Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1977645
Sabrina Horvath, Justin B Kueser, Jaelyn Kelly, Arielle Borovsky
While semantic and syntactic properties of verb meaning can impact the success of verb learning at a single age, developmental changes in how these factors influence acquisition are largely unexplored. We ask whether the impact of syntactic and semantic properties on verb vocabulary development varies with age and language ability for toddlers aged 16 to 30 months in a large sample (N = 5520, NLate Talkers = 821; NTypically Developing = 4699, cutoff = 15th percentile) of vocabulary checklist data from the MacArthur- Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MBCDI). Verbs from the MBCDI were coded for their syntactic and semantic properties, including manner/result meanings, durative/punctual events, and syntactic complexity. Both late talkers and typically developing children were less likely to produce syntactically complex verbs at younger ages as compared to older ages. Group differences emerged for manner/result: Typically developing children were more likely to produce manner verbs at all ages, but late talkers were more likely to produce result verbs. Regardless of group, children who produced more manner versus result verbs also had larger verb vocabulary sizes overall. These results suggest that late talkers and typically developing toddlers differ in how they build their verb vocabularies.
虽然动词意义的语义和句法特性可以影响单个年龄的动词学习成功,但这些因素如何影响习得的发展变化在很大程度上尚未得到探索。我们对16 ~ 30个月的幼儿(N = 5520, N = 821; N = 821)进行了大样本调查,研究句法和语义特征对动词词汇发展的影响是否随年龄和语言能力而变化。麦克阿瑟-贝茨交际发展量表(MBCDI)的词汇表数据的N典型发展= 4699,截止点=第15百分位)。来自MBCDI的动词根据其语法和语义属性进行编码,包括方式/结果含义、持续/准时事件和语法复杂性。与年龄较大的孩子相比,晚说话的孩子和正常发育的孩子在年龄较小的时候都不太可能产生句法复杂的动词。在方式/结果方面出现了组间差异:正常发育的孩子在所有年龄段都更有可能产生方式动词,但晚说话的孩子更有可能产生结果动词。无论哪一组,产生更多方式动词和结果动词的孩子总体上也有更大的动词词汇量。这些结果表明,晚说话者和正常发育的幼儿在如何构建动词词汇方面存在差异。
{"title":"Difference or delay? Syntax, semantics, and verb vocabulary development in typically developing and late-talking toddlers.","authors":"Sabrina Horvath, Justin B Kueser, Jaelyn Kelly, Arielle Borovsky","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1977645","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1977645","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>While semantic and syntactic properties of verb meaning can impact the success of verb learning at a single age, developmental changes in how these factors influence acquisition are largely unexplored. We ask whether the impact of syntactic and semantic properties on verb vocabulary development varies with age and language ability for toddlers aged 16 to 30 months in a large sample (<i>N</i> = 5520, <i>N</i> <sub>Late Talkers</sub> = 821; <i>N</i> <sub>Typically Developing</sub> = 4699, cutoff = 15th percentile) of vocabulary checklist data from the MacArthur- Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MBCDI). Verbs from the MBCDI were coded for their syntactic and semantic properties, including manner/result meanings, durative/punctual events, and syntactic complexity. Both late talkers and typically developing children were less likely to produce syntactically complex verbs at younger ages as compared to older ages. Group differences emerged for manner/result: Typically developing children were more likely to produce manner verbs at all ages, but late talkers were more likely to produce result verbs. Regardless of group, children who produced more manner versus result verbs also had larger verb vocabulary sizes overall. These results suggest that late talkers and typically developing toddlers differ in how they build their verb vocabularies.</p>","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9159542/pdf/nihms-1739008.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10450517","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-28DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.2003198
Xu Xiao, Gaoding Jia, Aiping Wang
ABSTRACT When reading Chinese, skilled native readers regularly gain a preview benefit (PB) when the parafoveal word is orthographically or semantically related to the target word. Evidence shows that non-native, beginning Chinese readers can obtain an orthographic PB during Chinese reading, which indicates the parafoveal processing of low-level visual information. However, whether non-native Chinese readers who are more proficient in Chinese can make use of high-level parafoveal information remains unknown. Therefore, this study examined parafoveal processing during Chinese reading among Tibetan-Chinese bilinguals with high Chinese proficiency and compared their PB effects with those from native Chinese readers. Tibetan-Chinese bilinguals demonstrated both orthographic and semantic PB but did not show phonological PB and only differed from native Chinese in the identical PB when preview characters were identical to the targets. These findings demonstrate that non-native Chinese readers can extract semantic information from parafoveal preview during Chinese reading and highlight the modulation of parafoveal processing efficiency by reading proficiency. The results are in line with the direct route to access the mental lexicon of visual Chinese characters among non-native Chinese speakers.
{"title":"Semantic Preview Benefit of Tibetan-Chinese Bilinguals during Chinese Reading","authors":"Xu Xiao, Gaoding Jia, Aiping Wang","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.2003198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.2003198","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT When reading Chinese, skilled native readers regularly gain a preview benefit (PB) when the parafoveal word is orthographically or semantically related to the target word. Evidence shows that non-native, beginning Chinese readers can obtain an orthographic PB during Chinese reading, which indicates the parafoveal processing of low-level visual information. However, whether non-native Chinese readers who are more proficient in Chinese can make use of high-level parafoveal information remains unknown. Therefore, this study examined parafoveal processing during Chinese reading among Tibetan-Chinese bilinguals with high Chinese proficiency and compared their PB effects with those from native Chinese readers. Tibetan-Chinese bilinguals demonstrated both orthographic and semantic PB but did not show phonological PB and only differed from native Chinese in the identical PB when preview characters were identical to the targets. These findings demonstrate that non-native Chinese readers can extract semantic information from parafoveal preview during Chinese reading and highlight the modulation of parafoveal processing efficiency by reading proficiency. The results are in line with the direct route to access the mental lexicon of visual Chinese characters among non-native Chinese speakers.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77163537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-28DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.2008939
Marta Casla Soler, Eva Murillo, Silvia Nieva, Jessica Rodríguez, Celia Méndez-Cabezas, Irene Rujas
ABSTRACT This study investigated verbal imitation from a multimodal point of view, considering the mutual influence of children’s and adults’ participation. Sixteen Spanish-speaking children were observed longitudinally at 21, 24, and 30 months of age in natural settings. We analyzed the multimodal characteristics of children’s and adults’ repetitions, considering whether they were verbal, verbal-gestural, or gestural. In addition, we also analyzed the multimodal characteristics of the utterances that were repeated (source). Measures of vocabulary and grammatical levels were also taken into account at the three points in development. Results showed that verbal-gestural repetitions were frequent in the speech of children and adults, although not as frequent as verbal repetitions. Nevertheless, verbal-gestural speech was reproduced more frequently than verbal speech. Adults were more likely to reproduce children’s speech when it included gestures, which was also related to children’s linguistic level. Furthermore, children and adults synchronize their multimodal communicative behaviors, coordinating the modality of their repetitions with the modality of the source speech. The results are discussed taking into account the need to study the multimodal characteristics of child-directed speech, as well as the need to study verbal repetition and multimodal communicative behaviors simultaneously, as forms of interaction that are essential to language development.
{"title":"Verbal and More: Multimodality in Adults’ and Toddlers’ Spontaneous Repetitions","authors":"Marta Casla Soler, Eva Murillo, Silvia Nieva, Jessica Rodríguez, Celia Méndez-Cabezas, Irene Rujas","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.2008939","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.2008939","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study investigated verbal imitation from a multimodal point of view, considering the mutual influence of children’s and adults’ participation. Sixteen Spanish-speaking children were observed longitudinally at 21, 24, and 30 months of age in natural settings. We analyzed the multimodal characteristics of children’s and adults’ repetitions, considering whether they were verbal, verbal-gestural, or gestural. In addition, we also analyzed the multimodal characteristics of the utterances that were repeated (source). Measures of vocabulary and grammatical levels were also taken into account at the three points in development. Results showed that verbal-gestural repetitions were frequent in the speech of children and adults, although not as frequent as verbal repetitions. Nevertheless, verbal-gestural speech was reproduced more frequently than verbal speech. Adults were more likely to reproduce children’s speech when it included gestures, which was also related to children’s linguistic level. Furthermore, children and adults synchronize their multimodal communicative behaviors, coordinating the modality of their repetitions with the modality of the source speech. The results are discussed taking into account the need to study the multimodal characteristics of child-directed speech, as well as the need to study verbal repetition and multimodal communicative behaviors simultaneously, as forms of interaction that are essential to language development.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87965297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-02DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1986399
Sara Ferman, Sapir Amira Shmuel, Y. Zaltz
ABSTRACT The acquisition of a new morphological rule can be influenced by numerous factors, including the type of feedback provided during learning. The present study aimed to test the effect of different feedback types on children’s ability to learn and generalize an artificial morphological rule (AMR). Two groups of eight-year-olds learned to judge and produce repeated and new (generalization) items representing the AMR during ten training sessions. One group (n = 7) received only corrective feedback, that is, heard “the correct answer is … ” after each incorrect answer, whereas the other group (n = 8) received corrective feedback following verification feedback, that is, heard “incorrect, the correct answer is … .” Performance in terms of accuracy and reaction times was compared to that of an additional eight-year-old group (n = 8) from a previous study who received only verification feedback, that is, heard “incorrect” following each incorrect answer. The data analysis that was conducted for all three groups (N = 23 total), with ten observations for each child revealed that corrective feedback improved implicit learning of the AMR and in some cases also allowed generalization to new items. The combination of verification and corrective feedback, however, yielded the best performance in generalizing the AMR, possibly by stimulating both implicit and explicit processes. These preliminary findings suggest that corrective feedback, and even more so combined corrective+verification feedback, can enhance procedural and declarative learning processes of young school-age children. Future studies may be necessary to test this inference in a larger group of school-age children, and across ages.
{"title":"The Type of Feedback Provided Can Affect Morphological Rule Learning of Young Children","authors":"Sara Ferman, Sapir Amira Shmuel, Y. Zaltz","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1986399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1986399","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The acquisition of a new morphological rule can be influenced by numerous factors, including the type of feedback provided during learning. The present study aimed to test the effect of different feedback types on children’s ability to learn and generalize an artificial morphological rule (AMR). Two groups of eight-year-olds learned to judge and produce repeated and new (generalization) items representing the AMR during ten training sessions. One group (n = 7) received only corrective feedback, that is, heard “the correct answer is … ” after each incorrect answer, whereas the other group (n = 8) received corrective feedback following verification feedback, that is, heard “incorrect, the correct answer is … .” Performance in terms of accuracy and reaction times was compared to that of an additional eight-year-old group (n = 8) from a previous study who received only verification feedback, that is, heard “incorrect” following each incorrect answer. The data analysis that was conducted for all three groups (N = 23 total), with ten observations for each child revealed that corrective feedback improved implicit learning of the AMR and in some cases also allowed generalization to new items. The combination of verification and corrective feedback, however, yielded the best performance in generalizing the AMR, possibly by stimulating both implicit and explicit processes. These preliminary findings suggest that corrective feedback, and even more so combined corrective+verification feedback, can enhance procedural and declarative learning processes of young school-age children. Future studies may be necessary to test this inference in a larger group of school-age children, and across ages.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80196008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-12DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1922280
Dorothy Ahn, J. Snedeker
ABSTRACT Korean is a classifier language in which bare nouns are not obligatorily number-marked. Children learning other classifier languages like Japanese and Mandarin are late in learning the plural morpheme. In this paper, we present two datasets that suggest that Korean plural marker -tul is acquired much earlier, in contrast to what has been previously claimed. In a comprehension study, we find that Korean children begin acquiring this morpheme by age 3, showing adult-like performance by age 4. We suggest that the higher frequency of plural marking on both types and tokens of nouns and the consistent marking of plural in the domain of definite nouns may facilitate Korean plural acquisition.
{"title":"Early Acquisition of Plural Morphology in a Classifier Language: Data from Korean 2-4 Year Olds","authors":"Dorothy Ahn, J. Snedeker","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1922280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1922280","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Korean is a classifier language in which bare nouns are not obligatorily number-marked. Children learning other classifier languages like Japanese and Mandarin are late in learning the plural morpheme. In this paper, we present two datasets that suggest that Korean plural marker -tul is acquired much earlier, in contrast to what has been previously claimed. In a comprehension study, we find that Korean children begin acquiring this morpheme by age 3, showing adult-like performance by age 4. We suggest that the higher frequency of plural marking on both types and tokens of nouns and the consistent marking of plural in the domain of definite nouns may facilitate Korean plural acquisition.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72931580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-04DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1981908
Tears, Lisa Pearl
ABSTRACT Poverty of the stimulus has been at the heart of ferocious and tear-filled debates at the nexus of psychology, linguistics, and philosophy for decades. This review is intended as a guide for readers without a formal linguistics or philosophy background, focusing on what poverty of the stimulus is and how it’s been interpreted, which is traditionally where the tears have come in. I discuss poverty of the stimulus from the perspective of language development, highlighting how poverty of the stimulus relates to expectations about learning and the data available to learn from. I describe common interpretations of what poverty of the stimulus means when it occurs, and approaches for determining when poverty of the stimulus is in fact occurring. I close with illustrative examples of poverty of the stimulus in the domains of syntax, lexical semantics, and phonology, and discuss the value of identifying instances of poverty of the stimulus when it comes to understanding language development.
{"title":"Poverty of the Stimulus Without Tears","authors":"Tears, Lisa Pearl","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1981908","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1981908","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Poverty of the stimulus has been at the heart of ferocious and tear-filled debates at the nexus of psychology, linguistics, and philosophy for decades. This review is intended as a guide for readers without a formal linguistics or philosophy background, focusing on what poverty of the stimulus is and how it’s been interpreted, which is traditionally where the tears have come in. I discuss poverty of the stimulus from the perspective of language development, highlighting how poverty of the stimulus relates to expectations about learning and the data available to learn from. I describe common interpretations of what poverty of the stimulus means when it occurs, and approaches for determining when poverty of the stimulus is in fact occurring. I close with illustrative examples of poverty of the stimulus in the domains of syntax, lexical semantics, and phonology, and discuss the value of identifying instances of poverty of the stimulus when it comes to understanding language development.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85594280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-24DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1977643
A. Helo, Ernesto Guerra, C. J. Coloma, María Antonia Reyes, P. Rämä
ABSTRACT Visually situated spoken words activate phonological, visual, and semantic representations guiding overt attention during visual exploration. We compared the activation of these representations in children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) across four eye-tracking experiments, with a particular focus on visual (shape) representations. Two types of trials were presented in each experiment. In Experiment 1, participants heard a word while seeing (1) an object visually associated with the spoken word (i.e., shape competitor) together with a phonologically related object (i.e., cohort competitor), or (2) a shape competitor with an unrelated object. In Experiment 2 and 3, participants heard a word while seeing (1) a shape competitor with an object semantically related to the spoken word (i.e., semantic competitor), or (2) a shape competitor with an unrelated object. In Experiment 4, children heard a word while seeing a semantic competitor with (1) the visual referent of the spoken or (2) with an unrelated object. The visual context was previewed for three seconds before the spoken word, except for Experiment 2, where it appeared at the onset of the spoken word (i.e., no preview). The results showed that when a preview was provided both groups were equally attracted by cohort and semantic competitors and preferred the shape competitors over the unrelated objects. However, shape preference disappeared in the DLD group when no preview was provided and when the shape competitor was presented with a semantic competitor. Our results indicate that children with DLD have a less efficient retrieval of shape representation during word recognition compared to typically developing children.
{"title":"Objects Shape Activation during Spoken Word Recognition in Preschoolers with Typical and Atypical Language Development: An Eye-tracking Study","authors":"A. Helo, Ernesto Guerra, C. J. Coloma, María Antonia Reyes, P. Rämä","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1977643","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1977643","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Visually situated spoken words activate phonological, visual, and semantic representations guiding overt attention during visual exploration. We compared the activation of these representations in children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) across four eye-tracking experiments, with a particular focus on visual (shape) representations. Two types of trials were presented in each experiment. In Experiment 1, participants heard a word while seeing (1) an object visually associated with the spoken word (i.e., shape competitor) together with a phonologically related object (i.e., cohort competitor), or (2) a shape competitor with an unrelated object. In Experiment 2 and 3, participants heard a word while seeing (1) a shape competitor with an object semantically related to the spoken word (i.e., semantic competitor), or (2) a shape competitor with an unrelated object. In Experiment 4, children heard a word while seeing a semantic competitor with (1) the visual referent of the spoken or (2) with an unrelated object. The visual context was previewed for three seconds before the spoken word, except for Experiment 2, where it appeared at the onset of the spoken word (i.e., no preview). The results showed that when a preview was provided both groups were equally attracted by cohort and semantic competitors and preferred the shape competitors over the unrelated objects. However, shape preference disappeared in the DLD group when no preview was provided and when the shape competitor was presented with a semantic competitor. Our results indicate that children with DLD have a less efficient retrieval of shape representation during word recognition compared to typically developing children.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88223829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-23DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1977644
G. Georgiou
ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of auditory perceptual phonetic training on the identification and production of English vowels by Cypriot Greek children and adults. Another two groups of Cypriot Greek child and adult speakers served as controls. The trained groups participated in the pretest, training, and posttest phase, while the controls completed only the pretest and posttest phase. The results showed that perceptual training improved identification accuracy, with children showing greater gains than adults. Although the performance of adults was poorer than the performance of children, their phonological system did undergo substantial alteration through perceptual phonetic training as they significantly improved their identifications in the posttest. Also, the results support a common mental space for the speech perception and production domains since the perceptually-oriented training affected the learners’ productions. However, transfer of improvements in production was observed only to some extent in children and not in adults, suggesting that training has an impact mostly on the trained modality and that some production improvement after perceptual training might be more evident in younger learners.
{"title":"The Impact of Auditory Perceptual Training on the Perception and Production of English Vowels by Cypriot Greek Children and Adults","authors":"G. Georgiou","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1977644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1977644","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of auditory perceptual phonetic training on the identification and production of English vowels by Cypriot Greek children and adults. Another two groups of Cypriot Greek child and adult speakers served as controls. The trained groups participated in the pretest, training, and posttest phase, while the controls completed only the pretest and posttest phase. The results showed that perceptual training improved identification accuracy, with children showing greater gains than adults. Although the performance of adults was poorer than the performance of children, their phonological system did undergo substantial alteration through perceptual phonetic training as they significantly improved their identifications in the posttest. Also, the results support a common mental space for the speech perception and production domains since the perceptually-oriented training affected the learners’ productions. However, transfer of improvements in production was observed only to some extent in children and not in adults, suggesting that training has an impact mostly on the trained modality and that some production improvement after perceptual training might be more evident in younger learners.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85857834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-22DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1979401
Thomas St. Pierre, Angela Cooper, Elizabeth K. Johnson
ABSTRACT Over time, people who spend a lot of time together (e.g., roommates) begin sounding alike. Even over the course of short conversations, interlocutors often become more acoustically similar to one another. This phenomenon – known as phonetic alignment – has been well studied in adult interactions, but much less is known about alignment patterns in intergenerational, adult-child dyads. In the current study, we investigated alignment between mothers and their children in a picture-naming task, as assessed using a perceptual similarity task and acoustic measures. Experiments 1 and 2 examined alignment in 2.5- and 4-year-old children and their mothers, both when mothers shadowed their children (Experiment 1), and when children shadowed their mothers (Experiment 2). Experiments 3 and 4 investigated long-term similarity between mothers and children when they were recorded separately. Results show that children and mothers aligned to one another in the shadowing task, regardless of who shadowed whom, and while there was no evidence for long-term alignment in younger children, there was some evidence of long-term alignment with 8-year-old children and their moms, but only for male children.
{"title":"Cross-generational Phonetic Alignment between Mothers and Their Children","authors":"Thomas St. Pierre, Angela Cooper, Elizabeth K. Johnson","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1979401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1979401","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Over time, people who spend a lot of time together (e.g., roommates) begin sounding alike. Even over the course of short conversations, interlocutors often become more acoustically similar to one another. This phenomenon – known as phonetic alignment – has been well studied in adult interactions, but much less is known about alignment patterns in intergenerational, adult-child dyads. In the current study, we investigated alignment between mothers and their children in a picture-naming task, as assessed using a perceptual similarity task and acoustic measures. Experiments 1 and 2 examined alignment in 2.5- and 4-year-old children and their mothers, both when mothers shadowed their children (Experiment 1), and when children shadowed their mothers (Experiment 2). Experiments 3 and 4 investigated long-term similarity between mothers and children when they were recorded separately. Results show that children and mothers aligned to one another in the shadowing task, regardless of who shadowed whom, and while there was no evidence for long-term alignment in younger children, there was some evidence of long-term alignment with 8-year-old children and their moms, but only for male children.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77480378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-21DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1941966
E. Pagliarini, Oana Lungu, A. van Hout, Lilla Pintér, Balázs Surányi, S. Crain, M. Guasti
ABSTRACT In English, a sentence like “The cat didn’t eat the carrot or the pepper” typically receives a “neither” interpretation; in Japanese it receives a “not this or not that” interpretation. These two interpretations are in a subset/superset relation, such that the “neither” interpretation (strong reading) asymmetrically entails the “not this or not that” interpretation (weak reading). This asymmetrical entailment raises a learnability problem. According to the Semantic Subset Principle, all language learners, regardless of the language they are exposed to, start by assigning the strong reading, since this interpretation makes such sentences true in the narrowest range of circumstances.). If the “neither” interpretation is children’s initial hypothesis, then children acquiring a superset language will be able to revise their initial hypothesis on the basis of positive evidence. The aim of the present study is to test an additional account proposed by Pagliarini, Crain, Guasti (2018) as a possible explanation for the earlier convergence to the adult grammar by Italian children. The hypothesis tested here is that the presence of a lexical form such as recursive né that unambiguously conveys a “neither” meaning, would lead children to converge earlier to the adult grammar due to a blocking effect of the recursive né form in the inventory of negated disjunction forms in a language. We compared data from Italian (taken from Pagliarini, Crain, Guasti, 2018), French, Hungarian and Dutch. Dutch was tested as baseline language. French and Hungarian have – similarly to Italian – a lexical form that unambiguously expresses the “neither” interpretation (ni ni and sem sem, respectively). Our results did not support this hypothesis however, and are discussed in the light of language-specific particularities of the syntax and semantics of negation.
{"title":"How Adults and Children Interpret Disjunction under Negation in Dutch, French, Hungarian and Italian: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison","authors":"E. Pagliarini, Oana Lungu, A. van Hout, Lilla Pintér, Balázs Surányi, S. Crain, M. Guasti","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1941966","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1941966","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In English, a sentence like “The cat didn’t eat the carrot or the pepper” typically receives a “neither” interpretation; in Japanese it receives a “not this or not that” interpretation. These two interpretations are in a subset/superset relation, such that the “neither” interpretation (strong reading) asymmetrically entails the “not this or not that” interpretation (weak reading). This asymmetrical entailment raises a learnability problem. According to the Semantic Subset Principle, all language learners, regardless of the language they are exposed to, start by assigning the strong reading, since this interpretation makes such sentences true in the narrowest range of circumstances.). If the “neither” interpretation is children’s initial hypothesis, then children acquiring a superset language will be able to revise their initial hypothesis on the basis of positive evidence. The aim of the present study is to test an additional account proposed by Pagliarini, Crain, Guasti (2018) as a possible explanation for the earlier convergence to the adult grammar by Italian children. The hypothesis tested here is that the presence of a lexical form such as recursive né that unambiguously conveys a “neither” meaning, would lead children to converge earlier to the adult grammar due to a blocking effect of the recursive né form in the inventory of negated disjunction forms in a language. We compared data from Italian (taken from Pagliarini, Crain, Guasti, 2018), French, Hungarian and Dutch. Dutch was tested as baseline language. French and Hungarian have – similarly to Italian – a lexical form that unambiguously expresses the “neither” interpretation (ni ni and sem sem, respectively). Our results did not support this hypothesis however, and are discussed in the light of language-specific particularities of the syntax and semantics of negation.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76692901","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}