Lexical-Semantic Cues Induce Sound Pattern Stability in Children With Developmental Language Disorder

Area of Science:

• Child language acquisition
• Developmental language disorder
• Speech-language pathology

Background:

• Preschoolers with developmental language disorder (DLD) exhibit inaccuracies and variability when learning new words.
• Understanding how to improve phonological organization in DLD is crucial for language development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if adding lexical-semantic information (meaning) to novel word forms enhances sound production organization in children with DLD.
• To compare the effects of meaningful words versus meaningless nonwords on speech production in DLD.

Main Methods:

• Twenty-one preschoolers with DLD and 21 typically developing peers imitated novel words and nonwords.
• Half of the novel forms were paired with visual referents (words), while the other half were not (nonwords).
• Network science methods assessed sound sequence stability and accuracy.

Main Results:

• Children with DLD demonstrated lower accuracy and higher variability in speech production compared to typical peers.
• Associating novel word forms with visual referents significantly improved network stability for children with DLD.
• Accuracy did not improve for children with DLD when visual referents were introduced.

Conclusions:

• Children with DLD face challenges in acquiring novel word forms, showing deficits in accuracy and consistency.
• Lexical-semantic information, provided through visual referents, acts as a scaffold to improve phonological organization in children with DLD.
• While meaning enhances sound pattern stability, it does not directly improve the accuracy of novel word production in this population.