A processability theory perspective on morphosyntax in school-age children with developmental language disorder

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Speech-Language Pathology

Background:

• Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) affects language acquisition in children.
• Processability Theory (PT) posits a five-stage implicational hierarchy for morphosyntactic development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the applicability of Processability Theory's implicational stages to Swedish-speaking children with DLD.
• To determine if children with DLD produce grammatical structures in a predictable order.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of sentence repetition task data from 49 school-age children with DLD (ages 6;5-11;5).
• Sentences were selected to represent different PT stages.
• Examination of the production of morphosyntactic structures.

Main Results:

• A significant implicational order was confirmed: higher-stage structures were produced only if lower-stage structures were also present.
• Only 26.5% of participants reached PT stage 4, and 2% reached stage 5.
• Findings were compared to typically developing children and associated with language, memory, and non-verbal measures.

Conclusions:

• The study supports the existence of a developmental hierarchy in morphosyntax for children with DLD, aligning with Processability Theory.
• The identified developmental stages can guide language intervention strategies by targeting the next stage in the hierarchy.
• The limited attainment of higher PT stages suggests potential challenges in advanced morphosyntactic development for this population.