How language affects social cognition and emotional competence in typical and atypical development: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: The ability to understand the mental state of others (social cognition), as well as language, is crucial for children to have good social adaptation. Social cognition (SC) has been shown to be a hierarchical model of three factors (Cognitive, intermediate and affective SC) interrelated with linguistic processes. Children on the autism spectrum and children with developmental language disorder (DLD) or social communication disorder (SCD) manifest language and SC difficulties, albeit in different ways. AIMS: This systematic review aims to find how language and SC interact with each other and identify linguistic and socio-affective profiles in the target population. METHODS: About 1593 articles were systematically reviewed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guide in November 2022, obtaining, through inclusion/exclusion criteria, a total of 38 articles for qualitative assessment. The majority of them were on autism (26) or DLD (14) and to a lesser extent SCD (3). MAIN CONTRIBUTION: Although SC is related to all components of language, SC is strongly related to narrative and morphosyntax and partially related to lexicon. Pragmatics shows a complex relation with SC due to greater sensitivity to other factors such as age or task, and prosody appears to be more related to emotional processes. Besides, autistic, SCD and DLD children showed differences in their language and socio-affective performance. Mainstream DLD children have lower performance in general language, where autistic and SCD children have more linguistic variation and are lower in pragmatic and SC tasks, SCD children being more associated with language production difficulties and autistic children with both receptive and productive language. CONCLUSION: Each language component has a different interaction with SC. Likewise, different linguistic profiles are partially found for each disorder. These results are important for future lines of research focusing on specific components of interaction and socio-emotional processes, as well as for clinical and educational treatment. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on the subject The hierarchical model of Schurz et al. (2021), divide social cognition into three brain constructs: cognitive social cognition (CSC), affective social cognition (ASC) and intermediate social cognition (ISC). They observe a large relationship between language and ISC, a fact that has been corroborated with some other studies. Studies have also found lower linguistic and socio-affective abilities in children with autism and language and communication disorders compared with children with neurotypical development, and large behavioural and neurocognitive overlaps between these disorders (Durrleman et al., 2019; Löytömäki et al., 2019). What this paper adds to existing knowledge This is the first review that relates all linguistic components (narrative, lexicon, morphosyntax, pragmatic and prosody) with the three constructs of social cognition (Cognitive, intermediate and affective). Moreover, it is the first review that studies the socio-linguistic factors comparing autism, developmental language disorder and social communication disorder with each other and with neurotypical development in children aged from 4 to 9 years. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Understanding how language and social cognition interact with each other in autism spectrum disorder, developmental language disorder and social communication disorder allows us to trace socio-linguistic profiles for each of the studied disorders, understand better children with these difficulties, and, with this, find specific potential intervention points to improve and prevent these difficulties.

Online Comprehension of Verbal Number Morphology in Children With Developmental Language Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Study.

PURPOSE: Previous studies have raised the possibility of preserved language comprehension in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) in online tasks and within simple sentence structures. Consequently, we evaluated the capacity of children with DLD to comprehend verbal number agreement in simple sentence structures (i.e., verb-object-subject and verb-subject). METHOD: Using an eye-tracking methodology, we conducted two psycholinguistic experiments with 96 Spanish- and Catalan-speaking participants. The sample was distributed into four groups: 24 children with DLD (age range: 4;6-12;6 [years;months]; average age = 7;8 [years;months]), 24 children with the same chronological age (4;6-12;2, 7;8), 24 children with the same linguistic level (4;6-9;4, 6;8), and 24 university students as language experts (18-30, 22;5). RESULTS: The experimental data indicate that children with DLD can comprehend verbal number agreement at least under the present experimental conditions. CONCLUSION: The empirical outcomes suggest that number morphology comprehension by children with DLD might be more typical than what it is generally considered to be.

Statistical word learning in Catalan-Spanish and English-speaking children with and without developmental language disorder.

BACKGROUND: A growing body of work shows that children with developmental language disorder (DLD) perform poorly on statistical word learning (SWL) tasks, consistent with the predictions of the Procedural Deficit Hypothesis that predicts that procedural memory is impaired in DLD. To date, however, SWL performance has not been compared across linguistically heterogeneous populations of children with DLD. AIMS: To compare SWL performance in a group of age, sex and non-verbal IQ-matched Catalan-Spanish and English-speaking children with and without DLD. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Two cohorts of children: (1) 35 Catalan-Spanish-speaking children with DLD (Mage = 8;7 years) and 35 age/sex-matched typical developing (TD) children (Mage = 8;9 years), and (2) 24 English-speaking children with DLD (Mage = 9;1 years) and 19 age/sex matched TD controls (Mage = 8;9 years) completed the tone version of a SWL task from Evans et al. (2009). Children listened to a tone language in which transitional probabilities within tone words were higher than those between words. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: For both Catalan-Spanish and English cohorts, overall performance for the children with DLD was poorer than that of the TD controls regardless of the child's native language. Item analysis revealed that children with DLD had difficulty tracking statistical information and using transitional probability to discover tone word boundaries within the input. For both the Catalan-Spanish and English-speaking children, SWL accounted for a significant amount of unique variance in Receptive and Expressive vocabulary. Likelihood ratio analysis revealed that for both Catalan-Spanish and English cohorts, children having performance ≤ 45% on the SWL task had an extremely high degree of likelihood of having DLD. The analysis also revealed that for the Catalan-Spanish and English-speaking children, scores of ≥ 75% and ≥ 70%, respectively, were highly likelihood to be children with normal language abilities. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: The findings add to a pattern suggesting that SWL is a mechanism that children rely on to acquire vocabulary. The results also suggest that SWL deficits, in particular when combined with other measures, may be a reliable diagnostic indicator for children with DLD regardless of the child's native language, and whether or not the child is bilingual or monolingual. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on the subject Although there is some disagreement, a small but growing body of work suggests that deficits in procedural memory, as measured either by motor sequencing (Serial Reaction Time-SRT) or SWL tasks, may be part of the deficit profile of children with DLD. To date, studies have not examined SWL across linguistically heterogeneous populations of children with DLD to determine if it is a unique clinical marker of the disorder. What this paper adds to existing knowledge The results show that children with DLD, regardless of their native language, or whether the child is bi- or monolingual, have difficulties on SWL tasks, and that these deficits are linked to severity of the language disorder. Taken together, these results indicate that procedural memory deficits may be a core feature of DLD. This suggests that statistical-learning tasks using tone stimuli can also advance our understanding of statistical-learning abilities in children with DLD more globally. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The current study shows that statistical-learning tasks using tone stimuli can be used in conjunction with standardized assessment measures to differentiate children with DLD from children with typical language ability.

Vocabulary Abilities and Parents' Emotional Regulation Predict Emotional Regulation in School-Age Children but Not Adolescents With and Without Developmental Language Disorder.

A comprehensive approach, including social and emotional affectations, has been recently proposed as an important framework to understand Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). There is an increasing considerable interest in knowing how language and emotion are related, and as far as we know, the role of the emotional regulation (ER) of parents of children with and without DLD, and their impact on their children's ER is still unknown. The main aims of this study are to advance our knowledge of ER in school-age children and adolescents with and without DLD, to analyze the predictive value of expressive and receptive vocabulary on ER in school-age children and adolescents, and to explore parental ER and their effect on their children's and adolescents' ER. To cover all objectives, we carried out three studies. In the first and second study, expressive and receptive vocabulary were assessed in wave 1, and ER (Emotional Regulation Checklist -ERC- for children and Emotion Regulation Scale -DERS- for adolescents) was assessed in wave 2, 4 years later. Participants in the first study consisted of two groups of school-aged children (13 had DLD and 20 were typically developing children -TD). Participants in the second study consisted of two groups of adolescents (16 had DLD and 16 were TD adolescents). In the third study, the ER of 65 of the parents of the children and adolescents from study 1 were assessed during wave 2 via self-reporting the DERS questionnaire. Results showed no significant differences in ER between DLD and TD groups neither in middle childhood nor in adolescence. Concerning vocabulary and ER, expressive language predicted ER in school-age children but not in adolescents. Finally, parental ER explained their school-age children's ER, but this was not the case in adolescents. In conclusion, the present data indicated that expressive vocabulary has a fundamental role in ER, at least during primary school years, and adds new evidence of the impact of parents' ER upon their children's ER, encouraging educators and speech language pathologists to include parents' assessments in holistic evaluations and interventions for children with language and ER difficulties.

Sociodemographic and Pre-Linguistic Factors in Early Vocabulary Acquisition.

Here, we studied the beginnings of language development, jointly assessing two groups of precursors, sociodemographic and pre-linguistic, that have previously been studied separately. Thus, the general objective of this study was to explore which factors best explained the acquisition of initial expressive vocabulary. The sample consisted of 504 participants from Catalan-speaking homes with ages ranging between 10 and 18 months. The data were obtained through the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MCB-CDIs). Vocabulary development shows a lexical spurt at 17 months. Regression analyses show that pre-linguistic factors have more explanatory power of than sociodemographic ones. Within the sociodemographic variables, age, birth order and birth weight explain part of the vocabulary variance. With respect to pre-linguistic variables, imitation, late gestures and phrase comprehension are predictors of the initial vocabulary acquisition. Specifically, imitation and late gestures were the pre-linguistic behaviours that made it possible to distinguish between children with higher and lower levels of vocabulary. We discussed these findings in relation to their relevance for language acquisition and for the early assessment of linguistic competence.

El Trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje (TDL): Dificultades lingüísticas y no lingüísticas / Developmental Language Disorder: Language and non-language difficulties

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El trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje (TDL) más allá de las dificultades lingüísticas: memoria y atención / Developmental language disorder beyond language difficulties: Memory and attention

INTRODUCCIÓN: Los niños y niñas con trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje (TDL) además de las dificultades del lenguaje, también pueden tener afectados otros aspectos cognitivos como la atención y la memoria. Los estudios de estos aspectos supralingüísticos han abierto un debate en la comunidad científica y profesional para cambiar la denominación de trastorno «específico» a «trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje». Existe un consenso sobre los déficits en la memoria fonológica, aunque hay resultados contradictorios en relación a la memoria visual y la atención. En el presente estudio evaluamos algunos aspectos de la memoria y la atención, así como el nivel de vocabulario en un grupo con TDL y un grupo con DT para conocer diferencias e interacción entre estas variables. MÉTODO: Participaron 39 niños/as con TDL y 39 niños/as con DT (de 5 a 12 años) bilingües del catalán y español, emparejados por edad y sexo. Se administraron baterías de evaluación de memoria visual (inmediata/demorada), repetición de pseudopalabras, atención selectiva sostenida y un reporte familiar para evaluar inatención e hiperactividad. Aplicamos análisis lineales generalizados para comparar el rendimiento entre grupos y correlaciones con el vocabulario. RESULTADOS: El grupo con TDL mostró un rendimiento inferior en todas las tareas de atención y memoria. El rendimiento de estas correlacionó positivamente con el nivel de vocabulario. El reporte familiar mostró que el número de niño/as con TDL con rasgos de inatención fue más elevado que en el grupo con DT. CONCLUSIONES: El diagnóstico, la intervención y la investigación del TDL tienen que considerar que las dificultades de esta población van más allá del lenguaje, y que se relacionan con déficits múltiples y variados en el desarrollo neuropsicológico

INTRODUCTION: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have cognitive deficit aspects such as attention and memory in addition to language difficulties. Studies of these supra-linguistic aspects have opened a debate in the scientific and professional community on changing the name of "specific" disorder to "developmental language disorder". There is consensus about phonological memory deficits in this population but there are conflicting results in relation to visual memory and attention. In the present study we evaluated some aspects of memory and attention capacities, as well as vocabulary knowledge in a group of children with and without DLD to find differences and interaction between these variables. METHOD: 39 bilingual Catalan-Spanish children with DLD and 39 typical developing (TD) children (from 5 to 12 years old), matched by age and sex participated in the study. Both groups were evaluated with a test battery of visual memory (immediate/delayed), non-word repetition task, sustained selective attention. A family report was used to assess inattention and hyperactivity. Linear mixed model analyses were used to compare performance between groups and correlations with vocabulary were applied. RESULTS: The group of children with DLD showed a lower performance in all attention and memory tasks. The performance of the tasks correlated positively with the level of vocabulary. The family report showed that the number of children with DLD with inattention features was higher than the number of children in the TD group. CONCLUSIONS: DLD diagnosis, intervention and research have to consider that the difficulties of this population go beyond language, and that they are related to multiple and varied deficits in neuropsychological development

Dificultades morfosintácticas en niños y niñas de 5 a 8 años con trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje a través de subpruebas del CELF-4 / Morphosyntactic difficulties in children aged 5 to 8 with developmental language disorder through subtests of the CELF-4

ANTECEDENTES Y OBJETIVO: El objetivo de este estudio es analizar, a nivel expresivo y receptivo, las dificultades morfosintácticas en niños y niñas con trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje (TDL) a través de tres subpruebas del CELF-4: estructura de palabras, estructura de oraciones y formulación de oraciones. MÉTODO: Participaron 25 niños/as con TDL y 25 niños/as con desarrollo típico, de entre 5 y 8 años de edad, bilingües del catalán y español, emparejados por edad y sexo. La subprueba estructura de palabras evaluó la producción de palabras, concretamente flexiones nominales y verbales, palabras derivadas, comparaciones y el uso de pronombres. A nivel receptivo se evaluó la comprensión de estructuras sintácticas a través de la subprueba estructura de oraciones, en la cual tuvieron que elegir imágenes que ilustraban el significado de la oración. Finalmente, la producción de oraciones se evaluó con la subprueba de formulación de oraciones, indicando a los participantes la palabra con la debían crear una oración. Se analizaron los resultados obtenidos comparando los tipos de palabras que produjeron en la tarea de estructura de palabras y según el tipo de oración que incluían las pruebas de estructura de oraciones y formulación de oraciones dependiendo del ítem. De este modo se han podido describir las dificultades morfosintácticas de forma más específica. RESULTADOS: Los resultados muestran que los participantes con TDL tienen dificultades gramaticales especialmente en los verbos y oraciones morfosintácticamente más complejas. También se constató que la comprensión de oraciones está más preservada que la producción. CONCLUSIONES: La evaluación según los tipos de marcas morfológicas y los tipos de oraciones es importante para poder hacer una mejor adaptación de las reeducaciones a las necesidades de los niños/as con TDL

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present study is to analyse the morphosyntactic difficulties (expressive and receptive skills) of children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Three subtests of the CELF-4 were assessed. Firstly expressive language was assessed using the subtest estructura de palabras (word production) and formulación de oraciones (sentence production), secondly receptive language was assessed with the subtest estructura de oraciones (sentence comprehension). METHOD: 25 children with DLD and 25 children with typical development took part of the study, they were 5-8 years old, bilingual Catalan-Spanish, sex and age-matched. The word production subtest assessed the word production, specifically the ability to establish nominal and verbal inflexions, word derivations, comparisons and pronouns. Receptive language was assessed through the sentence comprehension test, considering the syntactic structure comprehension by the selection of the image that showed the oral sentence heard. The sentence production was assessed by giving to the participants a word that they had to use to create a sentence. The results obtained were also analysed to item level considering the type of word and sentence complexity, in order to describe more specifically the morphosyntactic difficulties shown. RESULTS: the results showed that children with DLD had more grammatical difficulties than the typical development group, especially with verbs and in complex sentences. In addition, comprehension was found less impaired than production. CONCLUSIONS: Assessing the morphological cues and different types of sentences is important for boys and girls with DLD in order to establish better interventions to cover their needs

Antecedentes familiares, factores sociodemográficos y dificultades lingüísticas en el trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje / Family history, sociodemographic factors and language difficulties in children with developmental disorder

ANTECEDENTES Y OBJETIVO: Cada vez hay más investigaciones que tratan de encontrar posibles identificadores tempranos de las dificultades del lenguaje. El objetivo de este estudio fue analizar los antecedentes familiares de trastornos del lenguaje u otros trastornos del neurodesarrollo, los factores sociodemográficos y otros indicadores de desarrollo a partir de informes parentales en niños con y sin diagnóstico de trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje. Además, se analizó el grado de acuerdo entre la percepción de dificultades lingüísticas reportadas por las familias (madres/padres) y el nivel obtenido en la evaluación estructurada. MÉTODO: Participaron 23 niños y niñas con trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje y otros 23 con desarrollo típico, de entre 5 y 9 años, bilingües del catalán y español, emparejados por edad y sexo. Se utilizó la prueba CELF-4 para realizar la evaluación y el diagnóstico y test estandarizados para medir el nivel intelectual y el vocabulario expresivo y receptivo. Se administró un cuestionario parental para medir las variables: antecedentes familiares, factores sociodemográficos, indicadores de desarrollo y percepción de las dificultades lingüísticas de sus hijos. RESULTADOS: Se observó un mayor porcentaje de antecedentes familiares en el grupo con trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje que en el grupo con desarrollo típico. Se encontró una relación entre el nivel económico y el hecho de presentar TDL, un efecto significativo de grupo para el nivel económico en relación con el vocabulario receptivo y una correlación significativa entre primeras palabras con el vocabulario expresivo y receptivo posterior. Se encontró acuerdo entre el informe parental y la evaluación estructurada, aunque solo en las dificultades más notorias. CONCLUSIONES: Diferentes variables sociodemográficas y la edad de adquisición de las primeras palabras están relacionadas con el nivel de desarrollo del vocabulario posterior

BACKGROUND AND AIM: There is a growing body of research seeking to find early identifiers of language difficulties. The aim of this study was to analyze family history of language disorders or other neurodevelopmental disorders, sociodemographic factors and other indicators of development from parental reports in order to distinguish between children with and without developmental language disorder. In addition, the degree of agreement between the perception of language difficulties reported by parents and the children's assessment scores was compared. METHOD: 23 Catalan-Spanish bilingual children with developmental language disorder and 23 typical development children, matched by age and sex from 5 to 9 years of age took part in the study. CELF-4 was used to perform the language assessment and diagnosis, as well as other standardized tests to measure non-verbal intellectual level and expressive and receptive vocabulary. A questionnaire was administered to parents to measure the following variables: family history of language and other difficulties, sociodemographic factors, developmental indicators and their own perception of their children's language difficulties. RESULTS: A higher percentage of family history of language and other difficulties was observed in the developmental language disorder group compared to the typical development group. The economic level and the presence of DLD were significantly related, and we also found an effect of group on the economic level and on receptive vocabulary. A significant correlation was also found between the first words and later receptive vocabulary. Parental perception of their children's language difficulties and the results of the standardized language evaluation were also correlated, although only in the most evident difficulties. CONCLUSIONS: Different sociodemographic variables and the age of acquisition of first words are related to the development of subsequent vocabulary

Dificultades sociales, emocionales y victimización específica por el lenguaje en el trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje / Social, emotional, and specific language bullying in developmental language disorder

ANTECEDENTES Y OBJETIVO: El presente estudio analiza la relación entre el trastorno del desarrollo del lenguaje (TDL) y la presencia de síntomas emocionales o problemas con los compañeros/as. Concretamente, se estudia el riesgo de sufrir victimización en la población con TDL, y su relación con los problemas del lenguaje. MÉTODO: La investigación se realizó con una muestra de 42 participantes (21 con TDL; 21 con desarrollo típico (DT), cuyos padres/madres cumplimentaron el Cuestionario de Dificultades y Capacidades (versión en español del SDQ, Goodman, 1997) y un cuestionario creado ad hoc sobre Victimización General y Victimización Específica por el Lenguaje. En ellas se analizaron las variables Síntomas Emocionales, Problemas con los/as Compañeros/as, Victimización General y Victimización Específica por el lenguaje. RESULTADOS: Los resultados revelaron diferencias estadísticamente significativas entre los grupos en cuanto a Síntomas Emocionales, Problemas con los/as Compañeros/as y en Victimización específica por el lenguaje. Sin embargo, no ocurrió así con Victimización General. CONCLUSIONES: Los resultados de este estudio indican que el tener TDL estaría relacionado con sufrir manifestaciones emocionales negativas y con el riesgo de sufrir victimización específica a causa de los déficits en el lenguaje

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The present study aims to analyse the relationship between developmental language disorder (DLD) and the presence of emotional symptoms or problems with classmates. Specifically, it seeks to analyse the risk of suffering bullying in children with developmental language disorder (DLD), and its relation to language problems. METHOD: The study was carried out with a sample of 42 participants (21 with DLD; 21 with Typical Development-TD), their parents were asked to complete the spanish version of the Difficulties and Capabilities Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997) and a survey about bullying and linguistic bullying. We assessed Emotional Symptoms, Problems with Partners, bullying and Linguistic bullying variables. RESULTS: The results revealed statistically significant differences between the groups regarding Emotional Symptoms, Problems with Partners and in Linguistic bullying. However, this did not happen with General bullying. CONCLUSIONS: In light of these results, we conclude that language problems play a crucial role in the risk of linguistic bullying, a specific form of bullying

Rethinking attention in time: Expectancy violations reconcile contradictory developmental evidence.

Temporal expectations critically influence perception and action. Previous research reports contradictory results in children's ability to endogenously orient attention in time as well as the developmental course. To reconcile this seemingly conflicting evidence, we put forward the hypothesis that expectancy violations-through the use of invalid trials-are the source of the mixed evidence reported in the literature. With the aim of offering new results that could reconcile previous findings, we tested a group of young children (4- to 7-year-olds), an older group (8- to 12-year-olds), and a group of adults. Temporal cues provided expectations about target onset time, and invalid trials were used such that the target appeared at the unexpected time in 25% of the trials. In both experiments, the younger children responded faster in valid trials than in invalid trials, showing that they benefited from the temporal cue. These results show that young children rely on temporal expectations to orient attention in time endogenously. Importantly, younger children exhibited greater validity effects than older children and adults, and these effects correlated positively with participants' performance in the invalid (unexpected) trials. We interpret the reduction of validity effects with age as an index of better adaptation to the invalid (unexpected) condition. By using invalid trials and testing three age groups, we demonstrate that previous findings are not inconsistent. Rather, evidence converges when considering the presence of expectancy violations that require executive control mechanisms, which develop progressively during childhood. We propose a distinction between rigid and flexible mechanisms of temporal orienting to accommodate all findings.

Consistency of a Nonword Repetition Task to Discriminate Children with and without Developmental Language Disorder in Catalan-Spanish and European Portuguese Speaking Children.

Nonword repetition has been proposed as a diagnostic marker of developmental language disorder (DLD); however, the inconsistency in the ability of nonword repetition tasks (NRT) to identify children with DLD raises significant questions regarding its feasibility as a clinical tool. Research suggests that some of the inconsistency across NRT may be due to differences in the nature of the nonword stimuli. In this study, we compared children's performance on NRT between two cohorts: the children in the Catalan-Spanish cohort (CS) were bilingual, and the children in the European Portuguese cohort (EP) were monolingual. NRT performance was assessed in both Spanish and Catalan for the bilingual children from Catalonia-Spain and in Portuguese for the monolingual children from Portugal. Results show that although the absolute performance differed across the two cohorts, with NRT performance being lower for the CS, in both Catalan and Spanish, as compared to the EP cohort in both, the cut-points for the likelihood ratios (LH) were similar across the three languages and mirror those previously reported in previous studies. However, the absolute LH ratio values for this study were higher than those reported in prior research due in part to differences in wordlikeness and frequency of the stimuli in the current study. Taken together, the findings from this study show that an NRT consisting of 3-, 4-, and 5-syllable nonwords, which varies in wordlikeness ratings, when presented in a random order accurately identifies and correctly differentiates children with DLD from TD controls the child is bilingual or monolingual.

Real-time comprehension of Spanish prepositions and prepositional locutions in bilingual children with developmental language disorder: A study based on eye-movement evidence.

BACKGROUND: Function words, and more specifically prepositions and prepositional locutions, are considered to be one of the most important difficulties for children with DLD. AIMS: To examine the capacity of bilingual children with developmental language disorder (DLD) to comprehend different Spanish prepositions and prepositional locutions in a simple sentence structure, for example, El gato está sobre la mesa/El gato está bajo la mesa (The cat is on the table/The cat is under the table). METHODS & PROCEDURES: We used simple sentence structures to reduce lexical difficulties in order to focus our evaluation strictly on the grammatical morphemes under study. A total of 96 Spanish and Catalan-speaking participants, divided into four groups, were evaluated in an eye-tracking psycholinguistic experiment: 24 children with DLD (average age = 7.8 years, age range = 4.6-12.6), 24 children with the same chronological age (average age = 7.8 years, age range = 4.6-12.2), 24 children with the same linguistic level (average age = 6.8 years, age range = 4.6-9.4) and 24 adults (average age = 22.5 years, age range = 18-30). OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The empirical data show that, despite some differences, bilingual children with and without DLD can comprehend Spanish prepositions and prepositional locutions under the current experimental conditions. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Our results suggest that the capacity of bilingual children with DLD to comprehend Spanish prepositions and prepositional locutions in real time and within simple sentence structures is preserved. What this paper adds What is already known on the subject The empirical literature indicates that children with DLD show important errors in the production of functional words in general, and prepositions in particular. However, unlike other grammatical morphemes (such as clitic pronouns and articles), prepositions have been less studied, and the few existing studies have focused on the dimension of language production, not comprehension. What this paper adds to existing knowledge The present study, composed of two experimental tasks, seeks to determine to what extent the observable difficulty in the linguistic production of prepositions is also present in the comprehension of children with DLD. The empirical results suggest a less atypical comprehension in comparison with our initial hypothesis, and the differences that appear between the two tasks, allow us to formulate a theoretical interpretation regarding the mechanisms of their understanding. Thus far, we are not aware of other studies that have evaluated in real time the comprehension of prepositions and prepositional locutions in parallel. Clinical implications of this study Results suggest the presence of a more preserved comprehension of prepositions and prepositional locutions, at least in real-time experimental conditions (eye-tracking) and in simple sentence structures. A less atypical comprehension raises the possibility of a better prognosis for children with DLD. Working with comprehension of simple sentences and the gradual addition of more difficult grammatical morphemes could help to enhance the comprehension of a growing complex grammar.

Real time comprehension of Spanish articles in children with developmental language disorder: Empirical evidence from eye movements.

Function words and, more specifically, articles have been widely indicated as one of the main sources of difficulty for children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). The present study is the first to assess the online comprehension of Spanish articles in bilingual children with DLD. In an eye tracking experiment, we monitored participants' eye movements as they listened to Spanish articles embedded in structurally simple sentences. Ninety-six subjects from four different groups were evaluated: 24 children with DLD (average age 7;08), 24 children with the same chronological age (average age 7;08), 24 younger children matched for mean length utterance (average age 6;08), and 24 adults (average age 22;05). We calculated the proportion between the preference for the correct visual referent and a competitor object. Our results suggest that children with DLD are capable of timely comprehension of Spanish articles in real time and within simple sentence structures. However, we observed a strong effect of chronological age in the sample of interest; younger children with DLD are able to identify the correct referent, but this preference is weaker compared to the older children with DLD. We also observed local differences between the DLD group, and the other two children control groups, particularly when the chronological age group is introduced as a factor. These findings suggest a developmental trajectory that is different in the DLD group relative to children with typical language development. Notwithstanding, in spite of the article production difficulties previously reported, children with DLD in the present sample appear to be able to comprehend Spanish articles in the current experimental conditions.

"El nen s'ha menjat una aranya": The development of narratives in Catalan speaking children.

The production of a well-constructed narrative is the culmination of several years of language acquisition and is an important milestone in children's development. There is no current description of narrative development for Catalan speaking children. This study collected elicited narratives in Catalan from 118 children aged 4;0-10;11. Narratives were scored for macrostructure and microstructure. Narrative scores improved with age with maximum performance for macrostructure by 9 years. Children's ability to use micro-structural components of Catalan is variable with some developments continuing beyond 9 years. The results are discussed in relation to theoretical arguments about universal and specific features of narrative development. We conclude by highlighting the usefulness of the new test for future language assessment of children acquiring Catalan.

Auditory word recognition of verbs: Effects of verb argument structure on referent identification.

Word recognition includes the activation of a range of syntactic and semantic knowledge that is relevant to language interpretation and reference. Here we explored whether or not the number of arguments a verb takes impinges negatively on verb processing time. In this study, three experiments compared the dynamics of spoken word recognition for verbs with different preferred argument structure. Listeners' eye movements were recorded as they searched an array of pictures in response to hearing a verb. Results were similar in all the experiments. The time to identify the referent increased as a function of the number of arguments, above and beyond any effects of label appropriateness (and other controlled variables, such as letter, phoneme and syllable length, phonological neighborhood, oral and written lexical frequencies, imageability and rated age of acquisition). The findings indicate that the number of arguments a verb takes, influences referent identification during spoken word recognition. Representational complexity and amount of information generated by the lexical item that aids target identification are discussed as possible sources of this finding.

The effects of bilingualism on conflict monitoring, cognitive control, and garden-path recovery.

Bilinguals demonstrate benefits on non-linguistic tasks requiring cognitive control-the regulation of mental activity to resolve information-conflict during processing. This "bilingual advantage" has been attributed to the consistent management of two languages, yet it remains unknown if these benefits extend to sentence processing. In monolinguals, cognitive control helps detect and revise misinterpretations of sentence meaning. Here, we test if the bilingual advantage extends to parsing and interpretation by comparing bilinguals' and monolinguals' syntactic ambiguity resolution before and after practicing N-back, a non-syntactic cognitive-control task. Bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on a high-conflict but not a no-conflict version of N-back and on sentence comprehension, indicating that the advantage extends to language interpretation. Gains on N-back conflict trials also predicted comprehension improvements for ambiguous sentences, suggesting that the bilingual advantage emerges across tasks tapping shared cognitive-control procedures. Because the overall task benefits were observed for conflict and non-conflict trials, bilinguals' advantage may reflect increased cognitive flexibility.

Do Children with SLI Use Verbs to Predict Arguments and Adjuncts: Evidence from Eye Movements During Listening.

Different psycholinguistic theories have suggested the importance of verb semantics in rapidly anticipating upcoming information during real-time sentence comprehension. To date, no study has examined if children use verbs to predict arguments and adjuncts in sentence comprehension using children with specific language impairment (SLI). Twenty-five children with SLI (aged 5 years and 3 months to 8 years and 2 months), 25 age-matched controls (aged 5 years and 3 months to 8 years and 2 months), 25 MLU-w controls (aged 3 years and 3 months to 7 years and 1 month), and 31 adults took part in the study. The eye movements of participants were monitored while they heard 24 sentences, such as El hombre lee con atención un cuento en la cama (translation: The man carefully reads a storybook in bed), in the presence of four depicted objects, one of which was the target (storybook), another, the competitor (bed), and another two, distracters (wardrobe and grape). The proportion of looks revealed that, when the meaning of the verb was retrieved, the upcoming argument and adjunct referents were rapidly anticipated. However, the proportion of looks at the theme, source/goal and instrument referents were significantly higher than the looks at the locatives. This pattern was found in adults as well as children with and without language impairment. The present results suggest that, in terms of sentence comprehension, the ability to understand verb information is not severely impaired in children with SLI.

Argument structure and the representation of abstract semantics.

According to the dual coding theory, differences in the ease of retrieval between concrete and abstract words are related to the exclusive dependence of abstract semantics on linguistic information. Argument structure can be considered a measure of the complexity of the linguistic contexts that accompany a verb. If the retrieval of abstract verbs relies more on the linguistic codes they are associated to, we could expect a larger effect of argument structure for the processing of abstract verbs. In this study, sets of length- and frequency-matched verbs including 40 intransitive verbs, 40 transitive verbs taking simple complements, and 40 transitive verbs taking sentential complements were presented in separate lexical and grammatical decision tasks. Half of the verbs were concrete and half were abstract. Similar results were obtained in the two tasks, with significant effects of imageability and transitivity. However, the interaction between these two variables was not significant. These results conflict with hypotheses assuming a stronger reliance of abstract semantics on linguistic codes. In contrast, our data are in line with theories that link the ease of retrieval with availability and robustness of semantic information.

The formulation of argument structure in SLI: an eye-movement study.

This study investigated the formulation of verb argument structure in Catalan- and Spanish-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing age-matched controls. We compared how language production can be guided by conceptual factors, such as the organization of the entities participating in an event and knowledge regarding argument structure. Eleven children with SLI (aged 3;8 to 6;6) and eleven control children participated in an eye-tracking experiment in which participants had to describe events with different argument structure in the presence of visual scenes. Picture descriptions, latency time and eye movements were recorded and analyzed. The picture description results showed that the percentage of responses in which children with SLI substituted a non-target verb for the target verb was significantly different from that for the control group. Children with SLI made more omissions of obligatory arguments, especially of themes, as the verb argument complexity increased. Moreover, when the number of arguments of the verb increased, the children took more time to begin their descriptions, but no differences between groups were found. For verb type latency, all children were significantly faster to start describing one-argument events than two- and three-argument events. No differences in latency time were found between two- and three-argument events. There were no significant differences between the groups. Eye-movement showed that children with SLI looked less at the event zone than the age-matched controls during the first two seconds. These differences between the groups were significant for three-argument verbs, and only marginally significant for one- and two-argument verbs. Children with SLI also spent significantly less time looking at the theme zones than their age-matched controls. We suggest that both processing limitations and deficits in the semantic representation of verbs may play a role in these difficulties.