Cross-situational statistical learning in children with developmental language disorder

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) need more exposures to learn new words in an unambiguous context compared to children with typical development (TD). However, it remains unclear whether they would be able to learn new words by extracting frequencies over multiple word-object encounters in ambiguous situations. The present study examines this question through a cross-situational statistical-learning task (CSSL). Thirty-eight school-aged children with DLD and thirty-eight age/sex-matched TD children completed a CSSL eye-tracking experiment. Participants’ responses show that children with DLD had significantly poorer accuracy compared to TD children. However, both groups performed above chance. While the eye-tracking record evidenced no distinctive pattern between groups as children learnt new words, we observed a larger target visual preference in TD children when they were asked to find the referent for those new words. We discuss these findings in light of existing accounts for memory and language deficits in DLD.