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Abstract
Purpose
Article-noun disagreement in spoken language is a marker of children with developmental language disorder (DLD). However, the evidence is less clear regarding article comprehension. This study investigates article comprehension in monolingual Spanish-speaking children with and without DLD.
Method
Eye tracking methodology used in a longitudinal experimental design enabled the examination of real time article comprehension. The children at the time 1 were 40 monolingual Spanish-speaking preschoolers (20 with DLD and 20 with typical language development [TLD]). A year later (time 2), 27 of these children (15 with DLD and 12 with TLD) were evaluated. Children listened to simple phrases while inspecting a four object visual context. The article in the phrase agreed in number and gender with only one of the objects.
Result
At the time 1, children with DLD did not use articles to identify the correct image, while children with TLD anticipated the correct picture. At the time 2, both groups used the articles’ morphological markers, but children with DLD showed a slower and weaker preference for the correct referent compared to their age-matched peers.
Conclusion
These findings suggest a later emergence, but a similar developmental trajectory, of article comprehension in children with DLD compared to their peers with TLD.
Disclosure statement
The authors declare that the present study was conducted in the absence of any commercial, financial, or scientific relationships that could be interpreted as a potential conflict of interest.
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2023.2167235.