Exploring the Effect of Sentence Structure Frequenon the Accuracy of a Screener for Adults at Risk of Developmental Language Disorder

Purpose: Sentence repetition (SR) is a promising task for identifying childrerisk for developmental language disorder (DLD) but is unclear how to calibthe task for adults. In verbal recall, the frequency of language structures afadults with DLD differently from peers with typical language (TL), particulnear the limits of adults’ processing capacity. We hypothesized that repetiaccuracy for sentences with less frequent structures, passives, would betdistinguish adults at risk for DLD from their peers with TL than sentences more frequent structures, actives. Method: Forty-two adults (18–29 years old), including 17 classified as at risk DLD, completed an SR task composed of active and passive sentences matcfor lexical frequency and sentence plausibility. Sentences varied in length (eto 16 words) and number of clauses (one to two). Repetition accuracy matched active and passive sentences was evaluated for classification accurato determine whether the areas under the curve (AUCs) differed by structure. Results: Averaging repetition accuracy across all sentence lengths, the AUC passives did not differ from actives. For sentences with 11 words and two clathe AUC for passive structures was significantly higher than for active structureConclusions: Given sentences long enough to challenge the capacity of adultreconstruct sentences for recall, structural frequency affects those at risk for differently than those with TL. Manipulating the frequency of sentence structurea promising approach to developing an SR task suited to screening adults.