Investigating the Comprehension of Passive Sentences in Korean Children: An Eye-Tracking Study

In this study, we used eye-tracking techniques to provide a more precise explanation of the challenges children face in understanding passive sentences compared to active ones. Additionally, we investigated the relationship between passive constructions and executive functioning(EF) abilities(i.e., inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility). 70 Korean-speaking children aged 5 to 6 and 42 adults participated in this experiment. First, we found that children showed significantly lower accuracy in both active and passive sentence comprehension compared to adults. Specifically, 5-year-olds demonstrated significantly lower accuracy in passive sentence comprehension compared to 6-year-olds. Second, the eye-tracking analysis showed similar eye movement patterns in 5-6-year-old children and adults for both sentence conditions. Despite fixating on the agent area longer in active sentences and on the theme area longer in passive sentences, the low accuracy in comprehending passive sentences in children may be attributed to the