"Whatdunit?" Developmental changes in children's syntactically based sentence interpretation abilities and...

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics
• Psychometrics

Background:

• Understanding how children interpret sentences is crucial for language development research.
• Assessing sentence interpretation abilities in children, particularly those with specific language impairment, requires reliable and valid tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate developmental changes in syntactic sentence interpretation and word order sensitivity in typically developing English-speaking children.
• To evaluate the psychometric properties (validity and reliability) of a novel sentence interpretation task for potential use with children with specific language impairment.

Main Methods:

• A "whatdunit?" agent selection task was employed with 256 children aged 7-11.
• Participants listened to semantically implausible sentences with controlled noun animacy and event probability, presented in both canonical and noncanonical word orders.
• Children rapidly selected the picture of the noun performing the action, assessing interpretation accuracy and speed.

Main Results:

• Children demonstrated significantly greater accuracy and speed in interpreting sentences with canonical word order compared to noncanonical word order.
• Older children (mean age 10y 8m) were more accurate and faster than younger children (mean age 8y 1m) across all sentence structures.
• Error patterns were consistent between age groups, and the task showed strong validity and reliability.

Conclusions:

• Sentence interpretation abilities and sensitivity to word order develop significantly between ages 7 and 11.
• The "whatdunit?" task is a psychometrically sound instrument suitable for assessing sentence interpretation in children, including those with specific language impairment.