Children's dependence upon visual context in sentence comprehension

This study explored the manner in which young children utilize meaning clues implicit in nonlinguistic aspects of context to aid comprehension of difficult sentences. Comprehension of reversible passive sentences was measured for the degree to which visual context could be helpful to sentence understanding. Results indicated a strong reliance on visual cues by children from three to seven years of age. The use of visual aids as a means of helping children develop comprehension strategies is suggested.