This study (a) examines the role of cognitive abilities, age and vocabulary in the development of definitions and (b) compares the development of definitions (in content and form) in children with and without Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Definitions have been extensively studied in (non-)impaired populations. So far, no studies have tested the impact of cognitive abilities on the development of definitions. To address this gap, ten children with DLD and ten non-impaired peers were tested through a definition task and two cognitive tasks. The results exhibited that the control group produced more accurate definitions, albeit only in content, than the impaired group. Regressions showed that, in the impaired group, the younger the participants the better the scores. For the non-impaired group, age and verbal working memory found to predict the performance on definitions. Thus, we deduce that (a) the development of definitions is driven by different mechanisms in (non-)impaired children and (b) the role of early intervention seems to be important for atypical populations.

中文翻译：

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认知能力在有和没有发育性语言障碍的儿童发展定义中的作用。

这项研究（a）研究了认知能力，年龄和词汇在定义发展中的作用，并且（b）比较了患有和没有发育性语言障碍（DLD）的儿童中定义（内容和形式）的发展。定义已在（非）受损人群中广泛研究。到目前为止，还没有研究测试认知能力对定义发展的影响。为了解决这一差距，通过定义任务和两项认知任务对十名患有DLD的儿童和十名未受损的同伴进行了测试。结果表明，与受损的对照组相比，对照组仅在内容上产生了更准确的定义。回归表明，在有障碍的人群中，参与者越年轻，得分越高。对于未受损的人群，发现年龄和言语工作记忆可以预测定义的表现。因此，我们得出结论：（a）定义的发展是由（非）障碍儿童的不同机制驱动的；（b）早期干预的作用对于非典型人群似乎很重要。