MedWorm.com provides a medical RSS filtering service. Over 6000 RSS medical sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest items from the 'Journal of Child Language' source. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:37:42 +0100 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5650218&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22289295%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Sethuraman N, Smith LB Abstract ABSTRACTEnglish-learning children have been shown to reliably use cues from argument structure in learning verbs. However, languages pair overtly expressed arguments with verbs to varying extents, raising the question of whether children learning all languages expect the same, universal mapping between arguments and relational roles. Three experiments examined this question by asking how strongly early-learned verbs by themselves, without their corresponding explicitly expressed arguments, point to 'conceptual arguments' - the relational roles in a scene. Children aged two to four years and adult speakers of two languages that differ structurally in terms of whether the arguments of a verb are explicitly expressed more (English) or less (Tam... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5650218 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5650218 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5617658&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22261035%26dopt%3DAbstract This study explores the development of children's knowledge of linguistic and pragmatic aspects of singular and plural in Italian, for definite articles (Experiment 1) and verbs (Experiment 2). Participants aged three to adult were asked to pick objects from two dishes, each with a different number of items on them (one vs. two), following the morphological information. Results show that children understand that singular forms refer to 'one' at about age four, whereas they understand that plural forms refer to 'more than one' when they are older than six. Moreover, children use singular and plural knowledge in appropriate relation with the referential context only when they are about six. PMID: 22261035 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5617658 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5617658 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5617657&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22261116%26dopt%3DAbstract This article discusses the acquisition of gender in Russian, focusing on some exceptional subclasses of nouns that display a mismatch between semantics and morphology. Experimental results from twenty-five Russian-speaking monolinguals (age 2 ; 6-4 ; 0) are presented and, within a cue-based approach to language acquisition, we argue that children rely on certain morphosyntactic micro-cues in the course of acquisition of semantic agreement. A discrepancy is observed in the acquisition of semantic agreement across the different noun classes, and this suggests that children are highly sensitive to fine distinctions in syntax and morphology and use detailed input information to make specific inferences concerning the gender of different noun classes. Furthermore, we argue that acquisition data... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5617657 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5617657 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5617656&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22261154%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examined the cross-sectional developmental trajectories of influence of PP and ND on fast-mapping in thirty-eight English-speaking children aged 3 ; 01-5 ; 02, in a task varying PP and ND orthogonally. PP and ND exerted separable influences on fast-mapping. Overall, low ND supported better fast-mapping. The influence of PP changed across the developmental trajectory, 'switching' from a high to a low PP advantage. A potential explanation for this 'switch' is advanced, suggesting that it represents functional reorganization in the developing lexicon, which emerges from changes in the developing lexicon, as phonological knowledge is abstracted from lexical knowledge, over development. PMID: 22261154 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5617656 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5617656 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5617655&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22261185%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Stolt S, Matomäki J, Haataja L, Lapinleimu H, Lehtonen L, Abstract ABSTRACTIt is not well understood how grammar emerges in very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) children. The main aim of the present study was to gain information on the emergence of grammar in this group at 2 ; 0. The Finnish version of the Communicative Development Inventory was used to collect data from VLBW children (N=156) and full-term controls (N=146). At a group level, the grammatical skills of the VLBW children were significantly weaker than those of the controls. However, when the effect of lexicon size and premature birth on the emergence of grammar was analyzed in detail, few significant differences were found between the groups. The results suggest that even though grammar emerges more slowly for the ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5617655 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5617655 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5617654&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22261245%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Ramírez NF, Lieberman AM, Mayberry RI PMID: 22261245 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5617654 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5617654 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5593489&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22225837%26dopt%3DAbstract This study develops the hypothesis that the child-specific phenomenon of positional velar fronting can be modeled as the product of phonologically encoded articulatory limitations unique to immature speakers. Children have difficulty executing discrete tongue movements, preferring to move the tongue and jaw as a single unit. This predisposes the child to produce undifferentiated linguopalatal contact, neutralizing the coronal-velar contrast. Adopting a phonetically sensitive model of phonology, I propose that children's difficulty with discrete tongue movement can be encoded in a violable constraint, Move.as-Unit. The positional nature of fronting reflects the fact that discrete lingual movement is penalized more heavily in the motorically challenging context of a larger gesture. This anal... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5593489 Fri, 06 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5593489 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5573680&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22217145%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Vázquez MD, Delisle SS, Saylor MM Abstract ABSTRACTThe present study investigates whether four- and six-year-old children use pragmatic competence as a criterion for learning from someone else. Specifically, we ask whether children use others' adherence to Gricean maxims to determine whether they will offer valid labels for novel objects. Six-year-olds recognized adherence to the maxims of quality and relation and subsequently trusted the labels provided by a maxim adherer. Four-year-olds displayed this pattern when judging adherence to quality but not relation. A linear regression revealed that children's ability to identify maxim adherers predicted their ability to choose the correct object during word-learning trials. This research demonstrates that children use others... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5573680 Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5573680 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5573679&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22217160%26dopt%3DAbstract This study explored preschool age and gender differences in help-seeking within the theoretical framework of scaffolded problem-solving and self-regulation (Bruner, 1986; Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978; 1986). Within-subject analyses tracked changes in help-seeking among 62 preschoolers (34 boys, 28 girls, mean age 4.22 years) solving a challenging puzzle with an adult. The goal was to document whether age and gender interact with fluctuating difficulty to affect children's spontaneous help-seeking. ANOVAs indicated that girls used more help-seeking during difficult segments of the task, despite performance equal to the boys. This pattern was strongest among older girls, who outperformed all other children and used the most help-seeking. Partial correlations, controlling for solving time, in... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5573679 Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5573679 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5573678&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22217207%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Akhtar N, Menjivar J, Hoicka E, Sabbagh MA Abstract ABSTRACTThree- and four-year-olds (N=144) were introduced to novel labels by an English speaker and a foreign speaker (of Nordish, a made-up language), and were asked to endorse one of the speaker's labels. Monolingual English-speaking children were compared to bilingual children and English-speaking children who were regularly exposed to a language other than English. All children tended to endorse the English speaker's labels when asked 'What do you call this?', but when asked 'What do you call this in Nordish?', children with exposure to a second language were more likely to endorse the foreign label than monolingual and bilingual children. The findings suggest that, at this age, exposure to, but not necessarily immers... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5573678 Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5573678 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5573681&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22214650%26dopt%3DAbstract This study investigated whether and to what extent phonemic abilities of young readers (Grade 5) influence syllabic effects in reading. More precisely, the syllable congruency effect was tested in the lexical decision task combined with masked priming in eleven-year-old children. Target words were preceded by a pseudo-word prime sharing the first three letters that either corresponded to the syllable (congruent condition) or not (incongruent condition). The data showed that the syllable priming effect interacted with the score of phonemic abilities. In children with good phonemic skills, word recognition was delayed in the congruent condition compared to the incongruent condition, while it was speeded up in children with weaker phonemic skills. These findings are discussed in a lexical acc... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5573681 Wed, 04 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5573681 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5523445&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22182242%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Minai U, Jincho N, Yamane N, Mazuka R Abstract ABSTRACTRecent studies on the acquisition of semantics have argued that knowledge of the universal quantifier is adult-like throughout development. However, there are domains where children still exhibit non-adult-like universal quantification, and arguments for the early mastery of relevant semantic knowledge do not explain what causes such non-adult-like interpretations. The present study investigates Japanese four- and five-year-old children's atypical universal quantification in light of the development of cognitive control. We hypothesized that children's still-developing cognitive control contributes to their atypical universal quantification. Using a combined eye-tracking and interpretation task together with a non-ling... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5523445 Mon, 19 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5523445 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5523444&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22182259%26dopt%3DAbstract We report a syntactic priming experiment that examined whether children's acquisition of the passive is a staged process, with acquisition of constituent structure preceding acquisition of thematic role mappings. Six-year-olds and nine-year-olds described transitive actions after hearing active and passive prime descriptions involving the same or different thematic roles. Both groups showed a strong tendency to reuse in their own description the syntactic structure they had just heard, including well-formed passives after passive primes, irrespective of whether thematic roles were repeated between prime and target. However, following passive primes, six-year-olds but not nine-year-olds also produced reversed passives, with well-formed constituent structure but incorrect thematic role mappi... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5523444 Mon, 19 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5523444 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5523443&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22182597%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Lindsey BA, Gerken L Abstract ABSTRACTAdult Spanish speakers generally know which form a determiner preceding a noun should have even if the noun is not in their lexicon, because Spanish demonstrates high predictability between determiner form and noun form (la noun-a and el noun-o). We asked whether young children learning Spanish are similarly sensitive to the correlation of determiner and noun forms, or whether they initially learn determiner-noun pairings one-by-one. Spanish-English bilingual children and adults repeated Spanish words and non-words preceded by gender congruous and incongruous determiners. If children learn determiner-noun pairings one-by-one, they should show a gender congruity effect only for words. In contrast with this prediction, both children and ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5523443 Mon, 19 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5523443 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5523442&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22182669%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Gierut JA, Morrisette ML Abstract ABSTRACTThe effect of word-level variables on expressive phonology has not been widely studied, although the properties of words likely bear on the emergence of sound structure (Stoel-Gammon, 2011). Eight preschoolers, diagnosed with phonological delay, were assigned to treatment to experimentally induce gains in expressive phonology. Erred sounds were taught using stimulus words that varied orthogonally in neighborhood density and word frequency as the independent variables. Generalization was the dependent variable, defined as production accuracy of treated and untreated (erred) sounds. Blocked comparisons showed that dense neighborhoods triggered greater generalization, but frequency did not have a clear differential effect. Orthogonal ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5523442 Mon, 19 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5523442 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5523447&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22152307%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Warlaumont AS, Jarmulowicz L Abstract ABSTRACTAcquisition of regular inflectional suffixes is an integral part of grammatical development in English and delayed acquisition of certain inflectional suffixes is a hallmark of language impairment. We investigate the relationship between input frequency and grammatical suffix acquisition, analyzing 217 transcripts of mother-child (ages 1 ; 11-6 ; 9) conversations from the CHILDES database. Maternal suffix frequency correlates with previously reported rank orders of acquisition and with child suffix frequency. Percentages of children using a suffix are consistent with frequencies in caregiver speech. Although late talkers acquire suffixes later than typically developing children, order of acquisition is similar across population... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5523447 Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5523447 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5523446&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22152344%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Nilsen ES, Mangal L Abstract ABSTRACTThree- and four-year-olds participated in a referential communication task wherein they requested stickers from a knowledgeable or ignorant adult to complete a card. Following inadequate initial requests children were provided with three different feedback types: goal substitution (i.e. an incorrect sticker was provided), explicit statement of misunderstanding ('I don't know which one you mean'), and vague feedback ('Huh?'). Preschoolers' initial statements revealed sensitivity to the listener's perspective: more descriptors were provided when the listener did not have visual access to the card. Although listener's knowledge did not affect children's repair statements following feedback, the feedback type did: goal substitution elicited... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5523446 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5523446 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5469412&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22129486%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Bornstein MH, Hendricks C Abstract ABSTRACTUsing the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, language comprehension and production were compared in a sample of 101,250 children aged 2 ; 00 to 9 ; 11 and a focus subsample of 38,845 children aged 2 ; 00 to 4 ; 11 from sixteen under-researched developing nations. In the whole sample, comprehension slightly exceeded production; correlations between comprehension and production by country were positive and significant, but varied in size, and the average correlation was positive, significant, and small to medium. Mean comprehension and production varied with child age, reaching an asymptote at 5 ; 00, and correlations between comprehension and production by age were positive, significant, and similar at each age. In the focus subsam... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5469412 Thu, 01 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5469412 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5469414&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22123500%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Hoover JR, Storkel HL, Rice ML Abstract ABSTRACTThe effect of neighborhood density on optional infinitives was evaluated for typically developing (TD) children and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Forty children, twenty in each group, completed two production tasks that assessed third person singular production. Half of the sentences in each task presented a dense verb, and half presented a sparse verb. Children's third person singular accuracy was compared across dense and sparse verbs. Results showed that the TD group was significantly less likely to use optional infinitives with dense, rather than sparse verbs. In contrast, the distribution of optional infinitives for the SLI group was independent of verb neighborhood density. Follow-up analyses showed ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5469414 Tue, 29 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5469414 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5469413&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D22123503%26dopt%3DAbstract We report the findings of two experimental studies of children's knowledge of downward entailment. These experiments explore two different aspects of downward entailment, in a study with Mandarin-speaking children. Taken together with previous research findings, the results of the present study support the conclusion that downward entailment is a core property of human languages. PMID: 22123503 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5469413 Tue, 29 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5469413 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5255951&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21939582%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Cameron-Faulkner T Abstract ABSTRACTThe present study investigates flexibility of verb use in the early stages of English multiword development, and its relationship with patterns attested in the input. The data is taken from a case study of a monolingual English-speaking boy aged 2 ; 5-2 ; 9 and his mother while engaged in daily activities in the home. Data were coded according to Halliday's (1975) functional system. The findings suggest that early multiword verb use is functionally restricted and closely tied to verb use in the input. PMID: 21939582 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5255951 Fri, 23 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5255951 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5224382&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21914243%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Bergmann C, Paulus M, Fikkert P Abstract ABSTRACTPronouns seem to be acquired in an asymmetrical way, where children confuse the meaning of pronouns with reflexives up to the age of six, but not vice versa. Children's production of the same referential expressions is appropriate at the age of four. However, response-based tasks, the usual means to investigate child language comprehension, are very demanding given children's limited cognitive resources. Therefore, they might affect performance. To assess the impact of the task, we investigated learners of Dutch (three- and four-year-olds) using both eye-tracking, a non-demanding on-line method, and a typical response-based task. Eye-tracking results show an emerging ability to correctly comprehend pronouns at the age of fou... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5224382 Wed, 14 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5224382 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5224381&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21914244%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Zhou P, Su YE, Crain S, Gao L, Zhan L Abstract ABSTRACTHow do children develop the mapping between prosody and other levels of linguistic knowledge? This question has received considerable attention in child language research. In the present study two experiments were conducted to investigate four- to five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's sensitivity to prosody in ambiguity resolution. Experiment 1 used eye-tracking to assess children's use of stress in resolving structural ambiguities. Experiment 2 took advantage of special properties of Mandarin to investigate whether children can use intonational cues to resolve ambiguities involving speech acts. The results of our experiments show that children's use of prosodic information in ambiguity resolution varies depending... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5224381 Wed, 14 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5224381 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5224385&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21910951%26dopt%3DAbstract This article investigates whether two-year-olds learning Japanese, another argument-drop language, make use of argument number and case markings in learning novel verbs. Children watched videos of novel causative and non-causative actions via Intermodal Preferential Looking. The novel verbs were presented in transitive or intransitive frames; the NPs in the transitive frames appeared 'bare' or with case markers. Consistent with previous findings of Morphosyntactic Bootstrapping, children who heard the novel verbs in the transitive frame with case markers reliably assigned those verbs to the novel causative actions. PMID: 21910951 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5224385 Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5224385 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5224384&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21910952%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Gábor B, Lukács A Abstract ABSTRACTThis paper investigates early productivity of morpheme use in Hungarian children aged between 2 ; 1 and 5 ; 3. Hungarian has a rich morphology which is the core marker of grammatical functions. A new method is introduced using the novel word paradigm in a sentence repetition task with masked inflections (i.e. a disguised elicited production task). Results suggest that Hungarian nominal and verbal suffixes can be used productively before the age of three. Children showed greater productivity with nominal than with verbal suffixes, and no productivity with novel suffixes; greater input variability facilitated productive use. These findings confirm that although morphological productivity is an early achievement, it is a gradual process in... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5224384 Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5224384 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5224383&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21910953%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Olson J, Masur EF Abstract ABSTRACTMothers' verbal responses to their infants' spontaneous imitations of familiar and non-familiar words during naturally occurring interactions were examined in a longitudinal sample observed at 1 ; 1, 1 ; 5 and 1 ; 9. Maternal responses to both familiar and non-familiar imitations exhibited structural characteristics likely to be facilitative of early word learning, including shorter and single-word utterances and reproductions of imitated words in sentence-final position. Mothers also responded differentially to infants' non-familiar versus familiar imitations. Mothers produced more return imitations and more exact repetitions, providing an extra exemplar, following infants' imitations of non-familiar words. The familiar words infants imi... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5224383 Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5224383 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5213099&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21892989%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Molemans I, VAN DEN Berg R, VAN Severen L, Gillis S Abstract ABSTRACTVarious measures for identifying the onset of babbling have been proposed in the literature, but a formal definition of the exact procedure and a thorough validation of the sample size required for reliably establishing babbling onset is lacking. In this paper the reliability of five commonly used measures is assessed using a large longitudinal corpus of spontaneous speech from forty infants (age 0 ; 6-2 ; 0). In a first experiment it is shown that establishing the onset of babbling with reasonable (95%) confidence is impossible when the measures are computed only once, and when the number of vocalizations are not equal for all children at all ages. In addition, each measure requires a different minimal s... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5213099 Tue, 06 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5213099 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5213098&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21892990%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Kruk RS, Reynolds KA Abstract ABSTRACTWe tracked the developmental influences of exposure to French on developing English phonological awareness, decoding and reading comprehension of English-speaking at-risk readers from Grade 1 to Grade 3. Teacher-nominated at-risk readers were matched with not-at-risk readers in French immersion and English language programs. Exposure to spoken French phonetic and syllabic forms and to written French orthographic and morphological forms by children attending French immersion programs was expected to promote phonological, decoding and reading comprehension achievement. Growth in all outcomes was found, with children in immersion experiencing higher final status in phonological awareness and more rapid growth and higher final status in de... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5213098 Tue, 06 Sep 2011 04:00:00 +0100 5213098 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5182996&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21878148%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Schults A, Tulviste T, Konstabel K Abstract ABSTRACTParents of 592 children between the age of 0 ; 8 and 1 ; 4 completed the Estonian adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (ECDI Infant Form). The relationships between comprehension and production of different categories of words and gestures were examined. According to the results of regression modelling the production of object gestures and gestural routines was positively correlated with the use of all the word categories. Comprehension of common nouns was positively correlated to the production of common nouns and predicates, whereas the comprehension of predicates was negatively correlated to the production of common nouns and social terms. The older the children were the more they produ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5182996 Tue, 30 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5182996 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5146971&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21854689%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Stoll S, Bickel B, Lieven E, Paudyal NP, Banjade G, Bhatta TN, Gaenszle M, Pettigrew J, Rai IP, Rai M, Rai NK Abstract ABSTRACTAnalyzing the development of the noun-to-verb ratio in a longitudinal corpus of four Chintang (Sino-Tibetan) children, we find that up to about age four, children have a significantly higher ratio than adults. Previous cross-linguistic research rules out an explanation of this in terms of a universal noun bias; instead, a likely cause is that Chintang verb morphology is polysynthetic and difficult to learn. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the development of Chintang children's noun-to-verb ratio correlates significantly with the extent to which they show a similar flexibility with verbal morphology to that of the surrounding adults, a... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5146971 Sun, 21 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5146971 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5146972&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21854670%26dopt%3DAbstract This article uses the comparative method to challenge the logic of POS arguments. Rather than question the premises of POS arguments, the article demonstrates how POS arguments for individual languages lead to a reductio ad absurdum as POS arguments from genetically related languages are compared. Comparison leads to different contradictions for poverty of the negative stimulus (PONS) and poverty of the positive stimulus (POPS) arguments. Comparing PONS arguments leads to the conclusion that Universal Grammar contains language-specific versions of linguistic rules. Comparing POPS arguments leads to the conclusion that Universal Grammar may supply knowledge that is ungrammatical in the target language. The reductio shows that universal principles of grammar cannot be established on the basi... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5146972 Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5146972 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5146975&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21849102%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Tardif T, Gelman SA, Fu X, Zhu L Abstract ABSTRACTEnglish-speaking children understand and produce generic expressions in the preschool years, but there are cross-linguistic differences in how generics are expressed. Three studies examined interpretation of generic noun phrases in three- to seven-year-old child (N=192) and adult speakers (N=163) of Mandarin Chinese. Contrary to suggestions by Bloom (1981), Chinese-speaking adults honor a clear distinction between generics (expressed as bare NPs) and other quantified expressions ('all'/suo3you3 and 'some'/you3de). Furthermore, Mandarin-speaking children begin to distinguish generics from 'all' or 'some' as early as five years, as shown in both confirmation (Study 2) and property-generation (Study 3) tasks. Nonetheless, the ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5146975 Wed, 17 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5146975 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5146974&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21849103%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Hahn ER, Cantrell L Abstract ABSTRACTConsiderable research has demonstrated that English-speaking children extend nouns on the basis of shape. Here we asked whether the development of this bias is influenced by the structure of a child's primary language. We tested English- and Spanish-speaking children between the ages of 1 ; 10 and 3 ; 4 in a novel noun generalization task. Results showed that English learners demonstrated a robust shape-bias, whereas Spanish learners did not. Further, English-speaking children produced more shape-based nouns outside the laboratory than Spanish-speaking children, despite similar productive vocabulary sizes. We interpret the results as evidence that attentional biases arise from the specifics of the language environment. PMID: 2184910... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5146974 Wed, 17 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5146974 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5146973&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21849104%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examines the word order phenomenon of optional scrambling in Ukrainian. It aims to test factors such as semantic features and object type that have been shown to affect scrambling in other languages. Forty-one children between 2 ; 7 and 6 ; 0, and twenty adult speakers participated in an elicited production experiment. The picture description task was used to set appropriate semantic contexts to prompt the production of scrambled structures. The results demonstrate that the children scrambled at higher rates in definite/partitive contexts than in indefinite/non-specific contexts. This suggests that children are susceptible to the same semantic features that are associated with NP scrambling in adult production. However, they differ from adults in pronominal scrambling and approx... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5146973 Wed, 17 Aug 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5146973 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5085740&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21791152%26dopt%3DAbstract This study investigates three- to five-year-old children's interpretation of disjunction in sentences like 'The dog reached the finish line before the turtle or the bunny'. English disjunction has a conjunctive interpretation in such sentences ('The dog reached the finish line before the turtle and before the bunny'). This interpretation conforms with classical logic. Mandarin disjunction ('huozhe') can take scope over 'before' ('zai … zhiqian'), so the same sentence can mean 'The dog reached the finish line before the turtle or before the bunny (I don't know which)'. If children are guided by adult input in the acquisition of sentence meanings, English- and Mandarin-speaking children should assign different interpretations to such sentences. If children are guided by logical principles,... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5085740 Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5085740 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5085739&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21791153%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Berger F, Höhle B ABSTRACTChildren up to school age have been reported to perform poorly when interpreting sentences containing restrictive and additive focus particles by treating sentences with a focus particle in the same way as sentences without it. Careful comparisons between results of previous studies indicate that this phenomenon is less pronounced for restrictive than for additive particles. We argue that this asymmetry is an effect of the presuppositional status of the proposition triggered by the additive particle. We tested this in two experiments with German-learning three- and four-year-olds using a method that made the exploitation of the information provided by the particles highly relevant for completing the task. Three-year-olds already performed remarkably ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5085739 Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5085739 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5085741&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21781372%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study we investigated adopted Chinese girls' expressive English language outcomes in relation to their age at adoption, chronological age, length of exposure to English and developmental risk status at the time of adoption. Vocabulary and phrase utterance data on 318 girls were collected from the adoptive mothers using the Language Development Survey (LDS) (Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000). The girls, aged 18-35 months (M=26·2 months, SD=4·9 months), were adopted at ages ranging from 6·8 to 24 months (M=12·6 months, SD=3·1 months), and had been exposed to English for periods ranging from 1·6 to 27·6 months (M=13·7, SD=5·7). Findings suggest that vocabulary and mean length of phrase scores were negatively correlated with age at adoption but positively correlated with chronol... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5085741 Sun, 24 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5085741 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5037191&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21729365%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Foster EK, Hund AM ABSTRACTThe primary goal was to specify the impact of scaffolding and overhearing on young children's use of the spatial terms between and middle. Four- and five-year-old children described the location of a mouse hidden between two furniture items in a dollhouse with assistance from a parent. Children's use of between and middle increased significantly across trials, and in concert, parents' directive scaffolding involving middle decreased across trials. In the second study, three common scaffolding types (Between Directive, Middle Directive, non-directive) were compared with a no prompt condition by having children receive prompts from a doll and with overhearing conditions in which children overheard conversations between two adult experimenters containin... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5037191 Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5037191 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5037190&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21729366%26dopt%3DAbstract We report three studies, two involving English- and Russian-speaking children, and a third involving Russian-speaking adults. Unlike English, Russian offers a variety of syntactic forms that emphasize the patient of a transitive action, thus fulfilling the discourse function of the passive. We found that English speakers increased the use of the particular syntactic form presented in the prime, whereas Russian speakers increased their production of several different syntactic forms used to emphasize the patient of the action. PMID: 21729366 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5037190 Sun, 26 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5037190 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5037189&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21729367%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Boyd JK, Goldberg AE ABSTRACTThe present study exposed five-year-olds (M=5 ; 2), seven-year-olds (M=7 ; 6) and adults (M=22 ; 4) to instances of a novel phrasal construction, then used a forced choice comprehension task to evaluate their learning of the construction. The abstractness of participants' acquired representations of the novel construction was evaluated by varying the degree of lexical overlap that test items had with exposure items. We found that both child groups were less proficient than adults, but seven-year-olds showed evidence of across-the-board generalization whereas five-year-olds were sensitive to lexical overlap at test. This outcome is consistent with more conservative, item-based learning of syntactic patterns in younger children. Additionally, unlike ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5037189 Tue, 21 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5037189 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5037188&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21729368%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Prieto P, Estrella A, Thorson J, Vanrell MD ABSTRACTThis investigation focuses on the development of intonation patterns in four Catalan-speaking children and two Spanish-speaking children between 0 ; 11 and 2 ; 4. Pitch contours were prosodically analyzed within the Autosegmental Metrical framework in all meaningful utterances, for a total of 6558 utterances. The pragmatic meaning and communicative function were also assessed. Three main conclusions arise from the results. First, the study shows that the Autosegmental Metrical model can be successfully used to transcribe early intonation contours. Second, results reveal that children's emerging intonation is largely independent of grammatical development, and generally it develops well before the appearance of two-word combin... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5037188 Mon, 20 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 5037188 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4943097&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21669013%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examines longitudinal corpus data from two children, a typically developing girl, and a boy with Asperger's syndrome. Both were precocious talkers who reversed the majority of their personal pronouns for several months. A comparison of the children's behaviors revealed quantitative and qualitative differences in pronoun use: the girl showed 'semantic confusion', using second person pronouns for self-reference, whereas the boy showed a discourse-pragmatic deficit related to perspective-taking. The results suggest that there are multiple mechanisms underlying pronoun reversal and provide qualified support for both the Name/Person Hypothesis (Clark, 1978; Charney, 1980b) and the Plurifunctional Pronoun Hypothesis (Chiat, 1982). PMID: 21669013 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4943097 Mon, 13 Jun 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4943097 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4793537&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21489345%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Khamis-Dakwar R, Froud K, Gordon P ABSTRACTThere are differences and similarities between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and spoken varieties of Arabic, in all language domains. To obtain preliminary insights into interactions between the acquisition of spoken and standard varieties of a language in a diglossic situation, we employed forced-choice grammaticality judgments to investigate morphosyntactic knowledge of MSA and the local variant of Palestinian Colloquial Arabic (PCA), in 60 Arabic-speaking children aged 6 ; 4 to 12 ; 4, from a school in Nazareth. We used morphosyntactic structures which either differed or were similar between PCA and standard Arabic. Children generally performed better on items presented in PCA than in standard Arabic, with the exception of construct... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4793537 Wed, 13 Apr 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4793537 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4793541&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21473806%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examined on-line processing of Swedish sentences in a grammaticality-judgement experiment within the framework of the Competition Model. Three age groups from 6 to 11 and an adult group were asked to detect grammatical violations as quickly as possible. Three factors concerning cue cost were studied: violation position (early vs. late), violation span (intraphrasal vs. interphrasal) and violation type (agreement vs. word order). Developmental results showed that children were always slower at detecting grammatical violations. Irrespective of age, participants were faster at judging sentences with late violations, especially in the younger groups. Intraphrasal violations were more rapidly detected than interphrasal ones, particularly in adults. Finally, agreement violations and w... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4793541 Thu, 07 Apr 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4793541 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4683729&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21466752%26dopt%3DAbstract This study used a parent report adapted for Irish, to measure vocabulary development longitudinally for children aged between 1 ; 04 and 3 ; 04. The findings indicated that the children learned closed-class words at relatively smaller vocabulary sizes compared to children acquiring other languages, and had a strong preference for nouns. PMID: 21466752 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4683729 Tue, 05 Apr 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4683729 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4683731&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21457589%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Dittmar M, Abbot-Smith K, Lieven E, Tomasello M ABSTRACTThe current study used a forced choice pointing paradigm to examine whether English children aged 2 ; 1 can use abstract knowledge of the relationship between word order position and semantic roles to make an active behavioural decision when interpreting active transitive sentences with novel verbs, when the actions are identical in the target and foil video clips. The children pointed significantly above chance with novel verbs but only if the final trial was excluded. With familiar verbs the children pointed consistently above chance. Children aged 2 ; 7 did not show these tiring effects and their performance in the familiar and novel verb conditions was always equivalent. PMID: 21457589 [PubMed - as supplied by pub... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4683731 Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4683731 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4683730&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21457590%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study we explored whether two-year-old children respond differentially to one and the same question used as either a genuine question or as a test question based on the situation (playful game versus serious task) and attitude (playful ostensive cues versus not). Results indicated that children responded to questions differently on the basis of the situation but not the expressed attitude of the questioner. Two-year-old children thus understand something of the very special communicative intentions behind test questions. PMID: 21457590 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4683730 Thu, 31 Mar 2011 23:00:00 +0100 4683730 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4627272&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21426620%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Gavazzi IG, Ornaghi V ABSTRACTThe present study investigates whether training preschool children in the active use of emotional state talk plays a significant role in bringing about greater understanding of emotion terms and improved emotion comprehension. Participants were 100 preschool children (M=52 months; SD=9·9; range: 35-70 months), randomly assigned to experimental or control conditions. They were pre- and post-tested to assess their language comprehension, metacognitive language comprehension and emotion understanding. Analyses of pre-test data did not show any significant differences between experimental and control groups. During the intervention phase, the children were read stories enriched with emotional lexicon. After listening to the stories, children in the e... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4627272 Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4627272 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4627273&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21418730%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Hoff E, Core C, Place S, Rumiche R, Señor M, Parra M ABSTRACTThe extant literature includes conflicting assertions regarding the influence of bilingualism on the rate of language development. The present study compared the language development of equivalently high-SES samples of bilingually and monolingually developing children from 1 ; 10 to 2 ; 6. The monolingually developing children were significantly more advanced than the bilingually developing children on measures of both vocabulary and grammar in single language comparisons, but they were comparable on a measure of total vocabulary. Within the bilingually developing sample, all measures of vocabulary and grammar were related to the relative amount of input in that language. Implications for theories of language acquis... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4627273 Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4627273 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4565672&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21382221%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Liebal K, Carpenter M, Tomasello M ABSTRACTSpeakers often anticipate how recipients will interpret their utterances. If they wish some other, less obvious interpretation, they may 'mark' their utterance (e.g. with special intonations or facial expressions). We investigated whether two- and three-year-olds recognize when adults mark a non-verbal communicative act - in this case a pointing gesture - as special, and so search for a not-so-obvious referent. We set up the context of cleaning up and then pointed to an object. Three-year-olds inferred that the adult intended the pointing gesture to indicate that object, and so cleaned it up. However, when the adult marked her pointing gesture (with exaggerated facial expression) they took the object's hidden contents or a hidden aspe... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4565672 Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4565672 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4565673&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21371368%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examined how four- to five-year-olds and seven- to eight-year-olds used intonation (accent placement and accent type) to encode topic and focus in Dutch. Naturally spoken declarative sentences with either sentence-initial topic and sentence-final focus or sentence-initial focus and sentence-final topic were elicited via a picture-matching game. Results showed that the four- to five-year-olds were adult-like in topic-marking, but were not yet fully adult-like in focus-marking, in particular, in the use of accent type in sentence-final focus (i.e. showing no preference for H*L). Between age five and seven, the use of accent type was further developed. In contrast to the four- to five-year-olds, the seven- to eight-year-olds showed a preference for H*L in sentence-final focus. Furt... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4565673 Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4565673 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4509389&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21310096%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examined the effect of number of syllables and syllable structure on repetition of pseudo-words by Russian-speaking children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and typically developing (TD) children. One hundred and forty-four pseudo-words, varying in length and syllable complexity, were presented to two groups of children: 15 children with SLI, age range 4 ; 0 to 8 ; 8, and 15 TD children matched in age to the SLI group. The number of errors in the repetition of pseudo-words was analyzed in terms of the number of syllables and syllable complexity. The results demonstrated that children with SLI have deficits in working memory capacity. In addition to the pseudo-word length, the repetition performance was affected by syllable structure complexity. PMID: 21310096 [PubMed... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4509389 Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4509389 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4509385&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21310097%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Schmale R, Hollich G, Seidl A ABSTRACTBy their second birthday, children are beginning to map meaning to form with relative ease. One challenge for these developing abilities is separating information relevant to word identity (i.e. phonemic information) from irrelevant information (e.g. voice and foreign accent). Nevertheless, little is known about toddlers' abilities to ignore irrelevant phonetic detail when faced with the demanding task of word learning. In an experiment with English-learning toddlers, we examined the impact of foreign accent on word learning. Findings revealed that while toddlers aged 2 ; 6 successfully generalized newly learned words spoken by a Spanish-accented speaker and a native English speaker, success of those aged 2 ; 0 was restricted. Specifically... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4509385 Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4509385 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4509414&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21306657%26dopt%3DAbstract This study disclosed preschool children's superior performance on object relative clauses in Japanese; however, this dominance disappeared for the children who could use both the nominative and accusative case markers as cues for the comprehension of single-argument sentences. Assuming a filler-gap dependency for the relative clause formation, we suggest that there is no difference in the difficulty between subject and object relative clauses in the grammar of Japanese-speaking children. PMID: 21306657 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4509414 Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4509414 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4509407&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21306658%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Olson J, Masur EF ABSTRACTTwenty-four infants at 1 ; 1 and their mothers were videotaped for 18 minutes while playing. Infants' pointing, reaching and object-extending gestures were coded in three communicative intent contexts: proto-declarative, or commenting; proto-imperative, or requesting; and ambiguous. Mothers' responses to infants' gestures were coded as object labels, action labels, internal state labels and non-labeling utterances. Infants most often pointed in the proto-declarative and used object extensions in the proto-imperative context. Infants produced pointing and reaching equivalently in the ambiguous context. Mothers' responses included object labels more often in response to points than object extensions. In contrast, mothers provided action labels most ofte... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4509407 Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4509407 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4451912&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21281543%26dopt%3DAbstract This study provides experimental evidence for preschool children's competence in basic information structure, with particular attention to the notions of topic and focus. It investigates their mastery of structural and definiteness distinctions to encode the information status of discourse referents, and seeks to distinguish linguistic competence from cognitive development as the source for children's 'errors'. Evidence comes from a story-telling experiment performed on 45 children acquiring French (between the ages of 2 ; 6·22 and 5 ; 6·15). The article demonstrates continuity between the child and adult systems of basic discourse representation. It further argues that children's definiteness errors are not due to a lack of knowledge of the adult rules of information encoding. Rather, s... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4451912 Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4451912 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4451911&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21281548%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Kunnari S, Savinainen-Makkonen T, Leonard LB, Mäkinen L, Tolonen AK, Luotonen M, Leinonen E ABSTRACTChildren with specific language impairment (SLI) vary widely in their ability to use tense/agreement inflections depending on the type of language being acquired, a fact that current accounts of SLI have tried to explain. Finnish provides an important test case for these accounts because: (1) verbs in the first and second person permit null subjects whereas verbs in the third person do not; and (2) tense and agreement inflections are agglutinating and thus one type of inflection can appear without the other. Probes were used to compare the verb inflection use of Finnish-speaking children with SLI, and both age-matched and younger typically developing children. The children with... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4451911 Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0100 4451911 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4242576&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21134319%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Szagun G ABSTRACTThe acquisition of German participle inflection was investigated using spontaneous speech samples from six children between 1 ; 4 and 3 ; 8 and ten children between 1 ; 4 and 2 ; 10 recorded longitudinally at regular intervals. Child-directed speech was also analyzed. In adult and child speech weak participles were significantly more frequent than strong participles. Children's errors involved all elements of participle marking. All error types, including over-regularization, occurred from the beginning alongside correct forms. Errors decreased significantly over age. Over-regularization in the sense of -t affixation on strong verbs was significantly more frequent than erroneous -en suffixation on weak verbs but not than prefix and suffix omission. On particip... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4242576 Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4242576 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4242577&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21126387%26dopt%3DAbstract We present a series of experiments that compare two ambient-language properties, token and type frequency, as they contribute to phonotactic learning. Token frequency is the raw number of exposures children have to a particular pattern; type frequency refers to a count of abstract entities, such as unique words. Our results suggest that children's production accuracy is most sensitive to a combination of type and token frequency: children were able to generalize a target phonotactic sequence to a new word when familiarized with multiple word-types across tokens from multiple talkers, but not when presented with either word-types with no talker variability or multiple talker-tokens of a single word. PMID: 21126387 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4242577 Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4242577 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4211654&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21108867%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Salomo D, Graf E, Lieven E, Tomasello M ABSTRACTThree- and four-year-old children were asked predicate-focus questions ('What's X doing?') about a scene in which an agent performed an action on a patient. We varied: (i) whether (or not) the preceding discourse context, which established the patient as given information, was available for the questioner; and (ii) whether (or not) the patient was perceptually available to the questioner when she asked the question. The main finding in our study differs from those of previous studies since it suggests that children are sensitive to the perceptual context at an earlier age than they are to previous discourse context if they need to take the questioner's perspective into account. Our finding indicates that, while children are in pr... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4211654 Fri, 26 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4211654 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4211656&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21092370%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examined the extent and nature of lexical tone deficit in Chinese developmental dyslexia. Twenty Cantonese-speaking Chinese dyslexic children (mean age 8 ; 11) were compared to twenty average readers of the same age (CA control group, mean age 8 ; 11), and another twenty younger average readers of the same word reading level (RL control group, mean age 7 ; 4) on different measures of lexical tone awareness, rhyme awareness and visual-verbal paired-associate learning. Results showed that the Chinese dyslexic children performed significantly worse than the CA but not the RL control groups in nearly all the lexical tone and rhyme awareness measures. Analyses of individual performance demonstrated that over one-third of the dyslexic children showed a deficit in some aspects of tone ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4211656 Mon, 22 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4211656 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4211655&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21092371%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Mather E, Plunkett K ABSTRACTStudies report that infants as young as 1 ; 3 to 1 ; 5 will seek out a novel object in response to hearing a novel label (e.g. Halberda, 2003; Markman, Wasow & Hansen, 2003). This behaviour is commonly known as the 'mutual exclusivity' response (Markman, 1989; 1990). However, evidence for mutual exclusivity does not imply that the infant has associated a novel label with a novel object. We used an intermodal preferential looking task to investigate whether infants aged 1 ; 4 could use mutual exclusivity to guide their association of novel labels with novel objects. The results show that infants can successfully map a novel label onto a novel object, provided that the novel label has no familiar phonological neighbours. Therefore, as early as 1 ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4211655 Mon, 22 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4211655 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4163611&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21062525%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Naigles LR, Maltempo A ABSTRACTTwo-, three- and four-year-old English learners enacted sentences that were missing a direct object (e.g. *The zebra brings.). Previous work has indicated that preschoolers faced with such ungrammatical sentences consistently alter the usual meaning of the verb to fit the syntactic frame (enacting 'zebra comes'); older children are more likely to repair the syntax to fit the meaning of the verb (enacting 'zebra brings something'; Naigles, Gleitman & Gleitman, 1993). We investigated whether young children performed more repairs if an informative context preceded the ungrammatical sentences. Test sentences were preceded by short vignettes that created a relationship between three characters. Children repaired more sentences than had been found ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4163611 Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4163611 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4163612&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21054915%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: O'Shannessy C ABSTRACTThe study examines strategies multilingual children use to interpret grammatical relations, focusing on their two primary languages, Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri. Both languages use mixed systems for indicating grammatical relations. In both languages ergative-absolutive case-marking indicates core arguments, but to different extents in each language. In Lajamanu Warlpiri, pronominal clitics in a nominative-accusative pattern also indicate core arguments, and in Light Warlpiri word order in a nominative-accusative pattern partially does so. The study asks which sentence interpretation strategies children rely on most, when they learn to rely on them and whether cross-linguistic influences are seen. Children aged 5 ; 0, 7 ; 0 and 9 ; 0 and adults s... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4163612 Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4163612 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4163613&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21050500%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examined the proficiency of these children and their typically developing peers with the coordination of tense and aspect markers in two-clause sentences. Scenarios designed to elicit past tense were presented to five- to eight-year-old children with SLI (n=14) and their normally developing age- and MLU-matched peers (n=24) to examine the omission of tense markers in complex sentences (Owen, 2010). Responses with overt tense/aspect morphology in both clauses were recoded for how similar the use of tense and aspect was across the two clauses. Tense and aspect concordance was high across both sentence types, but aspect-only mismatches were more common than tense mismatches. The three groups of children did not differ from each other on any comparisons. Coordination of temporal inf... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4163613 Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4163613 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4134546&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21040621%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Weighall AR, Altmann GT ABSTRACTAn auditory sentence comprehension task investigated the extent to which the integration of contextual and structural cues was mediated by verbal memory span with 32 English-speaking six- to eight-year-old children. Spoken relative clause sentences were accompanied by visual context pictures which fully (depicting the actions described within the relative clause) or partially (depicting several referents) met the pragmatic assumptions of relativization. Comprehension of the main and relative clauses of centre-embedded and right-branching structures was compared for each context. Pragmatically appropriate contexts exerted a positive effect on relative clause comprehension, but children with higher memory spans demonstrated a further benefit for m... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4134546 Tue, 02 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4134546 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4134547&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21034524%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Mani N, Plunkett K ABSTRACTChildren look longer at a familiar object when presented with either correct pronunciations or small mispronunciations of consonants in the object's label, but not following larger mispronunciations. The current article examines whether children display a similar graded sensitivity to different degrees of mispronunciations of the vowels in familiar words, by testing children's sensitivity to 1-feature, 2-feature and 3-feature mispronunciations of the vowels of familiar labels: Children aged 1 ; 6 did not show a graded sensitivity to vowel mispronunciations, even when the trial length was increased to allow them more time to form a response. Two-year-olds displayed a robust sensitivity to increases in vowel mispronunciation size, differentiating betwe... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4134547 Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4134547 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4120897&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D21029504%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study, we asked if acquisition of French liaison/elision can be explained in a constructivist framework. We tested if children's liaison/elision was sensitive to co-occurrence and meaning. We expected children's use of liaison/elision to correlate with their experience with French (estimated by vocabulary). Thirty-one French-speaking children (twenty-five bilingual) between three and five years old produced familiar vowel-initial words, following four words: (1) un, (2) deux, (3) un petit and (4) beaucoup de. The children with smaller French vocabularies produced many vowel-initial words and some consonant-initial chunks. The children with larger French vocabularies produced liaison/elision correctly across several frames while associating a number interpretation with liaised conso... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4120897 Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0100 4120897 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4087293&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20950495%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Stoel-Gammon C ABSTRACTOur understanding of the relationships between lexical and phonological development has been enhanced in recent years by increased interest in this area from language scientists, psychologists and phonologists. This review article provides a summary of research, highlighting similarities and differences across studies. It is suggested that the research falls into two categories with different goals and different methodological approaches: (1) child-centered studies that examine the influences active in the prelinguistic and early-word period, emphasizing individual developmental patterns and the active role played by the child; and (2) studies inspired by research on word processing in adults; these focus on the effects of the phonological and lexical ch... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4087293 Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4087293 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4087292&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20950496%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Bleses D, Basbøll H, Lum J, Vach W PMID: 20950496 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4087292 Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4087292 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4087291&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20950497%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Zamuner TS PMID: 20950497 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4087291 Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4087291 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4087290&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20950498%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Velleman SL PMID: 20950498 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4087290 Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4087290 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4087289&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20950499%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Kehoe M Stoel-Gammon (this issue) highlights the close and symbiotic association that exists between the lexical and phonological domains in early linguistic development. Her comprehensive review considers two bodies of literature: (1) child-centred studies; and (2) studies based on adult psycholinguistic research. Within the child-centred studies, both prelinguistic and early meaningful speech is examined. Stoel-Gammon organizes her review of child-centred studies around a series of postulates that capture the associations between lexical and phonological development and here she focuses primarily on normally developing children acquiring American English. My intention is not to question these postulates, which are based on established research findings, but to extend them be... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4087289 Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4087289 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4087288&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20950500%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Storkel HL PMID: 20950500 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4087288 Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4087288 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4087287&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20950501%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Vihman M, Keren-Portnoy T Carol Stoel-Gammon has made a real contribution in bringing together two fields that are not generally jointly addressed. Like Stoel-Gammon, we have long focused on individual differences in phonological development (e.g. Vihman, Ferguson & Elbert, 1986; Vihman, Boysson-Bardies, Durand & Sundberg, 1994; Keren-Portnoy, Majorano & Vihman, 2008). And like her, we have been closely concerned with the relationship between lexical and phonological learning. Accordingly, we will focus our discussion on two areas covered by Stoel-Gammon (this issue) on which our current work may shed some additional light. PMID: 20950501 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4087287 Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4087287 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4087286&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20950502%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Edwards J, Munson B, Beckman ME PMID: 20950502 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4087286 Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4087286 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4087285&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20950503%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Demuth K PMID: 20950503 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4087285 Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4087285 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4087284&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20950504%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Hoff E, Parra M PMID: 20950504 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4087284 Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4087284 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4087283&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20950518%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Deacon SH, Leblanc D, Sabourin C ABSTRACTIn many learning situations, we need to determine to which cues to attend, particularly in cases when these cues conflict. These conflicts appear often in English orthography. In two experiments, we asked children to spell two-syllable words that varied on two dimensions: morphological and orthographic structure. In one set of these words, the two sources of information conflicted. Results of Experiment 1 suggest that seven- to nine-year-old children are sensitive to both orthographic and morphological dimensions of words, and that this dual sensitivity sometimes leads to correct spelling and sometimes to incorrect spelling. Results of Experiment 2 suggest that orthographic information dominates young (six-year-old) children's spelling,... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4087283 Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100 4087283 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3960641&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20807456%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Oshima-Takane Y, Ariyama J, Kobayashi T, Katerelos M, Poulin-Dubois D ABSTRACTThe present study investigated whether children's representations of morphosyntactic information are abstract enough to guide early verb learning. Using an infant-controlled habituation paradigm with a switch design, Japanese-speaking children aged 1 ; 8 were habituated to two different events in which an object was engaging in an action. Each event was paired with a novel word embedded in a single intransitive verb sentence frame. The results indicated that only 40% of the children were able to map a novel verb onto the action when the mapping task was complex. However, by simplifying the mapping task, 88% of the children succeeded in verb-action mapping. There were no differences in perceptual sali... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3960641 Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3960641 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3908450&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20738890%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Huang YT, Snedeker J ABSTRACTRecent work in adult psycholinguistics has demonstrated that activation of semantic representations begins long before phonological processing is complete. This incremental propagation of information across multiple levels of analysis is a hallmark of adult language processing but how does this ability develop? In two experiments, we elicit measures of incremental activation of semantic representations during word recognition in children. Five-year-olds were instructed to select a target (logs) while their eye-movements were measured to a competitor (key) that was semantically related to an absent phonological associate (lock). We found that, like adults, children made increased looks to competitors relative to unrelated control items. However, unl... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3908450 Wed, 25 Aug 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3908450 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3908449&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20738891%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Paradis J, Nicoladis E, Crago M, Genesee F ABSTRACTBilingual and monolingual children's (mean age=4;10) elicited production of the past tense in both English and French was examined in order to test predictions from Usage-Based theory regarding the sensitivity of children's acquisition rates to input factors such as variation in exposure time and the type/token frequency of morphosyntactic structures. Both bilingual and monolingual children were less accurate with irregular than regular past tense forms in both languages. Bilingual children, as a group, were less accurate than monolinguals with the English regular and irregular past tense, and with the French irregular past tense, but not with the French regular past tense. However, bilingual children were as accurate as monol... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3908449 Wed, 25 Aug 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3908449 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3908448&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20738892%26dopt%3DAbstract This study tracked the order in which ten beginning spellers (M age=5 ; 05; SD=0.21 years) mastered the correct spellings of common inflectional suffixes in English. Spellings from children's journals from kindergarten and grade 1 were coded. An inflectional suffix was judged to be mastered when children spelled it accurately in 90 percent of the contexts in which it was grammatically required, a criterion used to study the order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes in oral language. The results indicated that the order in which children learned to spell inflectional suffixes correctly is similar to the order in which they learn to use them in oral language, before school age. Discrepancies between the order of mastery for inflectional suffixes in written and oral language are discussed... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3908448 Wed, 25 Aug 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3908448 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3773353&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20633311%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Keren-Portnoy T, Keren M ABSTRACTThis paper sets out to show how facilitation between different clause structures operates over time in syntax acquisition. The phenomenon of facilitation within given structures has been widely documented, yet inter-structure facilitation has rarely been reported so far. Our findings are based on the naturalistic production corpora of six toddlers learning Hebrew as their first language. We use regression analysis, a method that has not been used to study this phenomenon. We find that the proportion of errors among the earliest produced clauses in a structure is related to the degree of acceleration of that structure's learning curve; that with the accretion of structures the proportion of errors among the first clauses of new structures declin... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3773353 Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3773353 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3741216&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20609279%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Curtin S ABSTRACTLexical stress is useful for a number of language learning tasks. In particular, it helps infants segment the speech stream and identify phonetic contrasts. Recent work has demonstrated that infants aged 1 ; 0 can learn two novel words differing only in their stress pattern. In the current study, we ask whether infants aged 1 ; 0 store stress information in their representations of words even when it not required for the task. To this end, we taught infants novel, three-syllable word-object pairings. At test, we manipulated the word by presenting infants with forms that shared the stress pattern of the familiar words but differed in the segments, and forms that shared the segments of the familiar word but differed in the stress pattern. Our findings reveal tha... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3741216 Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3741216 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3741215&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20609280%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examined relationships between prelinguistic variables from the MacArthur-Bates CDI and the development of language comprehension and production in children with autism. Forty-four children were assessed at baseline and 6, 12, 24, 33 and 53 months later. Growth Curve Modeling was used to examine the extent to which three composite CDI variables and three CDI item groupings predicted language development over 4-5 years. When examined individually, prespeech and early gestures were significant predictors of change for both comprehension and production, but late gestures were not. In addition, initiating joint attention and games and routines predicted comprehension and production over 4-5 years, and conventional gestures also predicted production. When all factors were considered ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3741215 Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3741215 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3741214&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20609281%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Narasimhan B, Gullberg M ABSTRACTWe investigate how Tamil- and Dutch-speaking adults and four- to five-year-old children use caused posture verbs ('lay/stand a bottle on a table') to label placement events in which objects are oriented vertically or horizontally. Tamil caused posture verbs consist of morphemes that individually label the causal and result subevents (nikka veyyii 'make stand'; paDka veyyii 'make lie'), occurring in situational and discourse contexts where object orientation is at issue. Dutch caused posture verbs are less semantically transparent: they are monomorphemic (zetten 'set/stand'; leggen 'lay'), often occurring in contexts where factors other than object orientation determine use. Caused posture verbs occur rarely in Tamil input corpora; in Dutch inpu... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3741214 Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3741214 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3741213&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20609282%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Storkel HL, Hoover JR ABSTRACTThe goal of this study was to examine the influence of part-word phonotactic probability/neighborhood density on word learning by preschool children with normal vocabularies that varied in size. Ninety-eight children (age 2 ; 11-6 ; 0) were taught consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) nonwords orthogonally varying in the probability/density of the CV (i.e. body) and VC (i.e. rhyme). Learning was measured via picture naming. Children with the lowest expressive vocabulary scores showed no effect of either CV or VC probability/density, although floor effects could not be ruled out. In contrast, children with low or high expressive vocabulary scores demonstrated sensitivity to part-word probability/density with the nature of the effect varying by group. Chi... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3741213 Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3741213 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3700071&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20576172%26dopt%3DAbstract This study tested the effect of the phoneme's linguistic affiliation (Standard Arabic versus Spoken Arabic) on phoneme recognition among five-year-old Arabic native speaking kindergarteners (N=60). Using a picture selection task of words beginning with the same phoneme, and through careful manipulation of the phonological properties of target phonemes and distractors, the study showed that children's recognition of Standard phonemes was poorer than that of Spoken phonemes. This finding was interpreted as indicating a deficiency in the phonological representations of Standard words. Next, the study tested two hypotheses regarding the specific consequences of under-specified phonological representations: phonological encoding versus phonological processing. These hypotheses were addressed th... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3700071 Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3700071 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3622573&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20513256%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Dinnsen DA, Gierut JA, Morrisette ML, Green CR, Farris-Trimble AW ABSTRACTError patterns in children's phonological development are often described as simplifying processes that can interact with one another with different consequences. Some interactions limit the applicability of an error pattern, and others extend it to more words. Theories predict that error patterns interact to their full potential. While specific interactions have been documented for certain pairs of processes, no developmental study has shown that the range of typologically predicted interactions occurs for those processes. To determine whether this anomaly is an accidental gap or a systematic peculiarity of particular error patterns, two commonly occurring processes were considered, namely Deaffrication... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3622573 Mon, 31 May 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3622573 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3512210&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20420743%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Macwhinney B PMID: 20420743 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3512210 Thu, 29 Apr 2010 05:48:09 +0100 3512210 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3512209&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20420744%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Waterfall HR, Sandbank B, Onnis L, Edelman S This paper reports progress in developing a computer model of language acquisition in the form of (1) a generative grammar that is (2) algorithmically learnable from realistic corpus data, (3) viable in its large-scale quantitative performance and (4) psychologically real. First, we describe new algorithmic methods for unsupervised learning of generative grammars from raw CHILDES data and give an account of the generative performance of the acquired grammars. Next, we summarize findings from recent longitudinal and experimental work that suggests how certain statistically prominent structural properties of child-directed speech may facilitate language acquisition. We then present a series of new analyses of CHILDES data indicating t... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3512209 Thu, 29 Apr 2010 05:48:06 +0100 3512209 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3446158&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20367896%26dopt%3DAbstract We present a hierarchical Bayesian framework for modeling the acquisition of verb argument constructions. It embodies a domain-general approach to learning higher-level knowledge in the form of inductive constraints (or overhypotheses), and has been used to explain other aspects of language development such as the shape bias in learning object names. Here, we demonstrate that the same model captures several phenomena in the acquisition of verb constructions. Our model, like adults in a series of artificial language learning experiments, makes inferences about the distributional statistics of verbs on several levels of abstraction simultaneously. It also produces the qualitative learning patterns displayed by children over the time course of acquisition. These results suggest that the patte... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3446158 Mon, 05 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3446158 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3433362&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20353614%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: VAN Rij J, VAN Rijn H, Hendriks P ABSTRACTIn this paper we discuss a computational cognitive model of children's poor performance on pronoun interpretation (the so-called Delay of Principle B Effect, or DPBE). This cognitive model is based on a theoretical account that attributes the DPBE to children's inability as hearers to also take into account the speaker's perspective. The cognitive model predicts that child hearers are unable to do so because their speed of linguistic processing is too limited to perform this second step in interpretation. We tested this hypothesis empirically in a psycholinguistic study, in which we slowed down the speech rate to give children more time for interpretation, and in a computational simulation study. The results of the two studies confirm ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3433362 Mon, 29 Mar 2010 23:00:00 +0100 3433362 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3404889&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20334718%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Chang A, Sandhofer CM, Adelchanow L, Rottman B ABSTRACTThe present study examined the number-specific parental language input to Mandarin- and English-speaking preschool-aged children. Mandarin and English transcripts from the CHILDES database were examined for amount of numeric speech, specific types of numeric speech and syntactic frames in which numeric speech appeared. The results showed that Mandarin-speaking parents talked about number more frequently than English-speaking parents. Further, the ways in which parents talked about number terms in the two languages was more supportive of a cardinal interpretation in Mandarin than in English. We discuss these results in terms of their implications for numerical understanding and later mathematical performance. PMID: 2033... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3404889 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3404889 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3404888&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20334719%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study, we use corpus analysis and computational modelling techniques to compare two recent accounts of the OI stage: Legate & Yang's (2007) Variational Learning Model and Freudenthal, Pine & Gobet's (2006) Model of Syntax Acquisition in Children. We first assess the extent to which each of these accounts can explain the level of OI errors across five different languages (English, Dutch, German, French and Spanish). We then differentiate between the two accounts by testing their predictions about the relation between children's OI errors and the distribution of infinitival verb forms in the input language. We conclude that, although both accounts fit the cross-linguistic patterning of OI errors reasonably well, only MOSAIC is able to explain why verbs that occur more frequen... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3404888 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3404888 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3404887&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20334720%26dopt%3DAbstract We describe a project whose goal is to annotate the English section of the CHILDES database with grammatical relations in the form of labeled dependency structures. We have produced a corpus of over 18,800 utterances (approximately 65,000 words) with manually curated gold-standard grammatical relation annotations. Using this corpus, we have developed a highly accurate data-driven parser for the English CHILDES data, which we used to automatically annotate the remainder of the English section of CHILDES. We have also extended the parser to Spanish, and are currently working on supporting more languages. The parser and the manually and automatically annotated data are freely available for research purposes. PMID: 20334720 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Lang... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3404887 Thu, 25 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3404887 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3404893&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20307344%26dopt%3DAbstract We present a framework for considering the relative merits and limitations of these various approaches. We then present a model of speech segmentation that aims to reveal important sources of information for speech segmentation, and to capture psycholinguistic constraints on children's language perception. The model constructs a lexicon based on information about utterance boundaries and deduces phonotactic constraints from the discovered lexicon. Compared to other models of speech segmentation, our model performs well in terms of accuracy, computational tractability and the number of components of the model. Finally, our model also reflects the psycholinguistic effects of language learning, in terms of the early advantage for segmentation provided by the child's name, and by revealing the... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3404893 Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3404893 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3404892&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20307345%26dopt%3DAbstract We present a way of representing speech corpora that avoids this assumption, and preserves acoustic variation present in speech. We use this new representation to re-evaluate a key computational model of word segmentation. One finding is that high levels of phonetic variability degrade the model's performance. While robustness to phonetic variability may be intrinsically valuable, this finding needs to be complemented by parallel studies of the actual abilities of children to segment phonetically variable speech. PMID: 20307345 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3404892 Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3404892 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3404891&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20307346%26dopt%3DAbstract We present experimental results from modified versions of Venkataraman's (2001) segmentation model that examine the utility of: (1) language-universal phonotactic cues; (2) language-specific phonotactic cues which must be learned while segmenting utterances; and (3) their combination. We show that the language-specific cue improves segmentation performance overall, but the language-universal phonotactic cue does not, and that their combination results in the most improvement. Not only does this suggest that language-specific constraints can be learned simultaneously with speech segmentation, but it is also consistent with experimental research that shows that there are multiple phonotactic cues helpful to segmentation (e.g. Mattys, Jusczyk, Luce & Morgan, 1999; Mattys & Jusczyk, 20... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3404891 Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3404891 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3404890&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20307347%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examines the interacting roles of implicational markedness and frequency from the joint perspectives of formal linguistic theory, phonological acquisition and computational modeling. The hypothesis that child grammars are rankings of universal constraints, as in Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004), that learning involves a gradual transition from an unmarked initial state to the target grammar, and that order of acquisition is guided by frequency, along the lines of Levelt, Schiller & Levelt (2000), is investigated. The study reviews empirical findings on syllable structure acquisition in Dutch, German, French and English, and presents novel findings on Polish. These comparisons reveal that, to the extent allowed by implicational markedness universals, freq... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3404890 Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3404890 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3351330&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20214842%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Zammit M, Schafer G ABSTRACTTen mothers were observed prospectively, interacting with their infants aged 0 ; 10 in two contexts (picture description and noun description). Maternal communicative behaviours were coded for volubility, gestural production and labelling style. Verbal labelling events were categorized into three exclusive categories: label only; label plus deictic gesture; label plus iconic gesture. We evaluated the predictive relations between maternal communicative style and children's subsequent acquisition of ten target nouns. Strong relations were observed between maternal communicative style and children's acquisition of the target nouns. Further, even controlling for maternal volubility and maternal labelling, maternal use of iconic gestures predicted the ti... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3351330 Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3351330 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3351329&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20214843%26dopt%3DAbstract This study investigates the acquisition of word-initial Korean obstruents (i.e. stops, affricates and fricatives). Korean obstruents are characterized by a three-way contrast among stops and affricates (i.e. fortis, aspirated and lenis) and a two-way fricative contrast (i.e. fortis and lenis). All these obstruents are voiceless word-initially. Cross-sectional data were collected from forty Korean children aged 2 ; 6 (year;month), 3 ; 0, 3 ; 6 and 4 ; 0, and the acquisition patterns of Korean obstruents were explored based on productions of mono- and multisyllabic words. Results confirm the universal patterns: stops were acquired before affricates and fricatives. In terms of order of acquisition across different laryngeal types, lenis stops were the last to be acquired. For Korean fricative... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3351329 Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3351329 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3351331&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20211046%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Pérez-Pereira M, Resches M ABSTRACTThis paper explores the concurrent and predictive validity of the long and short forms of the Galician version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI (IDHC). Forty-two Galician-speaking children were longitudinally evaluated at age 1 ; 6, 2 ; 0 and 4 ; 0. On the first two occasions, the subjects' vocabulary and grammar skills were assessed through the IDHC. Simultaneously, lexical and grammatical measures were obtained from spontaneous speech samples. Standardized measures of general cognitive abilities (WPPSI-R) and receptive and expressive language (RDLS-III) were obtained at age 4 ; 0. Results showed high and significant levels of concurrent and short-term validity of the IDHC. Strong associations were found between lexical development at age 2 ;... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3351331 Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3351331 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3339860&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20202289%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Pelham SD ABSTRACTEnglish-acquiring children frequently make pronoun case errors, while German-acquiring children rarely do. Nonetheless, German-acquiring children frequently make article case errors. It is proposed that when child-directed speech contains a high percentage of case-ambiguous forms, case errors are common in child language; when percentages are low, case errors are rare. Input to English and German children was analyzed for percentage of case-ambiguous personal pronouns on adult tiers of corpora from 24 English-acquiring and 24 German-acquiring children. Also analyzed for German was the percentage of case-ambiguous articles. Case-ambiguous pronouns averaged 63.3% in English, compared with 7.6% in German. The percentage of case-ambiguous articles in German was 7... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3339860 Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3339860 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3335798&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20196901%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Kidd E, Stewart AJ, Serratrice L ABSTRACTIn this paper we report on a visual world eye-tracking experiment that investigated the differing abilities of adults and children to use referential scene information during reanalysis to overcome lexical biases during sentence processing. The results showed that adults incorporated aspects of the referential scene into their parse as soon as it became apparent that a test sentence was syntactically ambiguous, suggesting they considered the two alternative analyses in parallel. In contrast, the children appeared not to reanalyze their initial analysis, even over shorter distances than have been investigated in prior research. We argue that this reflects the children's over-reliance on bottom-up, lexical cues to interpretation. The impl... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3335798 Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3335798 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3267573&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20146831%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Hill EL PMID: 20146831 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3267573 Sat, 13 Feb 2010 08:10:05 +0100 3267573 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3209375&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20096143%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: VAN Heugten M, Johnson EK ABSTRACTDutch, unlike English, contains two gender-marked forms of the definite article. Does the presence of multiple definite article forms lead Dutch learners to be delayed relative to English learners in the acquisition of their determiner system? Using the Preferential Looking Procedure, we found that Dutch-learning children aged 1 ; 7 to 2 ; 0 use articles during sentence comprehension in a fashion comparable to similarly aged English learners. That is, Dutch learners' sentence processing was impaired when a nonsense (se) as opposed to real article (de, het) preceded target words, much like English learners' sentence processing is disrupted by the use of a nonsense article. At the same time, however, gender cues did not help Dutch learners recog... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3209375 Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3209375 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3209374&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20096144%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Dromi E, Zaidman-Zait A ABSTRACTThe Hebrew Parent Questionnaire for Communication and Early Language (HPQ-CEL) was administered by 154 parents of Hebrew-speaking toddlers aged 1 ; 0 to 1 ; 3 (77 boys, 77 girls). The Questionnaire guided parents in observing and rating their toddlers in six contexts at home. The study aimed to identify inter-correlations between toddlers' non-linguistic behaviors that co-occur during the transition to speech. Seven communicative behaviors were extracted from the questionnaire data: Crying, Vocalizations, Collaboration with Adults, Pointing, Words, Joint Engagement in a Peek-a-Boo Game, and Triadic Interaction in Book Reading. Collaboration with Adults and Triadic Interaction in Book Reading yielded more significant correlations than other preli... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3209374 Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3209374 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3209373&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20096145%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Iverson JM ABSTRACTDuring the first eighteen months of life, infants acquire and refine a whole set of new motor skills that significantly change the ways in which the body moves in and interacts with the environment. In this review article, I argue that motor acquisitions provide infants with an opportunity to practice skills relevant to language acquisition before they are needed for that purpose; and that the emergence of new motor skills changes infants' experience with objects and people in ways that are relevant for both general communicative development and the acquisition of language. Implications of this perspective for current views of co-occurring language and motor impairments and for methodology in the field of child language research are also considered. PMID... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3209373 Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3209373 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3200774&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20092661%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Kimbrough Oller D PMID: 20092661 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3200774 Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3200774 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3200773&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20092662%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Smith LB PMID: 20092662 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3200773 Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3200773 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3194251&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20085669%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Taylor CL PMID: 20085669 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3194251 Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3194251 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3194250&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20085670%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Adolph KE, Tamis-Lemonda CS, Karasik LB PMID: 20085670 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3194250 Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0100 3194250 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3119225&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20028598%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Adani F ABSTRACTIn a number of studies, the acquisition of restrictive relative clauses (RCs) shows contrasting findings regarding comprehension and production, with the former usually delayed up to the age of five. As previously claimed in the literature, we suggest that this delay is a task artifact and we present a new procedure for the assessment of restrictive RCs. Data from three- to seven-year-old Italian children were collected and results show that children understand object RCs with preverbal subject in an adult-like manner at four years of age, but some of the three-year-old children were already above chance. Subject relatives show at ceiling performance from three years of age. We consider our results as evidence of continuity between early and adult competence gr... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3119225 Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3119225 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3102455&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20003618%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Vasilyeva M, Waterfall H, Gámez PB, Gómez LE, Bowers E, Shimpi P ABSTRACTPrevious research has used cross-linguistic priming methodology with bilingual adults to explore the nature of their syntactic representations. The present paper extends the use of this methodology to bilingual children to investigate the relation between the syntactic structures of their two languages. Specifically, we examined whether the use of passives by the experimenter in one language primed the subsequent use of passives by the child in the other language. Results showed evidence of syntactic priming from Spanish to English: hearing a Spanish sentence containing a passive led to the increase in children's production of the parallel structure in English. However, there was no priming in t... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3102455 Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3102455 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3102457&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20003576%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Herr-Israel E, McCune L ABSTRACTIn the period between sole use of single words and majority use of multiword utterances, children draw from their existing productive capability and conversational input to facilitate the eventual outcome of majority use of multiword utterances. During this period, children use word combinations that are not yet mature multiword utterances, termed 'successive single-word utterances' (SSWUs). The language development of five children, observed in play with their mothers, was studied longitudinally across the transitional period (age 1 ; 3 to 2 ; 0). Results demonstrate a common developmental trajectory from single words to SSWUs, formed with the support of conversation, to more independent SSWUs, and finally to majority use of multiword utterance... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3102457 Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3102457 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3102456&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D20003577%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Scofield J, Miller A, Hartin T ABSTRACTTwo studies examined whether preschool children preferred to select a moving object over stationary objects when determining the referent of a novel word. In both studies three- and four-year-olds observed three novel objects, one moving object and two stationary objects. In Study 1, children (n=44) were asked to select the object that best matched a novel word. In Study 2, children (n=45) were asked to select the object that best matched a novel fact. Results across the two studies indicated that three- and four-year-olds showed a preference for selecting the moving object and that this preference was similar for both words and facts. These results suggest that preschool children are able to use movement to determine the referent of a no... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3102456 Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3102456 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3072267&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19961658%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study, the auditory-visual speech perception, oro-motor and rule abstraction skills of 62 typically developing two-year olds were assessed and contrasted with the accuracy of their spoken phonology. Measures included auditory-visual speech perception, production of isolated and sequenced oro-motor movements, and verbal and non-verbal rule abstraction. Abilities in all three domains contributed to phonological acquisition. However, the use of atypical phonological rules was associated with lower levels of phonological accuracy and a linear regression indicated that this measure of rule abstraction had greater explanatory power than the measures of input processing and output skill. PMID: 19961658 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3072267 Mon, 07 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3072267 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3056425&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19951451%26dopt%3DAbstract This study explores parents' and children's use of and response to direct or indirect behaviour regulation in a family context. Ten families with two children each were divided into two groups depending on the age of the children (6-7 and 10-11 years or 10-11 and 13-14 years). Video-recorded regulatory dinner talk was transcribed, coded and analysed with regard to directness or indirectness in relation to behavioural outcome. Dinner talk was predominantly direct, but younger children were addressed by direct regulators as two-thirds of all regulators, whereas the opposite was seen with older children. Though children also tended to be direct, younger children used three times as many direct regulators as older ones. Compliance appeared in two-thirds of all direct regulators, but almost one... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3056425 Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3056425 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3056424&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19951452%26dopt%3DAbstract This study compared 12 adults adopted from Korea to the US as young children (all but one prior to age one year) to 13 participants who had no prior exposure to Korean to examine whether relearning can aid in accessing early childhood language memory. All 25 participants were recruited and tested during the second week of first-semester college Korean language classes. They completed a language background questionnaire and interview, a childhood slang task and a Korean phoneme identification task. Results revealed an advantage for adoptee participants in identifying some Korean phonemes, suggesting that some components of early childhood language memory can remain intact despite many years of disuse, and that relearning a language can help in accessing such a memory. PMID: 19951452 [Pu... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3056424 Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3056424 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3036244&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19939328%26dopt%3DAbstract This study explores the form of representational gestures produced by forty-five hearing children (age range 2 ; 0-3 ; 1) asked to label pictures in words. Five pictures depicting objects and five pictures depicting actions which elicited more representational gestures were chosen for more detailed analysis. The range of gestures produced for each item varied from 3 to 27 for a total of 128 gestures. Gestures have been analyzed with the same parameters used to describe signs produced by deaf children: handshape, location and movement. Results show that gestures for a given picture exhibit similarities in many of the parameters across children. Some motor characteristics found in the production of hearing toddlers' gestures are similar to those described for early signs. Implications of thi... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3036244 Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3036244 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3000207&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19912671%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Aljenaie K ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the distribution of imperfective and perfective verb inflections in Kuwaiti Arabic. Spontaneous speech of three children (1 ; 8-3 ; 1) was analyzed for accuracy and error types. The results showed that the verbal inflections appeared correct almost all the time (89-97% of the time). Agreement errors appeared 3-11% of the time. The children did not inflect the verb in obligatory contexts in describing ongoing action 2-12% of the time. It is predicted that children acquiring Arabic would select a default form in place of fully inflected forms. The children used a non-finite form which is identical to the imperfective verbal bare stem to describe ongoing action, which is consistent with Benmamoun's argument (1999, 2000) that the imperfec... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3000207 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3000207 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3000206&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19912672%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study, we investigated how Mandarin-speaking children and adults interpret focus structures like Zhiyou Yuehan chi-le pingguo 'Only John ate an apple' and Shi Yuehan chi-de pingguo 'It is John who ate an apple'. We found that children tended to associate focus operators zhiyou 'only' and shi 'be' with the verb phrase (VP), whereas adults uniquely associated them with the subject noun phrase (NP). To account for this difference, we propose that children initially treat focus operators as adverbials, thus ending up associating them with the VP. In order to assess our proposal, we examined children's understanding of zhiyou-constructions with negation, like Zhiyou Yuehan meiyou chi pingguo 'Only John didn't eat an apple'. It was found that children, like adults, consistently associate... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3000206 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 3000206 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2967874&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19889252%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Henderson AM, Sabbagh MA ABSTRACTParents' use of conventional versus unconventional labels with their two- (n=12), three- (n=12) and four-year-old children (n=12) was assessed as they talked about objects that were either known or unknown to them. For known objects, parents provided typical conventional labels casually during the conversation. For unknown objects, parents were less likely to use typical nouns as labels and marked their labels with additional information suggesting that the labels might be unconventional. Parents marked potentially unconventional labels by providing explicit statements of ignorance and paralinguistic cues of uncertainty. These patterns were strongest when the unknown objects were manufactured as opposed to homemade, possibly because manufacture... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2967874 Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100 2967874 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2947614&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19874639%26dopt%3DAbstract We examined whether preschoolers' ontological knowledge would influence lexical extension. In Experiment 1, four-year-olds were presented with a novel label for either an object with eyes described as an animal, or the same object without eyes described as a tool. In the animal condition, children extended the label to similar-shaped objects, whereas in the tool condition, children extended the label to similar-function objects. In Experiment 2, when four-year-olds were presented with objects with eyes described as tools, they extended the label on the basis of shared function. These experiments suggest that preschoolers' conceptual knowledge guides their lexical extension. PMID: 19874639 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2947614 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100 2947614 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2947613&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19874640%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Tare M, Gelman SA ABSTRACTThe present studies examined factors that influence children's and adults' interpretation of a novel word. Four factors are hypothesized to emphasize that a label refers to a richly structured category (also known as a 'kind'): generic language, internal property attributions, familiar kind labels and absence of a target photograph. In Study 1, for college students (N=125), internal property attributions resulted in more taxonomic and fewer shape responses. In Study 2, for four-year-olds (N=126), the presence of generic language and familiar kind labels resulted in more taxonomic choices. Further, the presence of familiar kind labels resulted in fewer shape choices. The results suggest that, when learning new words, children and adults are sensitive t... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2947613 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100 2947613 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2947612&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19874641%26dopt%3DAbstract This study examines potential predictors of 'precocious talking' (expressive language 90th percentile) at one and two years of age, and of 'stability' in precocious talking across both time periods, drawing on data from a prospective community cohort comprising over 1,800 children. Logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between precocious talking and the following potential predictors: gender, birth order, birth weight, non-English speaking background, socioeconomic status, maternal age, maternal mental health scores, and vocabulary and educational attainment of parents. The strongest predictors of precocity (being female and having a younger mother) warrant further exploration. Overall, however, it appears that precocity in early vocabulary development is not strongly in... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2947612 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100 2947612 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2766622&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19726000%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Marchman VA, Fernald A, Hurtado N ABSTRACTResearch using online comprehension measures with monolingual children shows that speed and accuracy of spoken word recognition are correlated with lexical development. Here we examined speech processing efficiency in relation to vocabulary development in bilingual children learning both Spanish and English (n=26 ; 2 ; 6). Between-language associations were weak: vocabulary size in Spanish was uncorrelated with vocabulary in English, and children's facility in online comprehension in Spanish was unrelated to their facility in English. Instead, efficiency of online processing in one language was significantly related to vocabulary size in that language, after controlling for processing speed and vocabulary size in the other language. Th... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2766622 Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2766622 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2758610&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19719886%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Surian L, Tedoldi M, Siegal M ABSTRACTWe investigated whether access to a sign language affects the development of pragmatic competence in three groups of deaf children aged 6 to 11 years: native signers from deaf families receiving bimodal/bilingual instruction, native signers from deaf families receiving oralist instruction and late signers from hearing families receiving oralist instruction. The performance of these children was compared to a group of hearing children aged 6 to 7 years on a test designed to assess sensitivity to violations of conversational maxims. Native signers with bimodal/bilingual instruction were as able as the hearing children to detect violations that concern truthfulness (Maxim of Quality) and relevance (Maxim of Relation). On items involving these... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2758610 Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2758610 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2734731&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19698206%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Leonard LB, Deevy P ABSTRACTThe aim of this study was to determine whether children with specific language impairment (SLI) are sensitive to completion cues in their comprehension of tense. In two experiments, children with SLI (ages 4 ; 1 to 6 ; 4) and typically developing (TD) children (ages 3 ; 5 to 6 ; 5) participated in a sentence-to-scene matching task adapted from Wagner (2001). Sentences were in either present or past progressive and used telic predicates. Actions were performed twice in succession; the action was either completed or not completed in the first instance. In both experiments, the children with SLI were less accurate than the TD children, showing more difficulty with past than present progressive, regardless of completion cues. The TD children were less a... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2734731 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2734731 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2734730&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19698207%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Weisleder A, Waxman SR ABSTRACTRecent analyses have revealed that child-directed speech contains distributional regularities that could, in principle, support young children's discovery of distinct grammatical categories (noun, verb, adjective). In particular, a distributional unit known as the frequent frame appears to be especially informative (Mintz, 2003). However, analyses have focused almost exclusively on the distributional information available in English. Because languages differ considerably in how the grammatical forms are marked within utterances, the scarcity of cross-linguistic evidence represents an unfortunate gap. We therefore advance the developmental evidence by analyzing the distributional information available in frequent frames across two languages (Spani... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2734730 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2734730 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2734729&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19698208%26dopt%3DAbstract In conclusion, our study established that a partially atypical trajectory emerged in preterms, showing specific long-term effects of preterm birth on language and literacy development. PMID: 19698208 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2734729 Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2734729 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2571884&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19570317%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Lee SA, Davis B, Macneilage P ABSTRACTThe phonetic characteristics of canonical babbling produced by Korean- and English-learning infants were compared with consonant and vowel frequencies observed in infant-directed speech produced by Korean- and English-speaking mothers. For infant output, babbling samples from six Korean-learning infants were compared with an existing English babbling database (Davis & MacNeilage, 1995). For ambient language comparisons, consonants and vowels in ten Korean and ten English infant-directed speech (IDS) samples were analyzed. The two infant groups demonstrated similar consonant patterns, but showed different vowel patterns from one another. For both languages, infant vowel patterns were related to those of ambient language IDS. Ambient lan... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2571884 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2571884 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2571883&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19570318%26dopt%3DAbstract This report describes the development of CLEX, a new web-based cross-linguistic database for lexical data from adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. CLEX provides tools for a range of analyses within and across languages. It is designed to incorporate additional language datasets easily, and to permit users to define mappings between lexical items in pairs of languages for more specific cross-linguistic comparisons. PMID: 19570318 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2571883 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2571883 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2571882&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19570319%26dopt%3DAbstract This study compared segmental distribution patterns for consonants and vowels in English infant-directed speech (IDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS). A previous study of Korean indicated that segmental patterns of IDS differed from ADS patterns (Lee, Davis & MacNeilage, 2008). The aim of the current study was to determine whether such differences in Korean are universal or language-specific. Results indicate that consonant distribution patterns of English IDS were significantly different from English ADS. Speakers who used IDS produced fewer fricatives, affricates, nasals and liquids, but more stops and glides, than speakers who used ADS. In terms of vowels, IDS speakers produced more high-back vowels /u / and /I/ diphthongs than ADS speakers. These results indicate both general trend... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2571882 Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2571882 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542964&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19523260%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Kyratzis A, Ross TS, Koymen SB ABSTRACTChildren are believed to construct their causal theories through talk and interaction, but with the exception of a few studies, little or nothing is known about how young children justify and build theories of the world together with same-age peers through naturally occurring interaction, Children's sensitivity to when a pair or group of interlocutors who interact frequently together feel that a justification is needed, is an index of developing pragmatic competence (Goetz & Shatz, 1999) and may be influenced by interactive goals and gender identity positioning. Studies suggest that salient contexts for justifications for young children are disagreement and control (e.g. Veneziano & Sinclair, 1995) but researchers have been less r... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542964 Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542964 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542963&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19523261%26dopt%3DAbstract This study analyzes the acquisition of relative clauses in Japanese to determine the semantic and functional characteristics of children's relative clauses in spontaneous speech. Longitudinal data from five Japanese children are analyzed and compared with English data (Diessel & Tomasello, 2000). The results show that the relative clauses produced by Japanese children predominantly have stative/attributive predicates. Additionally, early relative clauses in Japanese are often used to identify a referent that is not present in the context of interaction. These findings contrast with Diessel & Tomasello's (2000) English data, and possible explanations include the input that children are exposed to, which reflects typological characteristics of noun modification in Japanese. PMID:... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542963 Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542963 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542962&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19523262%26dopt%3DAbstract We describe and interpret several regularities in these patterns for two groups of children ('young': three-five-year-olds; and 'older': six-eight-year-olds) and an adult comparison group. The evidence indicates a strong correspondence of adult and child responses to structural complexity, both in terms of global fluency measures and in terms of more detailed indicators of planning load. In addition, we report some specific contrasts in the patterning for children and adults that suggest disparities in processing resources and/or in local planning strategies. PMID: 19523262 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542962 Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542962 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542961&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19523263%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Jaswal VK ABSTRACTWhen they see a familiar object and an unfamiliar one, and are asked to select the referent of a novel label, children usually choose the unfamiliar object. We asked whether this 'disambiguation effect' reflects an expectation that each object has just one label (mutual exclusivity), or an expectation about the intent of the speaker who uses a novel label. In Study 1, when a speaker gazed at or pointed toward the familiar object in a novel-familiar pair, children aged 2 ; 6 (N=64) selected that object in response to a neutral request, but were much less likely to do so in response to a label request. In Study 2, when a speaker both gazed at and pointed toward the familiar object, toddlers (N=16) overwhelmingly selected the familiar object in response to a lab... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542961 Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542961 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542960&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19523264%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Glenwright M, Pexman PM ABSTRACTAdults distinguish between ironic remarks directed at targets (sarcasm) and ironic remarks not directed at specific targets. We investigated the development of children's appreciation for this distinction by presenting these speech acts to 71 five- to six-year-olds and 71 nine- to ten-year-olds. Five- to six-year-olds were beginning to understand the non-literal meanings of sarcastic speakers and ironic speakers but did not distinguish ironic and sarcastic speakers' intentions. Nine- to ten-year-olds were more accurate at understanding sarcastic and ironic speakers and they distinguished these speakers' intentions, rating sarcastic criticisms as more 'mean' than ironic criticisms. These results show that children can determine the non-literal me... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542960 Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542960 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542967&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19490747%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Fais L, Kajikawa S, Amano S, Werker JF ABSTRACTIn this work, we examine a context in which a conflict arises between two roles that infant-directed speech (IDS) plays: making language structure salient and modeling the adult form of a language. Vowel devoicing in fluent adult Japanese creates violations of the canonical Japanese consonant-vowel word structure pattern by systematically devoicing particular vowels, yielding surface consonant clusters. We measured vowel devoicing rates in a corpus of infant- and adult-directed Japanese speech, for both read and spontaneous speech, and found that the mothers in our study preserve the fluent adult form of the language and mask underlying phonological structure by devoicing vowels in infant-directed speech at virtually the same rate... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542967 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542967 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542966&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19490748%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Chen LM, Kent RD ABSTRACTThe early development of vocalic and consonantal production in Mandarin-learning infants was studied at the transition from babbling to producing first words. Spontaneous vocalizations were recorded for 24 infants grouped by age: G1 (0 ; 7 to 1 ; 0) and G2 (1 ; 1 to 1 ; 6). Additionally, the infant-directed speech of 24 caregivers was recorded during natural infant-adult interactions to infer language-specific effects. Data were phonetically transcribed according to broad categories of vowels and consonants. Vocalic development, in comparison with reports for children of other linguistic environments, exhibited two universal patterns: the prominence of [] and [], and the predominance of low and mid vowels over high vowels. Language-specific patterns we... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542966 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542966 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542965&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19490749%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Krott A, Gagné CL, Nicoladis E ABSTRACTThe present study investigates children's bias when interpreting novel noun-noun compounds (e.g. kig donka) that refer to combinations of novel objects (kig and donka). More specifically, it investigates children's understanding of modifier-head relations of the compounds and their preference for HAS or LOCATED relations (e.g. a donka that HAS a kig or a donka that is LOCATED near a kig) rather than a FOR relation (e.g. a donka that is used FOR kigs). In a forced-choice paradigm, two- and three-year-olds preferred interpretations with HAS/LOCATED relations, while five-year-olds and adults showed no preference for either interpretation. We discuss possible explanations for this preference and its relation to another word learning bias... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542965 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542965 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2542968&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19435545%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Tardif T, Fletcher P, Liang W, Kaciroti N ABSTRACTParent report instruments adapted from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) examined vocabulary development in children aged 0 ; 8 to 2 ; 6 for two Chinese languages, Mandarin (n=1694) and Cantonese (n=1625). Parental reports suggested higher overall scores for Mandarin- than for Cantonese-speaking children from approximately 1 ; 4 onward. Factors relevant to the difference were only-child status, monolingual households and caregiver education. In addition to the comparison of vocabulary scores overall, the development of noun classifiers, grammatical function words common to the two languages, was assessed both in terms of the age and the vocabulary size at which these terms are acquired. Whereas age... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2542968 Tue, 12 May 2009 23:00:00 +0100 2542968 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2320752&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19327196%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Arnon I ABSTRACTChildren find object relative clauses difficult. They show poor comprehension that lags behind production into their fifth year. This finding has shaped models of relative clause acquisition, with appeals to processing heuristics or syntactic preferences to explain why object relatives are more difficult than subject relatives. Two studies here suggest that children (age 4 ; 6) do not find all object relatives difficult: a corpus study shows that children most often hear and produce object relatives with pronominal subjects. But they are most often tested on ones with lexical-NP subjects (e.g. The nurse that the girl is drawing). When tested on object relatives with pronominal subjects (e.g. The nurse that I am drawing), similar to those they actually hear and ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2320752 Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2320752 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2320767&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19323857%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Simon E ABSTRACTThis paper reports the results of a longitudinal case study examining the acquisition of the English voice system by a three-year-old native speaker of Dutch. The study aims to examine whether the child develops two different phonetic systems or uses just one system for both languages, and compares the early L2 acquisition process with L1, simultaneous bilingual and late L2 acquisition. The results reveal that the child successfully acquires the English contrast between short-lag and long-lag stops, but gradually changes the Dutch system, which contrasts prevoiced with short-lag stops, into the direction of the English system. PMID: 19323857 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2320767 Fri, 27 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2320767 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2320763&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19323858%26dopt%3DAbstract Authors: Aoyama K, Peters AM, Winchester KS ABSTRACTWe investigated developmental changes during the transition from one-word to two-word production, focusing on strategies to lengthen utterances phonologically and to control utterances suprasegmentally. We hypothesized that there is a period of reorganization at the onset of word combinations indicated by decreases in both filler syllables (Fillers) and final syllable lengthening (FSL). The data are from a visually impaired child (Seth) between 1 ; 6.21 and 1 ; 10.26. Seth produced many Fillers until 1 ; 9 when their number decreased for about two weeks after which they changed in nature. FSL was observed until 1 ; 8, but diminished at 1 ; 9. These two regressions coincide with the onset of word combination. PMID: 19323858 [PubMed... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2320763 Fri, 27 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2320763 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2320757&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19323859%26dopt%3DAbstract This study explored the ability of three- and four-year-old children without disabilities to perform tasks involving sequences of graphic symbols. Thirty participants were asked to transpose spoken simple sentences into graphic symbols by selecting individual symbols corresponding to the spoken words, and to interpret graphic symbol utterances by selecting one of four photographs corresponding to a sequence of three graphic symbols. The results showed that these were not simple tasks for the participants, and few of them performed in the expected manner - only one in transposition, and only one-third of participants in interpretation. Individual response strategies in some cases lead to contrasting response patterns. Children at this age level have not yet developed the skills required to ... Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2320757 Fri, 27 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2320757 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2267242&cid=s_37096_52_f&fid=37096&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Ftmpl%3DNoSidebarfile%26db%3DPubMed%26cmd%3DRetrieve%26list_uids%3D19281635%26dopt%3DAbstract In this study, we examined whether or not infants can access subtle prosodic information such as lexical stress in a word learning task. We tested infants younger than 1 ; 2 to see if they could learn two new word-object associations that differ only in stress pattern (Sww versus wSw). Our results are the first to demonstrate that, even without contextual support, infants at 1 ; 0 succeed at this task, suggesting that the salient acoustic properties associated with lexical stress facilitate word-object associative learning. PMID: 19281635 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Journal of Child Language) Journal of Child Language journals http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2267242 Fri, 13 Mar 2009 04:00:00 +0100 2267242