Vol.:(0123456789) Journal of Psycholinguistic Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-020-09711-w 1 3 The Role of Cognitive Abilities in the Development of Defnitions by Children with and Without Developmental Language Disorder Ifgeneia Dosi 1  · Zoe Gavriilidou 1 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract This study (a) examines the role of cognitive abilities, age and vocabulary in the develop- ment of defnitions and (b) compares the development of defnitions (in content and form) in children with and without Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Defnitions have been extensively studied in (non-)impaired populations. So far, no studies have tested the impact of cognitive abilities on the development of defnitions. To address this gap, ten children with DLD and ten non-impaired peers were tested through a defnition task and two cognitive tasks. The results exhibited that the control group produced more accurate defnitions, albeit only in content, than the impaired group. Regressions showed that, in the impaired group, the younger the participants the better the scores. For the non-impaired group, age and verbal working memory found to predict the performance on defnitions. Thus, we deduce that (a) the development of defnitions is driven by diferent mechanisms in (non-)impaired children and (b) the role of early intervention seems to be important for atypical populations. Keywords Defnitions · Cognitive abilities · Early intervention · Developmental language disorder Introduction The development of defnitions has been studied thoroughly over the past decades in typically developing children (Anglin 1977; Benelli et al. 1988, 2006; Gavriilidou 2015; Marinellie 2009; Marinellie and Johnson 2004; Nippold et al. 1999; Snow 1990; Snow et al. 1989) and children with language impairments (Marinellie 2010b; Marinellie and Johnson 1998, 2002), since they are often indicators of lexical knowledge (i.e. vocabu- lary) and access, metalinguistic abilities and literacy development (Gutierrez-Clefen and DeCurtis 1999; Harley 2008; Kikas 1993; Snow et al. 1989). In other words, speakers have access to their mental lexicon and carefully select the required information (characteristics, * Ifgeneia Dosi idosi@helit.duth.gr 1 Department of Greek Philology, Democritus University of Thrace, Campus, 69100 Komotini, Greece