Examination of skills to form word combinations in normally developing child and children with development disabilities

本研究通过分析正常发育儿童和发育障碍儿童的自发言语和特定任务中的言语，考察了发育障碍儿童的词语组合能力。主要研究结果如下：1。一名有表达性语言迟缓的男孩（3;8-5;2）和三名发育正常的日本儿童在20-21、24-25和27-28月龄时的纵向言语数据显示，一个单词的音节数和一个话语中的实词数平行增加。结果表明，语音形态的发展与句法的发展是相互作用的，或者两者都在一个共同的语言或认知基础上运作。2 .通过对4名5岁语言迟缓儿童和15名语言年龄匹配的正常对照在单词联想任务中的言语反应的分析表明，语言迟缓儿童在语境中表现出较高的错误率和不相关的反应，这表明他们在理解单词之间的语义关系方面存在困难。通过分析8组两部分连续图片的语言描述，研究了15名3-4岁正常发育儿童和4名5-6岁语言发育迟缓儿童的连接表达使用情况。在语言迟缓儿童中，结缔性表达的使用频率与3-4岁的对照组相似，但所有的被试都出现了语法错误，这表明在顺序图片描述任务中，被试组之间的话语存在一些质的差异。发育正常的孩子的母亲更有可能通过重复的反应而不是非重复的反应来回应孩子的单词和可能的单词生成。发育迟缓儿童的母亲在调整自己的谈话风格时，似乎对孩子的理解能力很敏感。

The present research examined skills of normally developing children and children with developmental disabilities to form word combinations by analyzing their spontaneous speech and speech during specific tasks. The major findings are as follows :1. The longitudinal speech data of a boy with an expressive language delay (3 ; 8-5 ; 2) and those of three normally developing Japanese children at 20-21, 24-25, and 27-28 months of age showed a paralell increase in the number of syllables in a word and in the number of content words in an utterance. The results suggested that the development of phonetic shapes and that they of syntax interact with each other, or that they both operate on a common linguistic or cognitive basis.2. An analysis of verbal responses of four 5-year-old language-delayed children and 15 normal controls matched in verbal age in the Word-association task indicated that the delayed children exhibited higher error rates and irrelevant responses from the contexts, suggesting difficulties in understanding semantic relationships between words.3. The use of connective expressions in fifteen 3-4-year-old normally developing children and four 5-6-year-old language delayed children was examined by analyzing verbal descriptions of eight sets of two-part sequential pictures. In language delayed children, the frequencies of the use of connective expressions were similar to those of the 3-4-year-old contol subjects, but all the subjects showed grammatical errors, suggesting some qualitative differences in utterances in a sequential picture description task between the subject groups.4. Mothers of normally-developing children were more likely to respond to the child's word and possibly word productions by repetitive responses than by non-repetitive responses. The mothers of developmentally delayed children appeared to be sensitive to the child's comprehension skills in adjusting their conversational styles.