Biomedical subjects

M A Nippold

Publications and source records attributed to M A Nippold.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2000

How adolescents comprehend unfamiliar proverbs: the role of top-down and bottom-up processes.

Typically achieving students who were 12, 15, and 18 years old (n = 150) participated in this investigation. The goal was to determine the extent to which students' prior knowledge of the nouns in unfamiliar proverbs would be associated with their ability to comprehend the expressions and how the relationship between word knowledge and proverb comprehension might change during the developmental period from late childhood to late adolescence. Proverbs containing concrete nouns (e.g., "Two captains will sink a ship") (concrete proverbs) and those containing abstract nouns (e.g., "Envy is destroyed by true friendship") (abstract proverbs) were presented in a multiple-choice task designed to examine comprehension of the expressions. Knowledge of the relevant semantic features of each noun was examined in a separate multiple-choice task. Word knowledge was found to be associated with proverb comprehension in all groups--and particularly so in the case of abstract proverbs. The results support a model of proverb comprehension in adolescents that includes bottom-up in addition to top-down processes.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1999

Defining abstract entities: development in pre-adolescents, adolescents, and young adults.

Students ages 12, 15, 18, and 23 (n = 60 per group) wrote definitions for 16 abstract nouns (e.g., pride, courage, realization). Responses were analyzed for the Aristotelian style, a type of definition that mentions both the superordinate category term and one or more characteristics of the word (e.g., "Pride is a sense of delight about a possession or accomplishment"). This response type was of interest because it is a sophisticated and literate defining style that is modeled in classrooms, textbooks, and dictionaries-a style that is informative, concise, and efficient. The results indicated that a number of important changes occur in the ability to provide Aristotelian definitions for abstract nouns during the developmental period from late childhood to early adulthood. Specifically, there was an increasing tendency for students to mention the appropriate category to which a word belongs, core features of the word, and subtle aspects of meaning. The study contributes to the knowledge base concerning the nature of language development in pre-adolescents, adolescents, and young adults.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1997

Proverb explanation through the lifespan: a developmental study of adolescents and adults.

A proverb explanation task consisting of 24 low-familiarity expressions was administered to 353 individuals ranging in age from 13 through 79 years. Half the proverbs were composed of concrete nouns ("A caged bird longs for the clouds") and half were composed of abstract nouns ("Humility often gains more than pride"). The task was designed to examine how patterns of language growth in adults compare to those observed in adolescents. It also served as a tool for examining the "metasemantic hypothesis," the view that complex semantic units, such as proverbs, are learned through active analysis of the words they contain. Performance on the task improved markedly during adolescence and into early adulthood. It reached a plateau during the 20s, remained stable during the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and began a slight decline during the 60s that reached statistical significance during the 70s. Concrete proverbs were easier to explain than abstract proverbs for adolescents and for adults in their 20s, but the two proverb types did not differ for adults in their 30s and older. Thus, the metasemantic hypothesis was supported for adolescents and young adults. For the adults, performance on the proverb explanation task was related to the number of years of formal education they had completed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1997

Japanese speakers of American English: competence with connectives in written language.

Competence with literate connectives (e.g., conversely, similarly, moreover) is important for academic success, particularly in university settings. This study examined the ability of Japanese speakers of American English (mean age = 23 years) who were attending an American university to use and understand connectives in written language. Compared to a control group of age-matched native English-speakers attending the same university, the Japanese students had difficulty with the words. Suggestions are offered on how speech-language pathologists might facilitate competence with connectives in adults who are non-native speakers of English.

Adult↗

PubMed1996

Proverb comprehension in youth: the role of concreteness and familiarity.

This study examined factors that were posited to play an important role in the development of proverb comprehension in school-age children and adolescents, namely, the concreteness and the familiarity of the expressions. Normally achieving students enrolled in Grades 5, 8, and 11 (n = 180) were administered a written forced-choice task that contained eight instances of four different types of proverbs: concrete-familiar ("A rolling stone gathers no moss"); concrete-unfamiliar ("A caged bird longs for the clouds"); abstract-familiar ("Two wrongs don't make a right"); and abstract-unfamiliar ("Of idleness comes no goodness"). Performance on the task steadily improved as a function of increasing grade level and, as predicted, the expressions proved to be differentially challenging: Concrete proverbs were easier to understand than abstract proverbs, and familiar proverbs were easier to understand than unfamiliar proverbs. The results concerning concreteness support the "metasemantic" hypothesis, the view that comprehension develops through active analysis of the words contained in proverbs. The results concerning familiarity support the "language experience" hypothesis, the view that comprehension develops through meaningful exposure to proverbs.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1996

Idiom understanding in Australian youth: a cross-cultural comparison.

In this developmental study, idiom understanding was examined in Australian students from Grades 5 and 8 (n = 50 per group; mean ages = 10.7 and 13.8, respectively). Twenty-four idioms with familiarity ratings ranging from high to low (as judged by Australian adolescents) were each presented in a brief story context. The students read each story and selected the best interpretation of the idiom from a set of four answer choices. Results indicated that performance on the task improved as a function of increasing grade level and that idiom familiarity was significantly correlated to idiom understanding for both groups of students. These results, which were consistent with a previous study of American students of comparable educational levels (Nippold & Taylor, 1995), provide further support for the "language experience" hypothesis of figurative language development. In replicating the previous developmental study, evidence of external validity is provided.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1995

Idiom understanding in youth: further examination of familiarity and transparency.

School-age children and adolescents (n = 150) enrolled in Grades 5, 8, and 11 were administered a forced choice task of idiom understanding that controlled for idiom familiarity and transparency. Performance on the task steadily improved during the targeted age range and was affected by the factors of interest: Idioms that were higher in familiarity and transparency were easier for students to understand than those that were less familiar and more opaque. The results of this study provide further support for the language experience hypothesis of figurative language development and for the hypothesis that metalinguistic activity, which itself becomes more sophisticated during the school-age and adolescent years, facilitates later language development. The study also suggests certain methodological implications for future research that examines the development of idiom understanding in youth.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1995

Comparison of personalized cueing and provided cueing on the facilitation of verbal labeling by aphasic subjects.

This study investigated the effects of two associative learning tasks on aphasic subjects' labeling of novel symbols. It was designed to determine if aphasic subjects need to develop their own associations for word-symbols pairs (personalized cueing) to obtain the long-term labeling benefits observed in prior research or if comparable results are obtained when "ready-made" associations are used during training (provided cueing). The results showed that the two cueing techniques were equal in their ability to elicit correct responses from the subjects. The results also demonstrated the long-term effectiveness of both cueing procedures on the subjects' labeling accuracy up to 30 days after training was discontinued.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Parents' speech and children's stuttering: a critique of the literature.

The role of parents in relation to their children's stuttering has been of great interest to speech-language pathologists for more than 50 years. As part of treatment, speech-language pathologists frequently advise parents to modify their speech behaviors when talking with their children. For example, parents are often told to speak more slowly and to refrain from interrupting or questioning the child excessively. Given the commonness of this advice, it is important to examine the research upon which it is based. This article contains a critical review of the literature concerning the role of parents' speech behaviors (e.g., rate, interruptions, question-asking) in relation to their children's stuttering. Published studies are reported and analyzed in order to determine the extent to which parents may affect their children's stuttering through their own speech behaviors. The review indicates that there is little convincing evidence to support the view that parents of children who stutter differ from parents of children who do not stutter in the way they talk with their children. Similarly, there is little objective support for the argument that parents' speech behaviors contribute to children's stuttering or that modifying parents' speech behaviors facilitates children's fluency. Implications for treatment and for future research are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1993

Familiarity and transparency in idiom explanation: a developmental study of children and adolescents.

Idioms differ widely in their degree of difficulty for children and adolescents. Two factors that might account for these differences, familiarity and transparency, were examined. Children and adolescents ages 11, 14, and 17 years (N = 150) were asked to explain in writing the meanings of 24 different idiomatic expressions, each presented in a brief story context. Results showed that performance on the task gradually improved as subject age increased and that high-familiarity idioms were generally easier to explain than moderate- or low-familiarity expressions. Easier idioms also tended to be more transparent. The results are consistent with the "language experience" view of figurative development and question the hypothesis that idioms are learned as giant lexical units.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1992

Use and understanding of adverbial conjuncts: a developmental study of adolescents and young adults.

The use and understanding of two types of adverbial conjuncts, concordant (e.g., similarly, moreover, consequently) and discordant (e.g., contrastively, rather, nevertheless), was examined developmentally in 120 adolescents and young adults. Four groups of 30 students participated. Mean ages of the groups were 12:9, 15:10, 19:2, and 23:8 (years:months). The results demonstrated an increasing ability to use and understand these words in the written mode. An interesting discrepancy emerged between the use and the understanding of adverbial conjuncts, a finding that resembled the well-documented discrepancy between the use and the understanding of spoken words in young children. Although young adults had mastered the words in terms of their understanding, they continued to show some difficulty using the words correctly. It was also found that the two types of conjuncts were equally difficult, a result that failed to support Piaget's (1928) hypothesis concerning the greater difficulty of discordant connectives. Factors that may contribute to the development of adverbial conjuncts are discussed.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1990

Concomitant speech and language disorders in stuttering children: a critique of the literature.

This article presents a critical review of the literature concerning concomitant speech and language disorders in stuttering children. Studies published since the 1920s that examined language onset and disorders of articulation, syntax and morphology, semantics, and word finding are analyzed. Collectively, the studies present a mixed impression of stutterers, not only because of methodological variations, but also because of the tremendous variability that exists among children who stutter. Although the evidence is not convincing that stutterers as a group are more likely than nonstutterers to have deficits in any of these areas, it is clear that some stutterers do have concomitant speech and language problems that may bear some relationship to their stuttering. The message from this body of research is that individual differences among stuttering children should not be ignored during clinical or research activities.

Articulation Disorders↗

PubMed1989

Idiom interpretation in isolation versus context: a developmental study with adolescents.

Idiom interpretation under two different presentation modes, Isolation and Context, was examined developmentally in 475 adolescents ages 14 through 17. Results demonstrated that accuracy was greater for idioms in Context than idioms in Isolation, and that accuracy for both presentation modes slowly improved during the target age range. However, even the oldest subjects had not yet mastered the task in either mode. Qualitative analysis indicated that No Response, Literal, and Unrelated error types were produced most often by the youngest subjects but tended to decrease as subject age increased. In general, more No Response, Literal, Related, and Unrelated error types were produced for idioms in Isolation than in Context, but more Restatement errors were produced for idioms in Context. It was also found that idiom interpretation was significantly correlated to specific measures of literacy in 16-year-olds.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1988

Proportional and functional analogical reasoning in normal and language-impaired children.

Teachers often use analogies in classroom settings to clarify new concepts for their students. However, analogies may inadvertently confuse the youngster who has difficulty identifying the one-to-one comparisons underlying them. Although analogical reasoning has been studied extensively in normal children, no information was available concerning this construct in children having a specific language impairment. Thus, it was unknown to what extent they might be deficient in analogical reasoning. Therefore, in the present study, 20 children ages 6-8 years (mean age = 7:6) having normal nonverbal intelligence but deficits in language comprehension were administered tasks of verbal and perceptual proportional analogical reasoning and a problem-solving task of functional analogical reasoning. Compared to a normal-language control group matched on the basis of chronological age and sex, the language-impaired group was deficient in all three tasks of analogical reasoning. However, when the factor of nonverbal intelligence was controlled statistically, the differences between the groups on each of the tasks were removed. Additional findings were that verbal proportional analogical reasoning was significantly correlated to perceptual proportional analogical reasoning and to functional analogical reasoning. Implications for assessment and intervention with young school-age language-impaired children are discussed.

Child↗

PubMed1988

Proverb comprehension in context: a developmental study with children and adolescents.

Although previous studies have reported that proverb comprehension remains quite literal before adolescence, the results of the present study indicated that fourth graders performed well on a proverb comprehension task involving contextual information and a written multiple choice format. It was also found that performance on the proverb task steadily improved at least through the eighth grade and was significantly correlated to performance on a perceptual analogical reasoning task. The study contributes to the small but growing body of information concerning language development during the preadolescent and adolescent years and may have some important implications for the assessment of youngsters of this age range who have comprehension deficits that are troublesome, yet difficult to document.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1988

Explanation of ambiguous advertisements: a developmental study with children and adolescents.

Explanation of linguistic ambiguity occurring in a naturalistic context was examined for children and adolescents at various ages. Subjects ages 9 through 18 were asked to explain the meanings of 14 ambiguous advertisements taken from recent magazines, newspapers, and brochures. All of the ads were lexically ambiguous and contained a word or phrase that had both a physical and a psychological meaning (e.g., "Introducing the Upper Crusts. Two sensational new entrees from Stouffer's"). Results were that older subjects explained the meanings correctly more frequently than younger subjects, although adolescents who were 18-years-old did not perform perfectly. It was also found that the psychological meanings of the ads were more difficult to explain than the physical meanings. The results were interpreted in relation to previous developmental studies of ambiguity involving sentences, jokes, and riddles, and studies of figurative language explanation.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1987

Verbal and perceptual analogical reasoning and proportional metaphor comprehension in young children.

In contrast to the common assumption that young children have little or no ability to reason by analogy or to comprehend proportional metaphors, the present study demonstrated that children as young as age 5 years have an emerging ability to solve both verbal and perceptual proportional analogy problems and to detect the meanings of proportional metaphoric sentences. These results were largely because the experimental tasks were designed to minimize the number of factors that would restrict the performance of young children. The results indicated that the years between 5 and 7 mark a steady improvement in analogical reasoning and proportional metaphor comprehension, but that children ages 5, 6, and 7 display a wide-ranging ability in these areas. It was also found that perceptual analogical reasoning was statistically related to verbal analogical reasoning and to proportional metaphor comprehension, and that perceptual analogical reasoning and proportional metaphor comprehension were both statistically related to receptive vocabulary development.

Child↗

PubMed1984

Syntactic and conceptual factors in children's understanding of metaphors.

A multiple-choice listening task was designed in which 7- and 9-year-old children (n = 30 per group) were presented with nine instances of four different types of metaphoric sentences: perceptual-predicative, psychological-predicative, perceptual-proportional, and psychological-proportional. When factors of memory and attention, sentence length, semantics, and novelty were controlled for, proportional metaphors proved to be significantly more difficult than predicative, but perceptual did not differ from psychological in ease of understanding. No interactions were significant. Nine-year-olds demonstrated metaphoric understanding superior to that of 7-year-olds, despite the fact that children of both ages were familiar with the underlying semantic features of the metaphors and understood all key words at a literal level. Implications for future research are discussed.

Attention↗