Word Detection in Sung and Spoken Sentences in Children With Typical Language Development or With Specific Language Impairment

Previous studies have reported that children score better in language tasks using sung rather than spoken stimuli. We examined word detection ease in sung and spoken sentences that were equated for phoneme duration and pitch variations in children aged 7 to 12 years with typical language development...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Advances in cognitive psychology 2015, Vol.11 (4), p.118-135
Main Authors: Planchou, Clément, Clément, Sylvain, Béland, Renée, Cason, Nia, Motte, Jacques, Samson, Séverine
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cognitive science
Cognitive Sciences
Experiments
Language acquisition
Language disorders
Life Sciences
Linguistics
Music
Neurons and Cognition
Psychological aspects
Psychological research
Psychology
Specific language impairment
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Summary:Previous studies have reported that children score better in language tasks using sung rather than spoken stimuli. We examined word detection ease in sung and spoken sentences that were equated for phoneme duration and pitch variations in children aged 7 to 12 years with typical language development (TLD) as well as in children with specific language impairment (SLI ), and hypothesized that the facilitation effect would vary with language abilities. In Experiment 1, 69 children with TLD (7-10 years old) detected words in sentences that were spoken, sung on pitches extracted from speech, and sung on original scores. In Experiment 2, we added a natural speech rate condition and tested 68 children with TLD (7-12 years old). In Experiment 3, 16 children with SLI and 16 age-matched children with TLD were tested in all four conditions. In both TLD groups, older children scored better than the younger ones. The matched TLD group scored higher than the SLI group who scored at the level of the younger children with TLD . None of the experiments showed a facilitation effect of sung over spoken stimuli. Word detection abilities improved with age in both TLD and SLI groups. Our findings are compatible with the hypothesis of delayed language abilities in children with SLI , and are discussed in light of the role of durational prosodic cues in words detection.
ISSN:1895-1171
1895-1171
DOI:10.5709/acp-0177-8