Children’s Comprehension of Object-Gapped Relative Clause Sentences: Investigating the Contribution of NP Number Mismatch

Abstract

Purpose: Center-embedded, object-gapped relative clause sentence comprehension is challenging for children as well as adults. Mismatching lexical and grammatical features of subject noun phrases (NP) across the main clause and relative clause has been shown to improve comprehension. Adani et al. (2014) concluded that children’s comprehension improved under conditions of NP number mismatch (e.g., singular main clause subject, plural relative clause subject) as compared to NP number match (e.g., both singular subjects). However, their stimuli provided number information on verb phrases (VPs) as well as NPs. Thus, Adani et al. was not a test of the contribution of NP number mismatch. In the present study, we isolated the contribution of NP number mismatch by constructing stimuli with NP number information but not VP number information. Method: Sixteen 6-year-olds with typical language participated in a center-embedded, object-gapped relative clause sentence comprehension task with four types of stimuli: (a) NP number mismatch without VP number information (NP mismatch only), (b) NP number match without VP number information (NP match only), (c) NP number mismatch with VP number mismatch (NP + VP mismatch) and (d) NP number match with VP number match (NP + VP match). Children selected one of four pictures in an array to a verbally presented relative clause sentence; 56 sentences were presented. Results: The within-group comparison for NP mismatch only and NP match only was not significant. However, the within-group comparison for NP mismatch only and NP + VP mismatch was significant. Children were more successful on NP + VP mismatch sentence comprehension ( = .69). Conclusion: A NP number mismatch across main clause and relative clause subjects does not confer an advantage in comprehension of center-embedded, object-gapped relative clause sentence comprehension for 6-year-old children. However, an advantage is realized when the number mismatch information is available on the NP and VP.