First Language recent issues

Telephone-mediated communication effects on young children's oral and written narratives

Cameron, C. A., Hutchison, J. — 2009-09-29

This study tested the effectiveness of a telephone-mediated language intervention on enhancing young children’s recontextualization processes in narrative expression. A four-week training program was incorporated into a primary school language-arts curriculum to investigate whether telephone experience designed to heighten listener awareness would augment oral and written narrative skill development. Findings supported predictions that telephone experience would affect both oral and written narrative expression. The telephone intervention enhanced oral psycholinguistic and narrative productivity over the face-to-face comparison treatment. Older students wrote significantly more sophisticated stories than younger students and the telephone enriched the written narratives of older children more than did in-person training. These findings advance theory and highlight educational benefits of a focus on recontextualization processes in distanced communication for understanding and advancing the role of audience awareness in emergent literacy development.

Information structural constraints on children's early language production: The acquisition of the focus particle auch ('also') in German-learning 12- to 36-month-olds

Muller, A., Hohle, B., Schmitz, M., Weissenborn, J. — 2009-09-29

This article presents new findings for the acquisition of the focus particle auch (‘also’) in German-learning children. In a longitudinal study with 11 children between 1;00 and 3;00 years of age complemented by two experiments with children aged 2;4 and 2;8, the authors investigated children’s production of the accented and unaccented auch. The results confirm earlier findings of a temporal delay between the first occurrences of both auch-variants. Based on the empirical findings, an account for this asymmetry is proposed that relates it to a more general developmental tendency that is characterized by a growing linguistic explicitness in embedding a given utterance in its discourse context. It is suggested that the observed delay is caused by the type of relation between the particle and its related constituent: in contrast to the accented auch the unaccented auch is anaphorically related to the sentence topic. It is proposed that the initial omission reflects a general tendency in early child language to drop topic material.

'I like Barney': Preschoolers' spontaneous conversational initiations with peers

O'Neill, D. K., Main, R. M., Ziemski, R. A. — 2009-09-29

In the absence of scaffolding provided by adults or a play situation, what topics will preschoolers raise in attempting to begin conversations with each other? This study provides a first in-depth examination of preschoolers’ peer-to-peer conversational initiations. The snack-time conversations of a class of 25 preschool children were videotaped bi-weekly for 21 weeks; 507 conversational initiations were identified and classified according to a detailed coding scheme that included utterance type (e.g., comment, question), person or object referent, person referenced (e.g., self, listener), and, of particular interest, reference to mental states. Of all initiations, 77.5% referenced persons (41.2% listener) and almost 30% referenced mental states, suggesting preschoolers are using their developing understanding of mind in finding common ground with peers.

Social factors in the acquisition of a new word order

Chang, F., Kobayashi, T., Amano, S. — 2009-09-29

Present syntax acquisition tasks are not optimal for studying how children learn a new syntactic constraint and generalize it in sentence production. To address this issue, this study modified Akhtar’s production task where novel word orders were learned, so that it was more socially natural. Three- and four-year-old children were tested in this new task and the role of input factors was assessed. The new task was more effective at eliciting the novel word order, but the role of input factors differed from earlier studies. To trace the source of these differences, the study manipulated the social features directly in a second experiment. The results suggest that social knowledge contextualizes the influence of input factors in syntax acquisition.

Five-year-olds' book talk and story retelling: Contributions of mother--child joint bookreading

Kang, J. Y., Kim, Y.-S., Pan, B. A. — 2009-07-13

This study examined the participation of preschool children (mean age 5;1) in two literacy-related activities — talking about a book with their mothers and subsequent independent retelling of the story. Sixty-two mother—child dyads from low-income families participated. Analysis of bookreading and story retelling transcripts revealed wide variability in extratextual talk during bookreading by both children and mothers. Children's responsive, but not spontaneous, extratextual book talk was closely associated with maternal types of talk. Children's story retelling skills were not related to the types of talk they produced during bookreading, but were predicted by the extent to which mothers encouraged their active participation during joint bookreading. Implications for bookreading intervention programs are discussed.

Parental input and connective acquisition: A growth curve analysis

van Veen, R., Evers-Vermeul, J., Sanders, T., van den Bergh, H. — 2009-07-13

In this study, the influence of parental input on the acquisition of discourse connectives was investigated. Three factors were hypothesized to play a role in contributing to the course of language acquisition: first, an increase in age, and hence, an increase in conceptual abilities; second, short-term frequency effects (effects of parental input in the space of one recording); and third, long-term frequency effects (effects of the cumulative parental input over a longer period of time). The authors developed a growth curve analysis and used this to analyze data from a dense longitudinal corpus of a German boy aged 1;11.12—2;11.27. Results show that each factor has a significant effect on the acquisition of the German connectives aber `but,' damit `so that,' und `and,' weil `because,' and wenn `when' and should always be taken into account when studying connective acquisition. Furthermore, growth curve analysis promises to be an innovative tool to study factors influencing the course of language acquisition.

An investigation into Malay numeral classifier acquisition through an elicited production task

Salehuddin, K., Winskel, H. — 2009-07-13

The act of categorization and labeling is fundamental in human cognition and language development. By studying numeral classifier acquisition, researchers are able to examine how children learn to categorize and label objects in their environment using a constrained framework. The current study investigated the acquisition of eight shape-based numeral classifiers in Malay through an elicited production task in 140 6- to 9-year-old children. The aim was to examine the developmental patterns observed in the production of Malay shape-based numeral classifiers. Results indicated that the ability to produce the correct numeral classifiers is a relatively prolonged process that involves an interaction of a variety factors, including semantic complexity, input frequency, and the formal teaching of numeral classifiers in school.

`I want hold Postman Pat': An investigation into the acquisition of infinitival marker `to'

Kirjavainen, M., Theakston, A., Lieven, E., Tomasello, M. — 2009-07-13

Infinitival-to omission errors (e.g., *I want hold Postman Pat) are produced by many English-speaking children early in development. This article aims to explain these omissions by investigating the emergence of infinitival-to, and its production/omission in obligatory contexts. A series of corpus analyses were conducted on the naturalistic data from one to 13 children between the ages of approximately 2;0 and 3;1 testing three hypotheses from two theoretical viewpoints. The data suggest that the errors are associated with different verb sequences (e.g., going-to and going-X) and their frequencies in the language to which children are exposed. The article concludes that these constructions compete for output when children are producing those verbs and that this supports the usage-based/constructivist account of the omission errors.

Book Review: The bilingual child: Early development and language contact By Virginia Yip & Stephen Matthews (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Pp. xxii + 295. ISBN 978-0-52183-617-3 (Hbk), 978-0-52154-476-4 (Pbk)

Kupisch, T. — 2009-07-13

Elicited production of case-marking in Russian and Serbian children: Are diminutive nouns easier to inflect?

Kempe, V., Seva, N., Brooks, P. J., Mironova, N., Pershukova, A., Fedorova, O. — 2009-04-14

Two experiments used an elicited speech-production paradigm to explore children's acquisition of noun case-marking inflections. Russian (N = 24, 2;10— 4;6 years) and Serbian children (N = 24, 2;10—4;11) were asked to produce prepositional phrases requiring genitive or dative inflections of masculine and feminine, familiar and novel, simplex (vaza [Ru/Se: vase]) and diminutive (Ru: vazochka, Se: vazica) nouns. Across languages, children produced fewer case-marking errors with familiar compared to novel nouns, and diminutive compared to simplex nouns. The diminutive advantage occurred despite a markedly lower frequency of diminutive usage in Serbian than Russian child-directed speech. This suggests that in acquiring richly inflected languages, children most readily construct low-level generalizations of inflectional changes applying to morpho-phonologically homogeneous clusters of words like diminutives.

The development of other-related conversational skills: A case study of conversational repair during the early years

Forrester, M. A., Cherington, S. M. — 2009-04-14

The analysis of conversational repair provides one route into understanding how young children learn the skills required for participating in talk. One key aspect of repair is the ability to respond appropriately to other participants. Employing a longitudinal case study approach, this article examines in detail the conversational repair skills of one child during the period where she is acquiring core conversational abilities and competencies (from 1;0 to 3;10). Focusing on the development of other-related conversational repair skills, 163 instances of other-related repair were examined and analysed. Extracts highlight the skills the child employed in self-repairs in response to others, as well as when repairing or correcting other people's conversation. The findings indicate that during the early years other-initiated self-repair is a more common occurrence than repairing others' talk. The findings provide insights into the significance of conversational repair for language development during the preschool years.

Preschoolers' use of analogies in referential communication

Iozzi, L., Barbieri, M. S. — 2009-04-14

In referential communication tasks, preschoolers' messages often fail. Children appear to produce `nonconventional' messages involving `idiosyncratic' or `private' meanings. The aim of this study was to examine whether some nonconventional messages are analogies that function to permit children to communicate in the absence of possessing a conventional name for an intended referent. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds were presented a classical referential communication task consisting of `easy-' and `difficult-to-name' sets of items. As predicted, children at both ages produced conventional messages to refer to `easy' stimuli and analogies to refer to the `difficult' stimuli. A second experiment ruled out the possibility that the use of analogies was in fact due to an erroneous categorization of the target stimulus. Together, the results demonstrate that analogical renaming does not stem from an erroneous categorization of the referent but instead may serve as a purposeful communicative strategy.

Some cues are stronger than others: The (non)interpretation of 3rd person present --s as a tense marker by 6- and 7-year-olds

Beyer, T., Hudson Kam, C. L. — 2009-04-14

This article describes two experiments examining how 6- and 7-year-old Standard American English-speaking children interpret 3rd person present —s as a tense marker, as compared to lexical items and past tense —ed. Because —s corresponds to multiple meanings, unlike —ed, it may result in later acquisition. Using an offline picture-choice task (Experiment 1), the study found that while all children successfully comprehended —ed, only the 7-year-olds successfully comprehended —s. Eye-tracking measures (Experiment 2) revealed that the 6-year-olds are actually sensitive to —s, but that it is not yet a particularly strong cue for them. The article argues that offline tasks may underestimate children's developing knowledge.

Do 2-year-olds disambiguate and extend words learned from video?

Scofield, J., Williams, A. — 2009-04-14

This study investigated whether children learned, disambiguated, and extended words presented via video. Eighteen 2-year-olds saw a series of short videos. Each video depicted a novel target object that was labeled with a novel word. Then the target object was replaced on screen with a pair of objects (which varied by condition) and children were asked to select the object that best matched a novel word. In the baseline and disambiguation conditions, children saw the target and a novel distracter. In the extension condition, children saw an exemplar of the target and a novel distracter. Results showed that children selected the target at above chance levels in the baseline condition and the exemplar at above chance levels in the extension condition. Results also showed that children's selection in the disambiguation condition did not differ from chance. Possible reasons for children's inability to disambiguate are discussed.

From implicit to explicit language knowledge in intervention: Introduction to the Special Issue on intervention and metalanguage

Ravid, D., Hora, A. — 2009-01-29

The Special Issue is themed on intervention programs which set educational and clinical goals and use explicit language instruction to achieve them. This introduction to the Special Issue explores the non-obvious relationship between intervention, metalinguistics and the study of developmental psycholinguistics. Intervention is typically designed to remedy and accelerate processes that are assumed to be naturally occurring under optimal circumstances. Beyond employing intervention to test hypotheses in developmental cognitive science, most intervention studies are explicitly constructed to improve impaired or non-optimal language skills. The introduction reviews the two major themes of this issue: the problematic yet uniquely efficacious role of intervention studies in gauging the variables that can be modified to improve language and literacy skills; and the origins and nature of metalinguistic awareness in development. The five papers appearing in this Special Issue each highlight a different facet of the relationship between intervention and metalanguage.

Treatment of syntactic movement in syntactic SLI: A case study

Levy, H., Friedmann, N. — 2009-01-29

We describe a study of syntactic intervention administered to a 12;2-year-old individual with syntactic SLI, who had difficulties in the comprehension and production of structures containing syntactic movement such as relative clauses, object questions, topicalization sentences, and sentences with verb movement. The intervention, comprised of 16 sessions, was based on syntactic theory and included explicit teaching of syntactic movement, relying on a type of syntactic knowledge that was intact — the argument structure of the verb. The participant's performance was assessed before and after treatment, and for some of the tests also during the treatment and 10 months later. The performance was assessed using various tasks that targeted comprehension, repetition and elicitation of semantically reversible sentences. Following treatment, the participant's performance on all structures with syntactic movement showed substantial improvement compared with baseline, in many of the tasks reaching the performance of the age-matched control group. Treatment of phrasal movement resulted not only in improvement in treated structures, but also in generalization to untrained structures: although phrasal movement was only treated directly for relative clauses and topicalization structures, the comprehension of object Wh-questions, which also include phrasal movement, improved as well. The high performance level was maintained 10 months after the treatment.

Incidental receptive language growth associated with expressive grammar intervention in SLI

Camarata, S., Nelson, K. E., Gillum, H., Camarata, M. — 2009-01-29

Children with SLI (Specific Language Impairment) display language deficits in the absence of frank neurological lesions, global cognitive deficits or significant clinical hearing loss. Although these children can display disruptions in both receptive and expressive grammar, the intervention literature has been largely focused on expressive deficits. Thus, there are numerous reports in the literature suggesting that expressive language skills can be improved using focused presentation of grammatical targets (cf. conversational recast; Camarata, Nelson & Camarata, 1994), but there have been few investigations addressing the remediation of receptive language skills in SLI for those children with receptive language deficits. The purpose of this study was to examine whether focused grammatical intervention on expressive grammar is associated with growth in receptive language in 21 children with SLI who have receptive language deficits. These children displayed significant growth in receptive language scores as an incidental or secondary association with expressive language intervention and significantly higher gains than seen in a comparison-control group with SLI and receptive language deficits (n = 6). The theoretical and clinical implications of these results are discussed.

The relation between ambiguity understanding and metalinguistic discussion of joking riddles in good and poor comprehenders: Potential for intervention and possible processes of change

Yuill, N. — 2009-01-29

This study investigated understanding of language ambiguity as a source of individual differences in children's reading comprehension skill, and the role of peer metalinguistic discussion in fostering comprehension improvement. Twenty-four 7- to 9-year-old children worked in pairs to discuss and resolve ambiguities in joking riddles. Their reading comprehension increased significantly more than a group of 24 no-treatment controls. Analysis of the children's discussions shows that comprehension improvement was associated with increases over training sessions in frequency of metalinguistic comments about the text ambiguities, and in particular with the simultaneous explanation of two meanings. We discuss individual differences in metalinguistic and metacognitive capabilities and their role in the process of comprehension improvement.

Promoting morphological awareness in Hebrew-speaking grade-schoolers: An intervention study using linguistic humor

Ravid, D., Geiger, V. — 2009-01-29

Research indicates that morphological awareness contributes to success in literacy acquisition and consolidation, since morphology links together phonological and semantic facets of language. The role of morphology is especially important in Hebrew, a highly synthetic Semitic language. The current study aimed to investigate the impact of an intervention program on knowledge and awareness of morphology in Hebrew-speaking grade-schoolers. Two three-month intervention programs were conducted in two groups of 4th-grade children: a metalinguistic morphological intervention program using linguistic humor, and a parallel intervention program using nonverbal humor. A morphological awareness test was administered to the two groups prior to and following the intervention period. The results demonstrate consistent advantages to the morphological intervention group, including tasks related both directly and indirectly to content taught.

On the relationship between morphological and phonological awareness: Effects of training in kindergarten and in first-grade reading

Casalis, S., Cole, P. — 2009-01-29

This study examined the relationship between phonological and morphological awareness in kindergarten, and their respective influence on learning to read in first grade, through an experimental training design with three groups of children. One experimental group received phonological awareness training while the other received morphological awareness training. The control group did not receive any training. Both training sessions were efficient since the largest pre- and post-test improvements were observed in the trained domains. Reciprocal influence analysis indicated that morphological awareness improved phonological sensitivity, but not the explicit manipulation of phonemes. In addition, phonological awareness training helped children to segment morphemes, but not to derive complex words. Thus, while some processes are shared by both metalinguistic domains, each domain appears to have its own specificity and may develop independently, at least partly. Even though morphological awareness training was found to be efficient at the kindergarten level, no clear impact on reading was found at the first-grade level, while phonological training displayed a clear positive effect on reading.