Journal of Child Language最新文献

We present the typological approach to child language research. The typological approach places language diversity at the centre of acquisition research, thereby limiting arbitrary adjustments to theory and practice. We apply the typological approach to Ingram’s (2002) measures of whole-word phonological complexity (PMLU) and proximity (PWP). Our generalised PMLUg measure takes into account crosslinguistic variation in word status, including complex predicates and words without vowels. We analysed conversational data from Dutch, English, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Xi’iùy to determine whether two-year-old children target and produce words with significant between-language differences in phonological complexity. We found significant between-language differences in PMLUg for the target and produced words, but not PWPg. Comparing the complexity of the children’s words with the complexity of target words reveals their growth potentials along the syllable and consonant dimensions. Our study begins the cumulative investigation of the features that determine whole-word phonological complexity and proximity crosslinguistically.

We examined the direct and indirect associations between home literacy environment (HLE) and children's listening comprehension and word reading in Chinese. Three hundred forty-seven Chinese kindergarten children (mean age = 74.01 months, 50% female) were tested on measures of pinyin letter knowledge, phonological awareness, vocabulary, word reading, and listening comprehension. Their parents completed a questionnaire about their socioeconomic status and the three aspects of HLE (code-related and meaning-related HLE, access to literacy resources). Results of path analysis showed that access to literacy resources was indirectly associated with both listening comprehension and word reading through the effects of phonological awareness and vocabulary. These findings suggest that in the early phases of language and literacy development, print materials in the home may be important not only for written-language skills but also for oral-language skills.

Limited studies have examined demographic differences in children's vocabulary in longitudinal samples, while there are questions regarding the duration, direction, and magnitude of these effects across development. In this longitudinal study, we included over 400 Dutch children. Caregivers filled out N-CDIs when children were 9-11 months (measuring word comprehension, word production, and gestures) and around 2-5 years of age (measuring word production). At 2-5 years, we also administered a receptive vocabulary task in the lab. We examined demographic effects on vocabulary size across infancy and toddlerhood. We found a disadvantage for males in infants' gestures and toddlers' vocabulary production. We found a negative effect of maternal education on infants' caregiver-reported vocabulary, but a positive effect on toddlers' lab-administered receptive vocabulary. Lastly, we found a negative effect of multilingualism - but only for the lab-administered task. Examining predictors in large, longitudinal samples ensures their robustness and generalisability across development.

We assess the feasibility of conducting web-based eye-tracking experiments with children using two methods of webcam-based eye-tracking: automatic gaze estimation with the WebGazer.js algorithm and hand annotation of gaze direction from recorded webcam videos. Experiment 1 directly compares the two methods in a visual-world language task with five to six year-old children. Experiment 2 more precisely investigates WebGazer.js' spatiotemporal resolution with four to twelve year-old children in a visual-fixation task. We find that it is possible to conduct web-based eye-tracking experiments with children in both supervised (Experiment 1) and unsupervised (Experiment 2) settings - however, the webcam eye-tracking methods differ in their sensitivity and accuracy. Webcam video annotation is well-suited to detecting fine-grained looking effects relevant to child language researchers. In contrast, WebGazer.js gaze estimates appear noisier and less temporally precise. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each method and provide recommendations for researchers conducting child eye-tracking studies online.

This study compared a unidimensional model of vocabulary and a two-factor model comprising vocabulary breadth and depth in a second language (L2). A total of 167 Chinese Grade 4 and 5 primary school children (Mean_age = 9.96 years old) learning English as an L2 participated in this study, and they were tested on four English vocabulary tests. Our results of confirmatory factor analyses indicate that vocabulary breadth and depth were not two distinct dimensions, and the unidimensional model was supported. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Children up to school age are known to have difficulty comprehending complex sentences with temporal connectives, but the reasons remain controversial. We tested six- to twelve-year-old children to assess how the iconicity of event-language mapping, type of connective, and clause order mediate the comprehension of temporal sentences. Sixty monolingual Greek-speaking children and 15 adult controls completed a picture-sequence selection task in which they judged after- and before-sentences in iconic and non-iconic order. Up to age twelve, children did not reach full adult-like comprehension of the connectives; performance in non-iconic after-sentences was significantly lower than in the other three conditions across all ages. We conclude that neither iconicity, connective, nor clause order can fully explain these findings and propose an account based on the interaction of iconicity and clause order: non-iconic, sentence-medial after requires revision of the initial event representation, resulting in an event-semantic kindergarten-path that children find difficult to overcome.