ArticleDevelopmental science2021
When event knowledge overrides word order in sentence comprehension: Learning a first language after childhood.
Article in Developmental science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Argument ordering in simple sentences is affected by age of first language acquisition: Evidence from late first language signers of ASL.Journal of child language · 2026Article
- Limits to resilience: Investigating narratives in ASL signers who acquired their first language in adolescence.Language learning and development : the official journal of the Society for Language Development · 2025Article
- Production of real signs but not pseudosigns affected by age of acquisition in American Sign Language.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- American Sign Language basic clause comprehension strategies used by late first-language learners: Plausibility, animacy, and linguistic structure.Language learning and development : the official journal of the Society for Language Development · 2025Article
- Article
- Impoverished language in early childhood affects the development of complex sentence structure.Developmental science · 2024Article
- Multimodal measures of sentence comprehension in agrammatism.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2023Article
- Article
- Restricted language access during childhood affects adult brain structure in selective language regions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Number Stroop Effects in Arabic Digits and ASL Number Signs: The Impact of Age and Setting of Language Acquisition.Language learning and development : the official journal of the Society for Language Development · 2023Article
- Historical Linguistics of Sign Languages: Progress and Problems.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
Limited language experience in childhood is common among deaf individuals, which prior research has shown to lead to low levels of language processing. Although basic structures such as word order have been found to be resilient to conditions of sparse language input in early life, whether they are robust to conditions of extreme language delay is unknown. The sentence comprehension strategies of post-childhood, first-language (L1) learners of American Sign Language (ASL) with at least 9 years of language experience were investigated, in comparison to two control groups of learners with full access to language from birth (deaf native signers and hearing L2 learners who were native English speakers). The results of a sentence-to-picture matching experiment show that event knowledge overrides word order for post-childhood L1 learners, regardless of the animacy of the subject, while both deaf native signers and hearing L2 signers consistently rely on word order to comprehend sentences. Language inaccessibility throughout early childhood impedes the acquisition of even basic word order. Similar to the strategies used by very young children prior to the development of basic sentence structure, post-childhood L1 learners rely more on context and event knowledge to comprehend sentences. Language experience during childhood is critical to the development of basic sentence structure.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.