Pub Date : 2023-06-17DOI: 10.1177/01427237231177573
M. Resches, A. Junyent, María Fernández-Flecha, M. Blume, Ana Kohan-Cortada
This article presents a cross-cultural comparison of the size and composition of the expressive vocabulary of young children speaking two dialectal varieties of South American Spanish. Ninety-one Peruvian and 91 Argentinian toddlers (mean age: 22.5 months), matched on gender, age and maternal education, were assessed through the respective adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Results revealed a vocabulary growth compatible with a spurt in both groups. A marginally significant country-by-gender interaction indicated that while Argentinian children exhibited an accelerated lexical growth before age 2;0 regardless of gender, only Peruvian girls did so; Peruvian boys presented a more gradual and later increase. We also found between-group qualitative differences in vocabulary composition: Argentinian toddlers with vocabularies of up to 100 words exhibited a significantly higher proportion of Nouns, while Peruvian children, especially those with a lexical mass under 50 words, had a higher percentage of Social words. Both findings are discussed in terms of possible cross-cultural differences linked to input quality and early interactions, and avenues for further research are proposed.
{"title":"Early vocabulary in two varieties of South American Spanish: Quantitative and qualitative differences","authors":"M. Resches, A. Junyent, María Fernández-Flecha, M. Blume, Ana Kohan-Cortada","doi":"10.1177/01427237231177573","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231177573","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents a cross-cultural comparison of the size and composition of the expressive vocabulary of young children speaking two dialectal varieties of South American Spanish. Ninety-one Peruvian and 91 Argentinian toddlers (mean age: 22.5 months), matched on gender, age and maternal education, were assessed through the respective adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. Results revealed a vocabulary growth compatible with a spurt in both groups. A marginally significant country-by-gender interaction indicated that while Argentinian children exhibited an accelerated lexical growth before age 2;0 regardless of gender, only Peruvian girls did so; Peruvian boys presented a more gradual and later increase. We also found between-group qualitative differences in vocabulary composition: Argentinian toddlers with vocabularies of up to 100 words exhibited a significantly higher proportion of Nouns, while Peruvian children, especially those with a lexical mass under 50 words, had a higher percentage of Social words. Both findings are discussed in terms of possible cross-cultural differences linked to input quality and early interactions, and avenues for further research are proposed.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"566 - 590"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46904238","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 : 2023-06-05DOI: 10.1177/01427237231173229
Li Sheng
reduced or absent priming effects. Instead, deficits in processing, mainly mediated through cognitive skills (e.g. memory) mean that priming effects will be observed but may decline rapidly over time. For PWA, Garraffa and Smith claim that priming effects may last longer in these individuals than in healthy adults, which they attribute to perseverance difficulties. The last chapter in this book focuses on children with DLD exclusively. In Chapter 10, Leonard discusses priming not as a research paradigm but as an intervention. This is argued on the basis of several similarities between priming and intervention (e.g. frequent explicit presentation, repetition, implicit learning, the possible impact on both production and comprehension, the targeting of clause-level structures). Leonard considers practical implications in implementing this intervention, including the level of the child’s knowledge of the structures targeted. In all, this book covers diverse content comprehensively and is accessible to an academic audience including final-year undergraduate students with an understanding of methods in experimental psychology. Core concepts are repeated enabling one to read selectively. Ideas are interesting and justified. Proposals for future research echo the zeitgeist for more inclusive and representative research. For an experimental method with such a strong grounding in cognitive psychology, proposed avenues going forward are well motivated by linguistics, reflecting the background and expertise of the authors.
{"title":"Book Review: Anita Wong, Understanding development and disorder in Cantonese using language sample analysis","authors":"Li Sheng","doi":"10.1177/01427237231173229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231173229","url":null,"abstract":"reduced or absent priming effects. Instead, deficits in processing, mainly mediated through cognitive skills (e.g. memory) mean that priming effects will be observed but may decline rapidly over time. For PWA, Garraffa and Smith claim that priming effects may last longer in these individuals than in healthy adults, which they attribute to perseverance difficulties. The last chapter in this book focuses on children with DLD exclusively. In Chapter 10, Leonard discusses priming not as a research paradigm but as an intervention. This is argued on the basis of several similarities between priming and intervention (e.g. frequent explicit presentation, repetition, implicit learning, the possible impact on both production and comprehension, the targeting of clause-level structures). Leonard considers practical implications in implementing this intervention, including the level of the child’s knowledge of the structures targeted. In all, this book covers diverse content comprehensively and is accessible to an academic audience including final-year undergraduate students with an understanding of methods in experimental psychology. Core concepts are repeated enabling one to read selectively. Ideas are interesting and justified. Proposals for future research echo the zeitgeist for more inclusive and representative research. For an experimental method with such a strong grounding in cognitive psychology, proposed avenues going forward are well motivated by linguistics, reflecting the background and expertise of the authors.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"463 - 465"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47251588","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 : 2023-05-27DOI: 10.1177/01427237231171763
L. Odijk, Steven Gillis
The inflectional diversity of parents’ speech directed to children acquiring Dutch was investigated. Inflectional diversity is defined as the number of inflected forms of a particular lemma (e.g. singular, plural of a noun) and measured by means of Mean Size of Paradigm (MSP). Changes in the inflectional diversity of infant directed speech (IDS) were analyzed as a function of children’s developing linguistic abilities. Two types of changes in the inflectional diversity of nouns and verbs were analyzed: (1) coarse tuning: changes relative to children’s growing vocabulary and (2) fine lexical tuning: changes relative to children’s use of specific lexical items. In addition, it was investigated if those changes were similar depending on particular characteristics of the children, namely, differences in their hearing abilities. Longitudinal recordings of spontaneous speech of 30 children (0;6-2;0) with normal hearing (NH) and 10 hearing-impaired children with a cochlear implant (CI) (0;6-2;6), and their parents were analyzed. As to coarse tuning, it was found that the inflectional diversity of IDS decreased at the beginning of the child’s lexical development but increased again parallel to infants’ growing cumulative vocabulary. As to fine lexical tuning, IDS showed less inflectional diversity before each child’s first use of a word and gradually more inflectional diversity afterward. In addition, parents of children with CI used less inflectionally diverse speech than parents of children with NH, which suggests an adaptation to specific characteristics of the children. In conclusion, inflectional morphology in IDS appears to be tuned to children’s hearing status and linguistic knowledge.
{"title":"Children steer the inflectional diversity of their parents: The role of word births and growing vocabulary","authors":"L. Odijk, Steven Gillis","doi":"10.1177/01427237231171763","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231171763","url":null,"abstract":"The inflectional diversity of parents’ speech directed to children acquiring Dutch was investigated. Inflectional diversity is defined as the number of inflected forms of a particular lemma (e.g. singular, plural of a noun) and measured by means of Mean Size of Paradigm (MSP). Changes in the inflectional diversity of infant directed speech (IDS) were analyzed as a function of children’s developing linguistic abilities. Two types of changes in the inflectional diversity of nouns and verbs were analyzed: (1) coarse tuning: changes relative to children’s growing vocabulary and (2) fine lexical tuning: changes relative to children’s use of specific lexical items. In addition, it was investigated if those changes were similar depending on particular characteristics of the children, namely, differences in their hearing abilities. Longitudinal recordings of spontaneous speech of 30 children (0;6-2;0) with normal hearing (NH) and 10 hearing-impaired children with a cochlear implant (CI) (0;6-2;6), and their parents were analyzed. As to coarse tuning, it was found that the inflectional diversity of IDS decreased at the beginning of the child’s lexical development but increased again parallel to infants’ growing cumulative vocabulary. As to fine lexical tuning, IDS showed less inflectional diversity before each child’s first use of a word and gradually more inflectional diversity afterward. In addition, parents of children with CI used less inflectionally diverse speech than parents of children with NH, which suggests an adaptation to specific characteristics of the children. In conclusion, inflectional morphology in IDS appears to be tuned to children’s hearing status and linguistic knowledge.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"539 - 565"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43141288","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 : 2023-05-22DOI: 10.1177/01427237231170486
Andrea Listanti, J. Torregrossa
Heritage language (HL) speakers seem to diverge from monolingual speakers in the acquisition of syntax–discourse interface phenomena. However, most of the studies reporting this finding do not make any distinction between different types of syntax–discourse interface structures. Therefore, it is an open question whether these structures are difficult for HL speakers across the board or whether different types of structures are associated with different acquisition outcomes. In this study, we investigate whether the timing of the acquisition of syntax–discourse interface structures among monolingual children affects their acquisition by HL children. We consider the acquisition of the alternation between preverbal and postverbal subjects with unaccusative, unergative and transitive verbs in Italian. This alternation involves the syntax–discourse interface across all verb types. However, mastery of this alternation has a different timing in monolingual acquisition depending on the verb type: it emerges earlier in association with unaccusative verbs than unergative and transitive ones. We elicit narratives in Italian from 42 Italian heritage children living in Germany and ranging in age from 7 to 14 years. We focus on the analysis of preverbal and postverbal subjects, considering the effect of verb type and discourse status of the subject. The children show a good mastery of the alternation between preverbal and postverbal subjects with unaccusative verbs, whereas they exhibit difficulties with the same alternation in association with transitive and unergative verbs. Furthermore, postverbal subjects with transitive verbs are particularly vulnerable to cross-linguistic effects from German. The results of the study suggest a gradient interpretation of heritage speakers’ difficulty with syntax–discourse interface structures, with timing in monolingual acquisition being a relevant factor that modulates the degree of this difficulty. The results are not affected by children’s dominance of exposure to Italian or age.
{"title":"The production of preverbal and postverbal subjects by Italian heritage children: Timing of acquisition matters","authors":"Andrea Listanti, J. Torregrossa","doi":"10.1177/01427237231170486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231170486","url":null,"abstract":"Heritage language (HL) speakers seem to diverge from monolingual speakers in the acquisition of syntax–discourse interface phenomena. However, most of the studies reporting this finding do not make any distinction between different types of syntax–discourse interface structures. Therefore, it is an open question whether these structures are difficult for HL speakers across the board or whether different types of structures are associated with different acquisition outcomes. In this study, we investigate whether the timing of the acquisition of syntax–discourse interface structures among monolingual children affects their acquisition by HL children. We consider the acquisition of the alternation between preverbal and postverbal subjects with unaccusative, unergative and transitive verbs in Italian. This alternation involves the syntax–discourse interface across all verb types. However, mastery of this alternation has a different timing in monolingual acquisition depending on the verb type: it emerges earlier in association with unaccusative verbs than unergative and transitive ones. We elicit narratives in Italian from 42 Italian heritage children living in Germany and ranging in age from 7 to 14 years. We focus on the analysis of preverbal and postverbal subjects, considering the effect of verb type and discourse status of the subject. The children show a good mastery of the alternation between preverbal and postverbal subjects with unaccusative verbs, whereas they exhibit difficulties with the same alternation in association with transitive and unergative verbs. Furthermore, postverbal subjects with transitive verbs are particularly vulnerable to cross-linguistic effects from German. The results of the study suggest a gradient interpretation of heritage speakers’ difficulty with syntax–discourse interface structures, with timing in monolingual acquisition being a relevant factor that modulates the degree of this difficulty. The results are not affected by children’s dominance of exposure to Italian or age.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"431 - 460"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43585443","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 : 2023-05-18DOI: 10.1177/01427237231172652
K. Abbot-Smith, J. Dockrell, A. Sturrock, Danielle Mathews, Charlotte Wilson
Individual differences in children’s social communication have been shown to mediate the relationship between poor vocabulary or grammar and behavioural difficulties. Moreover, there is increasing evidence that social communication skills predict difficulties with peers over and above vocabulary and grammar scores. The essential social communicative skills needed to maintain positive peer relationships revolve around conversation. Children with weaker conversation skills are less likely to make and maintain friendships. While helping all children to participate actively in collaborative conversations is part of school curricula, evidence-based training on how to achieve this is rarely provided for teachers. In this review, we first provide an overview of the key components of conversation skills and the cognitive abilities required to maintain them. We then present a narrative review of randomised controlled trials and experimental studies that either trained child conversation skills or included conversation skills in both training and outcome measures. Most of the studies focussed on training conversational ability in autistic children. The general finding was that verbally fluent autistic children improve following conversation training on blind-assessed reciprocal conversational ability. Only two studies were found that trained conversation skills in typically developing children with adequate controls and outcome measures, which directly assessed conversational proficiency. Both studies focussed on typically developing children who, at baseline, were in the weaker third of the mainstream classroom. Importantly, training not only improved the conversational ability of these children, it also improved their rates of lunchtime interaction with peers and their peer popularity ratings. We argue that there is considerable potential for supporting conversation skills in the classroom as a universal or Tier 1 intervention. Future research should explore whether conversation skills training would benefit the whole classroom.
{"title":"Topic maintenance in social conversation: What children need to learn and evidence this can be taught","authors":"K. Abbot-Smith, J. Dockrell, A. Sturrock, Danielle Mathews, Charlotte Wilson","doi":"10.1177/01427237231172652","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231172652","url":null,"abstract":"Individual differences in children’s social communication have been shown to mediate the relationship between poor vocabulary or grammar and behavioural difficulties. Moreover, there is increasing evidence that social communication skills predict difficulties with peers over and above vocabulary and grammar scores. The essential social communicative skills needed to maintain positive peer relationships revolve around conversation. Children with weaker conversation skills are less likely to make and maintain friendships. While helping all children to participate actively in collaborative conversations is part of school curricula, evidence-based training on how to achieve this is rarely provided for teachers. In this review, we first provide an overview of the key components of conversation skills and the cognitive abilities required to maintain them. We then present a narrative review of randomised controlled trials and experimental studies that either trained child conversation skills or included conversation skills in both training and outcome measures. Most of the studies focussed on training conversational ability in autistic children. The general finding was that verbally fluent autistic children improve following conversation training on blind-assessed reciprocal conversational ability. Only two studies were found that trained conversation skills in typically developing children with adequate controls and outcome measures, which directly assessed conversational proficiency. Both studies focussed on typically developing children who, at baseline, were in the weaker third of the mainstream classroom. Importantly, training not only improved the conversational ability of these children, it also improved their rates of lunchtime interaction with peers and their peer popularity ratings. We argue that there is considerable potential for supporting conversation skills in the classroom as a universal or Tier 1 intervention. Future research should explore whether conversation skills training would benefit the whole classroom.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41393220","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 : 2023-05-11DOI: 10.1177/01427237231169398
J. Vasil, C. Moore, M. Tomasello
Shared intentionality theory posits that at age 3, children expand their conception of plural agency to include 3- or more-person groups. We sought to determine whether this conceptual shift is detectable in children’s pronoun use. We report the results of a series of Bayesian hierarchical generative models fitted to 479 English-speaking children’s first-person plural, first-person singular, second-person, third-person plural, and third-person singular pronouns. As a proportion of pronouns, children used more first-person plural pronouns, only, after 3;0 compared to before. Additionally, children used more 1pp. pronouns when their mothers used more 1pp. pronouns. As a proportion of total utterances, all pronoun classes were used more often as children aged. These findings suggest that a shift in children’s social conceptualizations at age 3 is reflected in their use of 1pp. pronouns.
{"title":"Thought and language: association of groupmindedness with young English-speaking children’s production of pronouns","authors":"J. Vasil, C. Moore, M. Tomasello","doi":"10.1177/01427237231169398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231169398","url":null,"abstract":"Shared intentionality theory posits that at age 3, children expand their conception of plural agency to include 3- or more-person groups. We sought to determine whether this conceptual shift is detectable in children’s pronoun use. We report the results of a series of Bayesian hierarchical generative models fitted to 479 English-speaking children’s first-person plural, first-person singular, second-person, third-person plural, and third-person singular pronouns. As a proportion of pronouns, children used more first-person plural pronouns, only, after 3;0 compared to before. Additionally, children used more 1pp. pronouns when their mothers used more 1pp. pronouns. As a proportion of total utterances, all pronoun classes were used more often as children aged. These findings suggest that a shift in children’s social conceptualizations at age 3 is reflected in their use of 1pp. pronouns.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"516 - 538"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45012020","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 : 2023-04-29DOI: 10.1177/01427237231163650
George Pontikas
{"title":"Book Review: K. Messenger (Ed.), Syntactic Priming in Language Acquisition: Representations, mechanisms and applications (Trends in Language Acquisition Research, Volume 31)","authors":"George Pontikas","doi":"10.1177/01427237231163650","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231163650","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46298810","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 : 2023-04-26DOI: 10.1177/01427237231167301
Suvi Stolt
Few studies provide information on the reliability and validity of parental report instruments when assessing the language skills of pre-school–aged children. This study investigates the internal consistency and concurrent validity of the parental report instrument, the Finnish version of the Communicative Development Inventory III (FinCDI III), in children aged between 2;6 and 4;2 years (years;months, N = 155). One main aim was to analyze the validity of the information that parents can provide on different language domains (lexicon, phonology, morpho-syntax, metalinguistic skills) of their pre-school–aged children. In addition, the effect of age and background factors on the results of the FinCDI III was investigated. The FinCDI III was first adapted based on the Swedish version of the CDI III. Information on different language domains was gathered using the FinCDI III and respective tests. The internal consistency of FinCDI III was generally high (for the whole method: α = .91). Correlations between the sub-sections of the FinCDI III and respective test results varied from moderate to high (r-values = .35–.70, p < .001). A high correlation (r = .68) was detected between the total score of the FinCD III and that of the formal test focusing on general language competence. Age had a significant effect on the results of FinCDI III. Girls had generally higher FinCDI III scores than boys. The results underline the fact that parents can provide comparable information on the specific language domains of their pre-school–aged children as formal language tests when assessment is targeted to current behavior and when a recognition format is used. Findings broaden and strengthen earlier results regarding the validity of parental estimates on their child’s language, to now encompass older children aged between 2;6 and 4 years.
{"title":"Internal consistency and concurrent validity of the parental report instrument on language in pre-school-aged children – The Finnish Communicative Development Inventory III","authors":"Suvi Stolt","doi":"10.1177/01427237231167301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231167301","url":null,"abstract":"Few studies provide information on the reliability and validity of parental report instruments when assessing the language skills of pre-school–aged children. This study investigates the internal consistency and concurrent validity of the parental report instrument, the Finnish version of the Communicative Development Inventory III (FinCDI III), in children aged between 2;6 and 4;2 years (years;months, N = 155). One main aim was to analyze the validity of the information that parents can provide on different language domains (lexicon, phonology, morpho-syntax, metalinguistic skills) of their pre-school–aged children. In addition, the effect of age and background factors on the results of the FinCDI III was investigated. The FinCDI III was first adapted based on the Swedish version of the CDI III. Information on different language domains was gathered using the FinCDI III and respective tests. The internal consistency of FinCDI III was generally high (for the whole method: α = .91). Correlations between the sub-sections of the FinCDI III and respective test results varied from moderate to high (r-values = .35–.70, p < .001). A high correlation (r = .68) was detected between the total score of the FinCD III and that of the formal test focusing on general language competence. Age had a significant effect on the results of FinCDI III. Girls had generally higher FinCDI III scores than boys. The results underline the fact that parents can provide comparable information on the specific language domains of their pre-school–aged children as formal language tests when assessment is targeted to current behavior and when a recognition format is used. Findings broaden and strengthen earlier results regarding the validity of parental estimates on their child’s language, to now encompass older children aged between 2;6 and 4 years.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"492 - 515"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42143103","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 : 2023-04-24DOI: 10.1177/01427237231165118
Laura M. Morett, Cailee M. Nelson, Sarah S. Hughes-Berheim, J. Scofield
This research investigated whether observing beat gesture and hearing contrastive accenting with novel words enhances their learning in early childhood and whether these effects differ by sex in light of sex differences in the pace of language development. Fifty-three 3- to 5-year-old boys and girls learned pairs of novel words with contrasting referents with beat gesture, contrastive accenting, both, or neither. Knowledge of these words was then tested via a referent identification task. Novel word learning did not differ by beat gesture or contrastive accenting, nor did use of these cues to support word learning differ by age. However, 3-year-old boys were better able to identify the referents of novel words learned with rather than without beat gesture, and boys’ ability to identify the referents of novel words learned without beat gesture improved from ages 3 to 5 years. By contrast, no such effects of beat gesture on novel word learning by age were observed for girls. These results suggest that, for 3-year-old boys, beat gesture may compensate for difficulty deducing contrast from speech alone, and that their reliance on beat gesture as a cue to contrast decreases as their ability to deduce contrast from speech improves during early childhood. Thus, beat gesture may serve as a visual cue to contrast that scaffolds young children’s learning of words with contrasting meanings by supplementing the use of cues to contrast conveyed via speech.
{"title":"Development of sensitivity to beat gesture and contrastive accenting in support of word learning in early childhood in boys and girls","authors":"Laura M. Morett, Cailee M. Nelson, Sarah S. Hughes-Berheim, J. Scofield","doi":"10.1177/01427237231165118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231165118","url":null,"abstract":"This research investigated whether observing beat gesture and hearing contrastive accenting with novel words enhances their learning in early childhood and whether these effects differ by sex in light of sex differences in the pace of language development. Fifty-three 3- to 5-year-old boys and girls learned pairs of novel words with contrasting referents with beat gesture, contrastive accenting, both, or neither. Knowledge of these words was then tested via a referent identification task. Novel word learning did not differ by beat gesture or contrastive accenting, nor did use of these cues to support word learning differ by age. However, 3-year-old boys were better able to identify the referents of novel words learned with rather than without beat gesture, and boys’ ability to identify the referents of novel words learned without beat gesture improved from ages 3 to 5 years. By contrast, no such effects of beat gesture on novel word learning by age were observed for girls. These results suggest that, for 3-year-old boys, beat gesture may compensate for difficulty deducing contrast from speech alone, and that their reliance on beat gesture as a cue to contrast decreases as their ability to deduce contrast from speech improves during early childhood. Thus, beat gesture may serve as a visual cue to contrast that scaffolds young children’s learning of words with contrasting meanings by supplementing the use of cues to contrast conveyed via speech.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"43 1","pages":"469 - 491"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43117916","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 : 2023-04-11DOI: 10.1177/01427237231161135
L. Singh, Qi Cheng
Most words spoken to infants are produced in larger units, such as clauses, phrases, and sentences. As such, language learners must recognize words amidst the words that surround them. However, the phonetic forms of words change based on surrounding context. Here, we investigate the effects of a common source of phonetic change—phonological assimilation—on word recognition in English monolingual and English-Mandarin bilingual infants from Singapore. Using a preferential looking paradigm, 24-month-old monolingual English and bilingual English-Mandarin toddlers were presented with three different forms of familiar English words embedded in phrases: correct productions (e.g. ‘Look at the pen, dear’), assimilated forms (e.g. ‘Look at the pem, baby’), and mispronunciations (e.g. ‘Look at the pem, dear’). Although participants preferentially fixated visual targets upon hearing them labeled, there were no effects or interactions of language background and trial type on target fixation. However, higher naming effects were associated with increased English exposure in bilingual infants. The results suggest that monolingual and bilingual infants respond similarly to phonetic alternations arising from nasal place assimilation at 24 months.
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