Two experiments were designed as a preliminary exploration of how stress is used by language-impaired children in the comprehension of spoken language. Response time was measured as subjects decided whether a probe word given immediately after a sentence had been present in the sentence. The results of the first experiment indicated that the probe latency technique was sensitive to the effects of word category (content versus function words) and word position on the response times of children with normal language in the kindergarten, first, third, and sixth grades. In the second experiment, the probe latency task was used to study the effects of stress in relation to word category, word position and sentence meaningfulness in a group of language-impaired children to whom control groups were matched for language ability and chronological age. The response times of the age-matched group were not affected by stress, word category or word position variations. The language-impaired and language matched groups responded to variations in stress and word category, and to sentence meaningfulness in similar ways. Response times to function words were increased significantly by the addition of stress. It was concluded that the absence of sensitivity to stress appears not to be a major causative factor of language impairment.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.68599 |
| Date | January 1981 |
| Creators | Abelson, Annalee. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (School of Human Communication Disorders) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 000138949, proquestno: AAINK54725, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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