Carolina Gattei

This study investigates comprehension of spoken sentences with varying morphosyntactic complexity in Spanish-speaking children with prelingual hearing loss (CHL) and children with typical hearing (CTH) matched on auditory experience. We compare comprehension abilities between the groups and explore the development of comprehension strategies by analyzing theoretically defined comprehension profiles across sentence types. Participants with three to 11 years of auditory experience completed a tablet-based sentence-picture matching task. CHL predominantly relied on an agent-first strategy, showing accurate comprehension of simple subject-verb-object sentences and subject relatives, but persistent difficulties with object topicalization, passives, and object relatives. CTH showed progress along the age range examined, with older children usually achieving comprehension of all structures except object relatives. Data-driven k-means clustering supported the theoretical profiles. These findings highlight distinct comprehension strategies and developmental trajectories in later childhood, demonstrating persistent morphosyntactic challenges in CHL and providing a framework for interpreting individual differences in sentence processing.

Purpose. Spoken language development of children with prelingual hearing loss (CHL) who use hearing devices usually lags behind that of children with typical hearing (CTH), with sentence-level syntactic abilities being particularly vulnerable.Aims. This work systematically reviewed the evidence on CHL’s sentence-level syntactic performance across structures and evaluated its relation to modulating demographic, clinical, and cognitive factors to offer a robust empirical foundation that informs evidence-based clinical practices.Methods. Following PRISMA guidelines, we conducted a systematic review of studies reporting spoken sentence-level syntactic abilities (comprehension, production, or repetition) in CHL, with separate results for different syntactic structures. The protocol was registered in PROSPERO. Six databases were searched (last search: February 2026) for published and unpublished works written in five languages. Reports were grouped by ability and structure, focusing on simple sentences, topicalization, passives, relative clauses, and wh-questions. Main Contribution. Sixty-seven studies reported in 47 records were retained. Simple active sentences with canonical order were generally preserved. Passive sentences were understudied, with findings ranging from age-appropriate performance to delayed acquisition. Abundant evidence shows that topicalization, relative clauses and wh-questions are especially difficult for CHL. Their performance on object relatives and object questions often fell below that of younger CTH; findings for subject relatives and subject questions were mixed. Marked interindividual variability was recurrently reported, but findings regarding the modulating role of age, hearing experience, age at device fitting, and memory resources in performance on these specific syntactic structures remain inconsistent. This structure-specific characterisation pinpoints precise linguistic weaknesses, offering actionable insights for speech and language therapists designing targeted remediation protocols and evaluating service delivery.Conclusions. Variability across studies and limitations in methodology and reporting currently hinder robust cross-study comparability. Findings underscore the critical need for longitudinal designs and online processing research. Pinpointing specific syntactic difficulties in CHL is essential for developing tailored speech and language therapy alongside educational interventions.

Some differences between the grammar of heritage and monolingual speakers have been attributed to grammatical innovation, such that heritage behavior may reflect ongoing patterns of diachronic change. We examined this claim by comparing the acceptability of clitic doubling in three different speaker groups: monolingual and heritage speakers of European Spanish, and Rioplatense Spanish monolinguals. Accusative clitic doubling is grammaticalized in Rioplatense but not in European Spanish, consistent with Rioplatense Spanish being a more diachronically innovative variety. If heritage speakers mirror diachronic change, they may perform more similarly to Rioplatense than European monolinguals. The results of an acceptability judgement task showed that heritage speakers had robust knowledge of clitics but did not show evidence of progressive behavior with accusative clitic doubling. We propose that grammatical innovation may crucially depend on the demographic characteristics of heritage speakers, and on the grammatical properties of the phenomenon tested.

Some differences between the grammars of heritage and monolingual speakers have been attributed to grammatical innovation, such that heritage behavior may reflect ongoing patterns of diachronic change. We examined this claim by comparing the acceptability of clitic doubling in three different speaker groups: monolingual and heritage speakers of European Spanish, and Rioplatense Spanish monolinguals. Accusative clitic doubling is grammaticalized in Rioplatense but not in European Spanish, consistent with Rioplatense Spanish being a more diachronically innovative variety. If heritage speakers mirror diachronic change, they may perform more similarly to Rioplatense than European monolinguals. The results of an acceptability judgement task showed that heritage speakers had robust knowledge of clitics but did not show evidence of progressive behavior with accusative clitic doubling. We propose that grammatical innovation may crucially depend on the demographic characteristics of heritage speakers and on the grammatical properties of the phenomenon tested.

Semantic priming has been studied for nearly 50 years across various experimental manipulations and theoretical frameworks. Although previous studies provide insight into the cognitive underpinnings of semantic representations, they have suffered from small sample sizes and a lack of linguistic and cultural diversity. In this Registered Report, we measured the size and the variability of the semantic priming effect across 19 languages (n = 25,163 participants analysed) by creating the largest available database of semantic priming values using an adaptive sampling procedure. We found evidence for semantic priming in terms of differences in response latencies between related word-pair conditions and unrelated word-pair conditions. Model comparisons showed that the inclusion of a random intercept for language improved model fit, providing support for variability in semantic priming across languages. This study highlights the robustness and variability of semantic priming across languages and provides a rich, linguistically diverse dataset for further analysis. The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 15 July 2022. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://osf.io/u5bp6 (registration) or https://osf.io/q4fjy (preprint version 6, 31 May 2022).

Some differences between the grammar of heritage and monolingual speakers have been attributed to grammatical innovation, such that heritage behavior may reflect ongoing patterns of diachronic change. We examined this claim by comparing the acceptability of clitic doubling in three different speaker groups: monolingual and heritage speakers of European Spanish, and Rioplatense Spanish monolinguals. Accusative clitic doubling is grammaticalized in Rioplatense but not in European Spanish, consistent with Rioplatense Spanish being a more diachronically innovative variety. If heritage speakers mirror diachronic change, they may perform more similarly to Rioplatense than European monolinguals. The results of an acceptability judgement task showed that heritage speakers had robust knowledge of clitics but did not show evidence of progressive behavior with accusative clitic doubling. We propose that grammatical innovation may crucially depend on the demographic characteristics of heritage speakers, and on the grammatical properties of the phenomenon tested.

Semantic priming has been studied for nearly 50 years across various experimental manipulations and theoretical frameworks. Although previous studies provide insight into the cognitive underpinnings of semantic representations, they have suffered from small sample sizes and a lack of linguistic and cultural diversity. In this Registered Report, we measured the size and the variability of the semantic priming effect across 19 languages (N = 25,163 participants analyzed) by creating the largest available database of semantic priming values based on an adaptive sampling procedure. We found evidence for semantic priming in terms of differences in response latencies between related word-pair conditions and unrelated word-pair conditions. Model comparisons showed that inclusion of a random intercept for language improved model fit, providing support for variability in semantic priming across languages. This study highlights the robustness and variability of semantic priming across languages and provides a rich, linguistically diverse dataset for further analysis.

Purpose: Children with hearing loss (CHL) who use hearing devices (cochlear implants or hearing aids) and communicate orally have trouble comprehending sentences with noncanonical order. This study explores sentence comprehension strategies in Spanish-speaking CHL, focusing on their ability to integrate morphosyntactic cues (word order, morphological case marking) with verbs differing in their syntax-to-semantics configuration. Method: Fifty-eight Spanish-speaking CHL and 58 children with typical hearing (CTH) with a hearing age of 3;5–7;8 (years;months; i.e., time of adequate access to sound, in the case of CHL since effective fitting or implantation) were recruited in Argentina. A sentence comprehension task using the truth-value judgment paradigm was designed, including sentences with activity verbs and object-experiencer psych verbs in subject–verb–object (SVO) and object–verb–subject (OVS) orders, thus varying in canonicity. Results: Both groups showed good comprehension of SVO sentences with activity verbs but had difficulties with structures that deviated from canonicity. Comprehension was at chance level in both groups and at all hearing ages for sentences with activity verbs in OVS order and sentences with object-experiencer psych verbs in SVO order (both are noncanonical for the verb type). Sentences with object-experiencer psych verbs in OVS order were also comprehended at chance level by CHL and by the youngest CTH. Conclusions: These results suggest that Spanish-speaking CTH aged 7 years prioritize semantic information over case marking in sentences with a noncanonical syntactic structure. In CHL, difficulties with noncanonical structures seem to extend to semantic deviations, at least until hearing age 7 years. CHL might also struggle with the semantic structures of object-experiencer psych verbs beyond the age when CTH do. These findings are relevant for the linguistic assessment and education of CHL.

Children construct their social preferences and behaviors based on their social interactions and beliefs about other’s behavior. Most studies that evaluate the influence of social norms on children’s sharing behavior has focused on sharing decisions, while no previous study has evaluated whether norms about generosity could change beliefs about other’s sharing behavior. In the current study, 4–10-year-old children (N = 101) played two dictator games; one as baseline and the other after being exposed to either a generous or a selfish descriptive norm. Our results showed that, after being exposed to descriptive norms, all children changed their beliefs about others’ sharing behavior. However, these norms did not influence children’s sharing decisions. These results suggest that children´s beliefs about sharing behavior could be more malleable than their actual sharing decisions. These insights might help to design interventions aimed to change beliefs and, in turn, to model prosocial behaviors in children.