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Gender and agreement processing in children with Developmental Language Disorder*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2013

NATALIA RAKHLIN ,
SERGEY A. KORNILOV  and
ELENA L. GRIGORENKO
NATALIA RAKHLIN
Affiliation:
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
SERGEY A. KORNILOV
Affiliation:
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, USA Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, Connecticut, USA Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
ELENA L. GRIGORENKO*
Affiliation:
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, Connecticut, USA Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia Columbia University, New York, New York, USA
*
Address for correspondence: Elena L. Grigorenko, Child Study Center, 230 South Frontage Road, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06519-1124. tel: 203.737.2316; fax: 203.785.3002; e-mail: elena.grigorenko@yale.edu
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Abstract

Two experiments tested whether Russian-speaking children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) are sensitive to gender agreement when performing a gender decision task. In Experiment 1, the presence of overt gender agreement between verbs and/or adjectival modifiers and postverbal subject nouns memory was varied. In Experiment 2, agreement violations were introduced and the targets varied between words, pseudo-words, or pseudo-words with derivational suffixes. In both experiments, children with DLD did not differ from typically developing children in their reaction time or sensitivity to agreement features. In both groups, trials with feminine gender resulted in a higher error rate. Children with DLD displayed lower overall accuracy, which was related to differences in phonological memory in both experiments. Furthermore, in Experiment 1 group differences were not maintained after phonological memory was entered as a covariate. The results are discussed with respect to various processing and linguistic theories of DLD.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , March 2014 , pp. 241 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

[*]

The first two authors have contributed equally to the writing of the manuscript. This research was supported by NIH grant R01 DC007665 to Elena L. Grigorenko. Grantees undertaking such projects are encouraged to express freely their professional judgment. This article, therefore, does not necessarily reflect the position or policies of the National Institutes of Health, and no official endorsement should be inferred. We thank the children who participated in the study and their families for their cooperation, and the local medical officials of the AZ community for their help with data collection.

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