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At least 253 records · Page 14Linked to original sources
PubMed1995

The use of props in a syntactic awareness task.

The study investigated the effects of using props to illustrate the meaning of sentences in a syntactic awareness task in which subjects were required to correct ungrammatical sentences. Forty preschool children (aged 4; 11 to 5; 11) were asked to correct 20 sentences, 10 of which were illustrated using props, and 10 of which were not. Children scored significantly higher in the props condition though the proportion of meaning-changing errors to total errors was not significantly lower in this condition. It is argued that the use of props, by providing contextual support, reduces the processing capacity required to complete the task.

Awareness↗
PubMed1995

Children's comprehension of the distinction between want and need.

Two experiments examined the development of children's understanding of the difference between want and need. In experiment 1, children were tested on their knowledge that want represents an intrinsic desire whereas need represents an instrumental desire. Forty-five children between three and five years of age heard four stories in which one character encountered a problem, while another did not. A desirable object which could alleviate the problem was then introduced, and after both characters requested the object, the children were asked whether each character wants the object or needs it. Three-year-olds were unable to differentiate the two terms in such contexts, whereas four- and five-year-olds were significantly more likely to say that the character experiencing the problem needed the object, while the other wanted it. In experiment 2, 45 subjects between three and five years of age were tested on their understanding that a request employing need expresses a stronger desire than one employing want. Subjects were required to give an object to one of two characters, one of whom asked for it using need and the other using want. In this experiment, three-year-olds were equally likely to give the object to the character using want as to the one using need. Both four- and five-year-olds were significantly more likely to give the object to the character who used need. The results from these two experiments show that the understanding of the semantic and pragmatic difference between want and need develops at about four years of age.

Child Language↗
PubMed1996

Context-sensitive underspecification and the acquisition of phonemic contrasts.

Several competing proposals for the (under)specification of phonological representations are evaluated against the facts of phonemic acquisition. Longitudinal evidence relating to the emergence of a voice contrast in the well-documented study of Amahl (from age 2;2 to 3;11) is reconsidered. Neither contrastive specification nor context-free radical underspecification is capable of accounting for the facts. The problem is in the characterization of the change in the status of a feature from being noncontrastive and conditioned by context at one stage to being contrastive with phonetic effects that diffuse gradually through the lexicon. Both frameworks must treat as accidental the persistence of the early substitution pattern and require the postulation of wholesale changes in underlying representations, where these changes do not accord well with the observed phonetic changes or with the facts available to the learner. Context-sensitive radical underspecification provides a plausible account of each stage and the transition between stages with minimal grammar change.

Child Language↗
PubMed1996

An experimental test of phonemic cyclicity.

Laryngeal-supralaryngeal cyclicity has been put forth as an acquisition principle that describes expansion of the phonemic inventory as a bivalent cycle with alternations between the elaboration of laryngeal and supralaryngeal properties of the system (Gierut, 1994). This study evaluated experimentally the claims of the principle by manipulating the domain of the cycle and the phase relationship of the cycle as independent variables, and by monitoring longitudinally the order of emergent phonemic distinctions in the sound systems of seven children with phonological delays (aged 3;4 to 5;8) as the dependent variable. Three general findings emerged: (1) the course of acquisition for all children was consistent with cyclicity; (2) there were no differences in phonemic acquisition between children taught a laryngeal as opposed to a supralaryngeal distinction; and (3) children taught out-of-phase with the cycle evidenced greater phonemic expansion than those taught in-phase with the cycle.

Child Language↗
PubMed1991

Simultaneity in children's narratives: the case of when, while and as.

This study examines the use of the co-temporal connectives when, while and as in the elicited narratives of 71 children between 4;10 and 11;11. A group of 26 adults provided comparison data. Subjects were asked to 'tell a story' about each of three sets of story pictures. Analysis of the adult data confirmed a preference for preposed over postposed when clauses and supported the notion of a continuum of simultaneity for when, while and as. The oldest children (like the adults) were more likely to prepose when clauses than were younger children, a finding which suggests that with increasing awareness of the information needs of the listener, children begin to use preposed adverbial clauses as information 'guideposts'. Surprisingly, however, children in general were far more likely than adults to use durative predicates with when clauses and did not use co-temporal as - substituting when or while in those contexts in which as appeared in the adult protocols. These two findings are shown to be connected, since aspect in the adult data is differentially distributed with respect to the three connectives. It is hypothesized that for narrative purposes children acquire when before while and while before as, in the order of increasing specificity and constraint, with the determining factor being a convergence of syntax, semantics and information flow.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Conversational or communicative skill? A reassessment of two-year-olds' behaviour in miscommunication episodes.

Young children's competence in using and responding to clarification requests may reflect their desire to achieve goals through the direction of others rather than knowledge that messages must be understood by another mind. This possibility was addressed by examining miscommunication episodes between children aged 2; 6 and their parents in videotaped free play sessions. Although the children generally responded appropriately in form to parental clarification requests, they responded more often to and resolved successfully more of those following their own requests than those following their assertions. Thus, the results support the idea that young children are frequently motivated to repair their utterances when they have not achieved some overt behaviour desired from others. These findings are discussed in the light of the conversational experience two-year-olds bring to clarification situations.

Child Language↗
PubMed1990

Similarity neighbourhoods of words in young children's lexicons.

Similarity neighbourhoods for words in young children's lexicons were investigated using three computerized databases. These databases were representative of three groups of native English speakers: 5-year-olds, 7-year-olds, and adults. Computations relating to the similarity neighbourhoods of words in the children's and adult's lexicon revealed that words in the 5- and 7-year-olds' lexicons have many fewer similar neighbours than the same words analyzed in the adult lexicon. Thus, young children may employ more global recognition strategies because words are more discriminable in memory. The neighbourhood analyses provide a number of insights into the processes of auditory word recognition in children and the possible structural organization of words in the young child's mental lexicon.

Child↗