Universität zu Köln

Emmrich, Kristin (2026). Effekte syntaktischen Primings und visueller Aufmerksamkeit auf die Produktion von Passivsätzen bei Kindern mit Sprachentwicklungsstörung. Bachelor thesis, Universität zu Köln.

PDF (Bachelor's Thesis) Bachelor Thesis Kristin Emmrich.pdf Download (1MB)

Abstract

Background. Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) demonstrate significant difficulties in the production and comprehension of complex syntactic structures such as passives. German children with DLD show reduced use of these structures [1] and more errors in both production [1] and comprehension [2]. Previous research has shown that syntactic priming, that is a speaker’s tendency to repeat the same syntactic structure previously used by an interlocutor, can increase the number of produced passives in children with DLD [e.g. 3], although less than typically developing children. This reduced effectiveness of syntactic priming in children with DLD has been interpreted as a reduced capacity to learn from syntactic experience [3]. For neuro typical adults, previous research has shown an increased propensity to use the passive in describing event scenes when the patient is animate rather than inanimate, visually cued rather than non-cued, and located to the left rather than to the right of the agent [4]. Research Questions. In this thesis were investigated, whether the combination of the priming paradigm with factors that raise the prominence of the patient character in a depicted transitive event scene (i.e. animacy, visual cueing, and position) can boost implicit syntactic learning in children with DLD, thus providing a basis for an interventional concept. To examine whether this combination paradigm is effective, we investigated whether there is an increase in the number of produced passive utterances during an event-description task. To examine long-term facilitation effects, the experiment was repeated after one week. Method. The tested participants were six monolingual German-speaking children (age 3;11 to 10;7) with DLD, diagnosed by speech therapists. Each child was tested twice with one week in between. For the event description task, 48 transitive event scenes were created, including 24 prime pictures and 24 target pictures, and three conditions were defined (eight items per condition): active, passive, and passive-cued. During the experiment, the experimenter and the child sat together in front of a screen and alternately described the pictures that appeared. First, a prime picture appeared (e.g., vampire hitting king), which were described by the experimenter using, depending on condition, an active or passive sentence. Next, a target picture appeared (e.g., clown pushing dwarf), and the child were prompted to describe it. In the passive-prominence condition, the prominence of the patient was raised by a visual cue (a 700 ms red dot appearing at the location where the patient subsequently appeared) and by presenting it on the left side of the agent. After each target picture, two filler pictures showing simple objects (e.g., a chair) followed. Again, the first filler picture were named by the experimenter and the second by the child. Analysis. For the produced utterances, 275 responses were analyzed for speaker’s syntactic choice and coded as active, passive, or passive structured. The latter category included utterances where the children used passive morphology without, however, changing the mapping of thematic role and syntactic function. All analyzable clauses had a clear syntactic distinction. Unclear utterances or such not describing the picture were excluded (13). For the effects of raising the prominence of the patient, children’s eye gaze was also analyzed. Results. The results show an increased production of passive-structured clauses. Thus far, the number of produced passives or clauses with passive structures is higher in the passive conditions (32 / 35 to 24), in the second half of the experiment (51 to 40) [vgl. 5] and at the second test session (64 to 27). The strength of the effects varies between children. Besides well-formed, complete utterances, children sometimes show lower-level increases in syntactic complexity over time or produce errors such as altered thematic roles. Discussion. The results suggest that a combination of syntactic priming with raising the prominence of the patient in a transitive event scene boost the production of passives by German-speaking children with DLD. Effects at lower developmental levels or typical error patterns, such as altered thematic roles [5,6], still indicate a clear increase in attempts to produce the primed grammatical structure. The use of techniques manipulating visual attention constitutes a novel contribution to research in language interventions. Moreover, the observed consistency after one week suggests that the method may be effective in speech therapy targeting the acquisition of complex syntactic structures.