Distributional learning aids linguistic category formation in school-age children.
Jessica Hall, Amanda Owen VAN Horne, Thomas Farmer
PMID 29125090WHAT IT FOUND
School-age children rated new artificial-language sentences as more acceptable when they fit patterns in what they heard.
They did this without meaning or sound cues. This is a basic language-learning finding, not a therapy result.
Key findings
01Children rated novel grammatical sentences higher than ungrammatical sentences.
02Familiar and novel sentence ratings did not differ.
03Higher vocabulary scores were linked to a larger distinction between familiar and ungrammatical items.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used an artificial language and a computer task, not real clinical language. All children were typically developing, so the results do not show what happens in children with language impairment. Eight children were added after the original sample for some analyses, and the paper notes this limits interpretation of p-values. The vocabulary-score interaction was small, and the direction of the relationship is unclear. No clinical outcome or treatment was tested.
Declared interests
The supplied text lists NIH extramural research support. It does not state author conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that a speech-language therapy works. The children heard artificial alien sentences, not clinical language tasks, and no treatment was tested.