The audio-visual and syntactic priming effect on specific language impairment and gender in modern standard Arabic

الملخص EN

The present study endeavors to investigate if priming is influenced by gender in Modern Standard Arabic and if it is confined solely to subjects with no specific language impairment (SLI), sometimes called Developmental Language Disorder (DLD).

The study sample comprises 74 subjects, between the ages of 11; 1 and 11; 10, distributed into (a) two SLI experimental groups of 38 subjects divided into two gender groups of 18 females and 20 males besides (b) 2 Non-SLI control groups of 36 participants divided into two gender groups of 17 females in addition to 19 males.

Using a mixed research design, the researcher conducted this study within the framework of the relevance theory (RT) whose main premise is that human beings are endowed with a biological capability to augment the relevance of the incoming stimuli.

Each group was given 2 distinct priming stimuli: audio-visual priming (T1) and syntactic priming (T2).

The results manifested that the priming effect was outright distinct among SLI participants especially when recalling typical responses (TR) in T1 and T2 with slight notability of males over females.

The results also uncovered that Non-SLI females showed stronger original response (OR) priming in T1 than males and that non-SLI males in T2 excelled in OR priming than females.

Moreover, the results manifested that the audio-visual priming has a sturdier influence on SLI females than Non-SLI females and that syntactic priming seems to have the same impact on the Non-SLI and SLI females.

The present study concluded that the priming effect varies according to gender and is not restricted merely to Non-SLI subjects