The Use of Structural Priming and Focused Recasts to Facilitate the Production of Subject- and Object-Focused Relative Clauses by School-Age Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the use of structural priming combined with a focused recasting procedure to elicit subject- and object- focused, center-embedded relative clauses from students with developmental language disorders (DLDs) and typically developing (TD) students. Method: A total of 26 children (13 DLD, 13 TD), ranging in age from 6;10 to 10;11 (years;months), participated in this study. All children completed a priming and recasting task that targeted subject- and object-focused relatives. The stimuli were presented in two blocks, which each contained 40 trials for each sentence type. Results: Children with DLD and their TD peers were significantly more accurate producing subject-focused than object-focused relatives. An analysis of rate of learning indicated that significantly more trials were required for subjects in the DLD group to demonstrate consistent performance on both subject- and object- focused relatives. Conclusions: The study supports the feasibility of combining an implicit priming task with an explicit recasting task for teaching subject-focused relative clauses to children with DLD. However, it is likely that additional instruction and/or more trials will be necessary for children with DLD to attain consistent performance levels.