Comparative Study of Syntactic Perception and Production between Persian-speaking Educable Children with Intellectual Disability and Typically Developing Children

As perception of language and particularly syntactic perception has a significant effect on language and learning development, the present study aimed at comparing syntactic perception and production between educable children with ID and TD children.

In the current causal-comparative study, 15 children with intellectual disabilities of chronological age 12-13 and mental age 7-9 were included. Intellectual disabilities of these children were confirmed earlier using Wechsler intelligence test, edition 4, and their IQ were measured to be between 55-70. The control group included 15 typically developing children of age 7-9 years and 15 typically developing children aged 12-13 years. Children with intellectual disabilities were selected from exceptional schools and typically developing children from normal schools of Jiroft city via available sampling method. All the three groups were homogenized in language ability using the verbal section of the Wechsler Intelligence Test, edition 4. The research data was gathered by adapting the study of Benítez-Burraco, Garayzábal, and Cuetos (2016). This test included six subtests that standardized by the Spearman-Brown. The data were then analyzed using multivariate analysis and SLD in SPSS.

There was a significant difference between the overall performances of the three groups in syntactic perception and production (basic phrase rules, auxiliary markers and basic structure of the inflectional phrase, verbal valency, syntactic subcategory constraints within the verbal phrase, production of noun complement clauses, production of relative (adjunct) clauses) (P<0/05).

The results of the present research showed that, in general, children with intellectual disabilities had a weaker performance in the perception and production of syntax in comparison to typically developing children with the same chronological and mental age. Gender was not found to have any significant effect on syntactic perception and production. Individuals who work in education of children with intellectual disabilities can make use of the results of this research.