ABSTRACT

Purpose: Comprehension monitoring (CM) refers to the ability to detect one’s own misunderstanding and to respond appropriately, for instance, by asking questions. This study aimed to compare CM in children with typically developing language (TDL) in kindergarten (n = 30) and school age (n = 30) with children with developmental language disorder (DLD) in kindergarten (n = 26) and school age (n = 22).Methods: In this exploratory, hypothesis generating study, the children received instructions on a digital device that were sometimes incomprehensible for various reasons (e.g., ambiguity, impossibility, unknown words). Reactions to incomprehensible instructions were assessed by identifying misunderstandings as the first step in the comprehension monitoring (CM) process. Results: The results revealed significant age effects in overall CM for children with TDL, as well as in reasons for non-comprehension. In contrast, such effects were largely absent in children with DLD, except for minor differences in the area of ambiguity. Regarding language status, differences between children with TDL and DLD at kindergarten age were found only for ambiguity. At school age, however, clear group differences emerged in overall CM and across all reasons of non-comprehension, except for overly complex utterances.Conclusions: These findings suggest that CM difficulties in children with DLD are not particularly pronounced at an early age but appear to stagnate with age. By school age at the latest, many children with DLD experience significant impairments in CM, which can have a long-term negative impact on their learning success.