Influence of Semantic Richness on Word Form Learning in Children With Developmental Language Disorder

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) show a word form learning deficit, characterized by inaccurate and variable productions of novel words. We investigated whether, when a novel word form is introduced, incremental exposure to either a sparse visual referent or a relatively semantically rich story influences the phonetic accuracy and the phonological and articulatory variability of production in children with DLD and their typically developing (TD) peers.

Thirty-six preschoolers (18 DLD, 18 TD) aged 4;1-5;11 (years;months) were exposed to six novel words, two in each of three semantic cue conditions: no cues, sparse cues (visual referent), and rich cues (story). Children participated in three learning sessions. The first session consisted of nonword practice of word forms, and the present study only included the later consolidation sessions (Sessions 2 and 3) during which semantic content was incrementally incorporated. Phonetic accuracy, phonological variability, articulatory variability, referent identification, and confrontation naming measures were used to evaluate learning.

The most robust result was that children with DLD were less phonetically accurate and more phonologically variable than their TD peers, although variability decreased across sessions. For only children with DLD, phonetic accuracy decreased in the rich story condition. However, both TD and DLD groups showed increased variability in the rich story condition. In the slower mapping sessions included in this study, children with DLD and TD children showed similar performance in speech motor (i.e., lower lip/jaw motion) variability as well as in comprehension and confrontation naming of semantic referents.

Children with DLD demonstrate deficits in their capacity to organize phonological sequences. Phonological organization shows some malleability based on the type of semantic information presented during learning, with relatively rich and elaborated input (as opposed to simple naming) disrupting the organization of phonological sequences.

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.32118145.