Influence of Syntactical Complexity on Comprehension in Conceptually Delayed Children at Linguistic Stage I

Individuals concerned with developing comprehension and production of multi-word utterances in conceptually delayed children have sought to design variables believed to play a role in language learning. One such variable is level of linguistic input. The purpose of this study was to determine whether conceptually delayed children functioning at linguistic Stage I (Brown, 1973) exhibit differential levels of comprehension as a function of the linguistic complexity of the stimulus utterance. Conceptually delayed preschoolers at early and late State I were asked to respond to commands expressed in simple, complete adult forms and in incomplete, telegraphic child forms. Results indicated that late Stage I children were superior to early stage I children in comprehension of all forms. No significant differences as a function of complexity were noted for either group of children.