HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal My Folders Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Ford, J. A. Articles by Milosky, L. M. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Ford, J. A. Articles by Milosky, L. M. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

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

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: fordj{at}cortland.edu.

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.

KEY WORDS: emotion, inferencing, social competence, language impairment

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Facebook    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				E. Skarakis-Doyle and L. Dempsey The Detection and Monitoring of Comprehension Errors by Preschool Children With and Without Language Impairment J Speech Lang Hear Res, October 1, 2008; 51(5): 1227 - 1243. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]