Lexical Ambiguity Comprehension of Korean Children with Specific Language Impairments

Lee, Seungbok; Lee, Hee Ran

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2006;11(1): 14-29.

Seungbok Lee^` , and Hee Ran Lee^`

이승복(Seungbok Lee)| 이희란(Hee Ran Lee)

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the comprehension strategies for lexical ambiguity in Korean children with specific language impairments (SLI). Fourteen SLI children, 14 chronological age-matched (CA) children and 14 language age-matched normal children (LA) participated in this study. The children were asked to define the presented 14 polysemous words (experiment 1). In experiment 2, using both meanings the dominant and subordinate of the 14 words, 28 sentences were given to measure the children's comprehension. The results indicated that the dominant meaning of the ambiguous words was comprehended by SLI as well as by the normal groups. However, the definition (experiment 1) and comprehension (experiment 2) of the subordinate meanings in the SLI group were behind the performance of the two normal control groups. The results indicated that although the SLI children demonstrate a verbal definition skill lower than that of the normal children with similar language skills, they tend to rely more on dominant definitions when lexical ambiguity comprehension strategies are available.