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

Abstract

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.