Word Learning according to Stimulus Conditions of Korean Children with Specific Language Impairment

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of stimulus conditions, such as category, shape, and theme, as children with specific language impairment (SLI) learned new words. Methods: Seventeen children (aged 4-6 years) in a SLI group, 17 in a chronological age-matched children (CA) group, and 17 in a language age-matched children (LA) group participated in the study. The stimulus conditions were a total of 22 sets, which consisted of one standard stimulus and three stimulus conditions for the children to choose (including exercise questions). The stimulus conditions consisted of category stimuli, shape stimuli, and thematic stimuli. Results: First, there were significant differences between the SLI and CA groups, and the SLI and LA groups, in category and shape stimuli. However, there was a significant difference only between the SLI and CA groups in thematic stimuli. Second, the groups exhibited higher to lower word meaning interference across conditions as follows: SLI (shape stimuli> category stimuli> thematic stimuli), CA (category stimuli> thematic stimuli> shape stimuli), and LA (category stimuli> shape stimuli> thematic stimuli). Conclusion: Children with SLI respond based on shape similarity when they infer the meaning of words, but typically developing children focus on categorization. This implies the mechanism for word learning is different for children with SLI. Thus, this study has its clinical significance in suggesting a basis for understanding the semantic knowledge of the subjects and the necessity of higher level categorization knowledge to understand the characteristics of word acquisition of children with SLI and to provide better intervention methods for them.