD, and children with DLD, providing clarity about predictive processing in DLD. Second, it may influence intervention approaches by identifying areas of strength and need in children with DLD. Third, it sets the stage for larger-scale longitudinal work examining effects of early prediction ability, language knowledge, and event processing on later sentence comprehension.
Are You a Good Fit for This Trial?
Inclusion Criteria
Timeline for a Trial Participant
Screening
Participants are screened for eligibility to participate in the trial
Measurement of Cognitive Factors
Measure participant-level cognitive factors and their effect on prediction of agents and patients in sentences varying across syntactic complexity and semantic competition.
Measurement of Linguistic Knowledge
Measure knowledge of agent-verb and verb-patient cooccurrences and verb-specific semantic features.
Measurement of Event Processing Skills
Measure how children with DLD categorize and attend to agents/patients in visual scenes.
Follow-up
Participants are monitored for safety and effectiveness after the main trial activities.
What Are the Treatments Tested in This Trial?
Interventions
- Sentence complexity
- Thematic role
How Is the Trial Designed?
1
Treatment groups
Experimental Treatment
The investigators will measure participant-level cognitive factors and their effect on prediction of agents and patients in sentences varying across syntactic complexity and semantic competition. The investigators will measure knowledge of agent-verb and verb-patient cooccurrences (e.g., dog-bite, eat-apple) and knowledge of verb-specific semantic features (e.g., throw-\<round object\>). The investigators will measure how children with DLD categorize and attend to agents/patients in visual scenes.
Find a Clinic Near You
Who Is Running the Clinical Trial?
Father Flanagan's Boys' Home
Lead Sponsor
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Collaborator
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