TY - JOUR
T1 - Objects, motions, and paths
T2 - Spatial language in children with Williams syndrome
AU - Landau, Barbara
AU - Zukowski, Andrea
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank James Hoffman, Helene Intraub, Ray Jackendoff, Michael McCloskey, and Colin Phillips for helpful comments on a draft of this article. We also thank Ted Supalla and Elissa Newport for making available the stimuli from their Verbs of Motion Production task, and Nicole Kurz and Litza Stark for help in transcribing and coding the data reported in this article. We thank the children who participated in these studies, their parents, and the organizations that helped us locate these participants. The latter organizations include the Williams Syndrome Association, the University of Delaware Preschool, and the Mom’s Club chapters of Hockessin, Pike Creek, and Newark, Delaware. This research was supported in part by Grant No. 12-FY99-670 from the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation and Grant SBR-9808585 from the National Science Foundation.
PY - 2003
Y1 - 2003
N2 - The acquisition of spatial language is often assumed to be built upon an early-emerging system of nonlinguistic spatial knowledge. We tested this relationship by examining spatial language in children with Williams syndrome (WS), a rare genetic disorder that gives rise to severe nonlinguistic spatial deficits together with relatively spared language. Twelve children with WS, 12 normally developing mental-age matched children, and 12 normal adults described 80 videotaped motion events. Children with WS showed substantial control over key linguistic components of the motion event, including appropriate semantic and syntactic encoding of Figure and Ground objects, Manner of Motion, and Path. The expression of Path, although surprisingly spared, was more fragile among children with WS in contexts plausibly related to their nonlinguistic spatial deficit. The results show strong preservation of the formal aspects of spatial-linguistic knowledge and suggest that the nonlinguistic spatial deficits shown by children with WS have, at most, limited effects on their spatial language. These findings have implications for the relationship between spatial language and other aspects of spatial cognition.
AB - The acquisition of spatial language is often assumed to be built upon an early-emerging system of nonlinguistic spatial knowledge. We tested this relationship by examining spatial language in children with Williams syndrome (WS), a rare genetic disorder that gives rise to severe nonlinguistic spatial deficits together with relatively spared language. Twelve children with WS, 12 normally developing mental-age matched children, and 12 normal adults described 80 videotaped motion events. Children with WS showed substantial control over key linguistic components of the motion event, including appropriate semantic and syntactic encoding of Figure and Ground objects, Manner of Motion, and Path. The expression of Path, although surprisingly spared, was more fragile among children with WS in contexts plausibly related to their nonlinguistic spatial deficit. The results show strong preservation of the formal aspects of spatial-linguistic knowledge and suggest that the nonlinguistic spatial deficits shown by children with WS have, at most, limited effects on their spatial language. These findings have implications for the relationship between spatial language and other aspects of spatial cognition.
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U2 - 10.1207/s15326942dn231&2_6
DO - 10.1207/s15326942dn231&2_6
M3 - Article
C2 - 12730022
AN - SCOPUS:0037248316
SN - 8756-5641
VL - 23
SP - 105
EP - 137
JO - Developmental Neuropsychology
JF - Developmental Neuropsychology
IS - 1-2
ER -