Relative Clause Sentence Comprehension in Children with Mild Intellectual Disabilities: Cues of Additional Position and Parallel Function

Park, Ju Hye; Kim, Young Wook

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2009;14(4): 456-469.

Ju Hye Park^` , and Young Wook Kim^`

박주혜(Ju Hye Park)| 김영욱(Young Wook Kim)

ABSTRACT

intellectual disabilities to identify differences in their ability to comprehend relative clause sentences, depending on additional position and function cues of parallel function. We aimed to obtain data to design effective intervention plans for these children, with consideration for the level of their language comprehension.
Methods
We surveyed 20 children with mild intellectual disabilities whose language age was between 5 and 6-years-old and 20 non-disabled children. We collected data using test pictures and test sentences prepared by the researcher to determine ability of each child to understand relative sentences through the sentence-picture verification test.
Results
First, with respect to positional cues, both groups appeared to be better at understanding left branching sentences than center-embedded sentences. Second, the use of parallel function cues resulted in better understanding than when different case-marker function cues were used.
Discussion & Conclusion
The results of this study imply that it is necessary to promote and activate language comprehension in children with mild intellectual disabilities through complementary strategies involving the efficient arbitration strategy, the children’s characteristics of understanding, and the syntactic characteristics of relative clauses.

Keywords: 경도 지적장애아동 | 관형절이 포함된 내포문 | 첨가위치 단서 | 병행기능 단서