The Influence of Prosodic and Gestural Cues on Novel Word Acquisition by Children With Specific Language Impairment

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of prosodic and gestural cues on children’s lexical learning. Acquisition of novel words was examined under linguistic input conditions that varied in terms of rate of speech, stress, and use of supplemental visual cues i.e., gestures). Sixteen kindergarten children served as subjects in this study, including 8 children with normal language (NL) and 8 children with specific language impairment (SLI). A repeated-measures design was used such that all subjects in both groups participated in each of the three experimental conditions (the Rate, Stress, and Visual Condition). Results indicated that acquisition of novel words by the groups with NL and SLI was significantly affected by alterations in speaking rate and by the use of gestures accompanying spoken language. There were no statistically significant effects for the stress manipulations, although subjects with SLI tended to correctly produce novel words that had received emphatic stress during training more often than words presented with neutral stress. Implications of these findings are discussed with respect to the importance of considering how the manner of presentation of the linguistic signal influences the processing and acquisition of language.