Systematic language input improved productions of elaborated verb phrases of Cantonese-speaking children with language difficulties.

It has been well-documented that language input designed according to the principles of statistical learning can promote language acquisition among children with or without language disorder. Cantonese-speaking children with language disorder were reported to have difficulties using expanded verb phrases and prepositional phrases, but the corresponding intervention is relatively unexplored. The current study evaluated the efficacy of an intervention designed using the statistical learning principles to promote the acquisition of these two structures. A retrospective study of existing data collected from a total of 16 Cantonese-speaking children (four female; mean age = 6.70 years) with suspected language disorder was conducted. The participants were initially divided into the 'Treatment' and the 'Control' groups. A total of eight sessions of language treatment, which focused on giving systematic language input of expanded verb phrases and prepositional phrases, were conducted on each child. Results showed that the Treatment group produced significantly more expanded verb phrases in the post-treatment language samples, while the Control group did not. The final pre- and post-comparison conducted after the Control group also received treatment indicated overall significant increased number of expanded verb phrases produced across time. On the contrary, improvement in the production of prepositional phrases was not significant. It is suggested that the unique thematic roles coded by individual prepositions possibly restricted the generalisation effect of treatment, which explains the non-significant improvement across time. Theoretical and clinical implications were discussed.

Comprehension of presupposition triggers in Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorders.

Built on a previous finding that children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) had difficulty comprehending presuppositions, a domain of knowledge which is crucial for successful communication, the present study investigated the comprehension of seven types of presupposition trigger - namely definite descriptions, factive predicates, change-of-state verbs, implicative verbs, iteratives, temporal clauses, and counterfactual conditionals - in Cantonese-speaking children with and without ASD. Twenty-seven children with ASD (mean age 9.07) were compared with 23 typically developing (TD) children matched on chronological age and 21 TD children matched on language ability (LA). Knowledge of presupposition triggers was evaluated on the basis of children's ability to judge whether a given utterance was a correct presupposition of a preceding utterance. Children with ASD were found to perform significantly worse than TD children matched on chronological age in comprehending the seven types of presupposition trigger, but they performed similarly to TD children matched on language ability. After the effects of chronological age, language ability, and non-verbal intelligence were controlled for, children with ASD were still found to show a deficit in comprehending the presupposition triggered by a temporal clause, relative to the two groups of TD children. Future studies should investigate the factors contributing to this specific deficit in children with ASD, such as executive functioning and theory of mind.

Comprehension of literal statements and similes in Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorders.

While it has been proposed, following relevance theory, that similes can be understood at a purely literal level on a par with literal statements, it remains unclear whether children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASD) perform similarly to typically developing (TD) children in comprehending literal statements and similes. The present study investigated comprehension of literal statements and similes in Cantonese-speaking children with HFASD and TD children matched on both chronological age and verbal mental age. An utterance-picture matching task was devised to assess their comprehension of literal statements and similes in Cantonese. Overall results showed that Cantonese-speaking children with HFASD performed worse than TD children in comprehending literal statements and similes, and both groups showed more difficulty in comprehending similes than literal statements. After the effects of chronological age and verbal mental age were controlled for, no group difference was found between children with HFASD and TD children in comprehending literal statements, whereas the group difference in simile comprehension still existed, suggesting that children with HFASD showed deficits in comprehending similes relative to TD children. These findings challenge the proposal that similes can be understood at a purely literal level on a par with literal statements. Future studies should investigate the role of different aspects of language ability and different levels of theory-of-mind skills in comprehension of similes and metaphors in children with HFASD.

Comprehension of presuppositions in school-age Cantonese-speaking children with and without autism spectrum disorders.

While an enormous amount of research has been done on the deficient conversation skills in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), little is known about their performance on presuppositions, a domain of knowledge that is crucial for successful communication. This study investigated the comprehension of four types of presupposition, namely existential, factive, lexical and structural presuppositions, in school-age Cantonese-speaking children with and without ASD. A group of children with ASD (n = 21), mean age 8.8, was compared with a group of typically developing children (n = 106). Knowledge of presuppositions was evaluated based on children's ability to judge whether a given utterance was a correct presupposition of a preceding utterance. Children with ASD were found to show a deficit in the comprehension of presuppositions, even after controlling for differences in general language ability and non-verbal intelligence. The relative difficulty of the four types of presupposition did not differ between the two groups of children. The present findings provide new empirical evidence that children with ASD have a deficit in the comprehension of presuppositions. Future research should explore whether the deficit in the comprehension of presuppositions is related to the development of theory of mind skills in children with ASD.

Corrigendum: Corpus of Mandarin Child Language: a preliminary study on the acquisition of semantic content categories in Mandarin-speaking preschoolers.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1234525.].

Corpus of Mandarin Child Language: a preliminary study on the acquisition of semantic content categories in Mandarin-speaking preschoolers.

In studying language acquisition in children, sizable research studies have been focusing on the investigation of form and lexical semantics. This study aims to establish a child language database annotated both syntactically with part of speech and semantically with semantic content category to supplement the study of child language acquisition in the semantic domain beyond lexical level. The Corpus of Mandarin Child Language (CMCL) that documented the production of different semantic content categories by Mandarin-speaking children was established. Naturalistic language samples of 82 native Mandarin-speaking children aged 25-60 months, divided into three age groups, were obtained. The corresponding semantic content categories coded in each utterance were tagged according to previous studies, in addition to the annotations of part of speech. MLU and lexical diversity were examined and the usage and acquisition of different semantic content categories were also analyzed. The results regarding syntactic complexity and lexical diversity replicated the typical language acquisition pattern from previous studies, which supported the validity of the data obtained in the CMCL. To investigate the trajectory of acquisition of various semantic content categories by age, a 90% acquisition criterion was used. Our findings regarding the acquisition order of semantic content category were basically in line with previous studies in general, with some minor differences. This acquisition order observed is largely explained by the cognitive and syntactic complexity associated with the semantic content category, with additional influence from language specific properties and cultural specific factors of Mandarin. In addition, with the tags in both part-of-speech and semantic content category, the CMCL potentially provides a platform for examining the form-content interface in early child language acquisition, which also implies significantly on the theoretical and clinical ground.