title: Normal and retarded children's understanding of semantic relations in different verbal contexts.
abstract: The effect of different semantic relations presented in different verbal contexts to language retarded and normal children at the one-and two-word stage of development was studied. No significant difference was found between the performance of mentally retarded language-disordered and normal children on the verbal comprehension task. Both groups of children performed best on the possessive, next on the agent-object, then actor-action, and poorest on the locative relations. Finally, nonsense, telegraphic, and expanded contexts did make a difference in the children's understandings with expanded being the best, telegraphic next, and nonsense contexts poorest. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008607:Intellectual Disability; D007804:Language Development; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis; D011581:Psychological Tests; D012660:Semantics; D013060:Speech; D014481:United States