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Research Article
Research Article
April 2008

Inference Generation During Discourse and Its Relation to Social Competence: An Online Investigation of Abilities of Children With and Without Language Impairment

Publication: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
Volume 51, Number 2
Pages 367-380

Abstract

Purpose

This study examined whether young children with typical language development (TL) and children with language impairment (LI) make emotion inferences online during the process of discourse comprehension, identified variables that predict emotion inferencing, and explored the relationship of these variables to social competence.

Method

Preschool children (16 TL and 16 LI) watched narrated videos designed to activate knowledge about a particular emotional state. Following each story, children named a facial expression that either matched or did not match the anticipated emotion. Several experimental tasks examined linguistic and nonlinguistic abilities. Finally, each child’s teacher completed a measure of social competence.

Results

Children with TL named expressions significantly more slowly in the mismatched condition than in the matched condition, whereas children with LI did not differ in response times between the conditions. Language and vocal response time measures were related to emotion inferencing ability, and this ability predicted social competence scores.

Conclusion

The findings suggest that children with TL are inferring emotions during the comprehension process, whereas children with LI often fail to make these inferences. Making emotion inferences is related to discourse comprehension and to social competence in children. The current findings provide evidence that language and vocal response time measures predicted inferencing ability and suggest that additional factors may influence discourse inferencing and social competence.

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Information & Authors

Information

Published In

Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
Volume 51Number 2April 2008
Pages: 367-380

History

  • Received: Nov 12, 2006
  • Revised: May 14, 2007
  • Accepted: Jul 2, 2007
  • Published in issue: Apr 1, 2008

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Key Words

  1. emotion
  2. inferencing
  3. social competence
  4. language impairment

Authors

Affiliations

Janet A. Ford [email protected]
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Linda M. Milosky
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

Notes

Contact author: Janet A. Ford, who is now with the Department of Speech Pathology/Audiology, State University of New York at Cortland, P.O. Box 2000, Cortland, NY 13045. E-mail: [email protected].

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