Role saliency cues and children's sentence comprehension

• Published in: Journal of psycholinguistic research 1982-05, Vol.11 (3), p.217-228
• Main Authors: Hargrove, Patricia M, Panagos, John M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0090-6905; 1573-6555
• DOI: 10.1007/BF01067565

Forty-eight children at four age levels (3, 4, 5, & 7 years) acted out active & passive sentences immediately after exposure to matching information, mismatching information, & no information cues. The cues took the form of short stories read & acted out with toys by the examiner. The stories highlighted one of the toys as actor. Matching information consisted of having the same actor in the story & in the experimental sentence. Mismatching information consisted of having the actor of the story differ from the actor of the experimental sentence. No information context consisted of neutral comments. The matching information cues yielded the highest comprehension scores, followed in order by the no information & mismatching information cues. Active sentences were easier to comprehend than passive sentences & comprehension scores improved with age. Processing context information in the form of role saliency cues is a component of children's language comprehension & development. It was found that context is used differentially depending on age & linguistic knowledge. Results indicated that the analysis of children's comprehension skills is a multifaceted process not solely dependent on syntactic processing. 3 Tables. AA