Does enhanced conversation recast promote the learning of grammatical morphemes in Cantonese-speaking preschool children?

Abstract

Enhanced Conversation Recast (ECR) is an input-based grammatical intervention based on statistical learning principles. Recent research reported evidence demonstrating the efficacy of ECR on the learning of grammatically obligatory morphemes in English-speaking preschool children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). This feasibility study, which adopted a within-participant design with single baseline and control item, investigated the efficacy of ECR in promoting the learning of aspect markers in four Cantonese-speaking preschool children. Three of the four children made observable gains in the trained morpheme given 12 ECR training sessions within a mean dosage of 288. One child demonstrated 1-week maintenance effect and a moderate generalization effect to the untrained morpheme. Children’s breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge might have contributed to the individual variability observed, although the contributing factors were not well understood. With early evidence established in the typically developing children in this study, future research on Cantonese speaking children with DLD can be considered.