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At least 595 records · Page 33Linked to original sources
PubMed1996

Colour term knowledge in two-year-olds: evidence for early competence.

It is commonly believed that colour terms are acquired unusually slowly. However, several recent studies suggest that preschoolers have more colour term knowledge than previously believed. In two studies, we investigated the colour term knowledge of 49 two-year-olds and the influence of schooling on their colour term acquisition. Both studies revealed considerable knowledge in such young children. A longitudinal comparison of children with and without school experience in Study 2 indicated that the higher performance of the school group could not be accounted for by differences predating that group's experience. In reviewing the evidence from the children's performance, we conclude that contemporary children's early and frequent experience with colour terms may account for this cohort's improved performance over previous generations of children.

Child Language↗
PubMed1996

Developmental changes in the incidence and likelihood of simultaneous talk during the first two years: a question of function.

Global tendencies for the relative absence of covocalization (simultaneous talk) have been identified in both conversations between adult partners and conversations between mothers and their infants; in each case, the alternating mode in which one partner speaks at a time is predominant. The present investigation examined the timing of the partner's talk in mother-infant engagements over infant age to determine whether: (a) variations occur in the incidence of the alternating mode; and (b) variations occur in the extent to which the alternating mode predominates. Conversations involving a total of 48 mothers and their infants aged from 0;3 to 2;0 were investigated at each of eight infant ages (0;3, 0;6, 0;9, 1;0, 1;3, 1;6, 1;9 and 2;0). The results indicated that, within a global tendency for the relative absence of covocalization, there was: (a) a curvilinear tendency for the incidence of covocalization to decrease over the first 18 months, and then to increase; and (b) a linear tendency for the extent to which the alternating mode predominates to increase over age. These changes are interpreted as reflecting the facilitative effects of covocalization in the case of young preverbal infants, and the need for the alternating, turn-taking pattern to predominate as mutual comprehension becomes possible in conversations between mothers and their older infants.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Epistemic modality in French children's discourse: to be sure or not to be sure?

This study focuses on the development of epistemic modality, with particular attention to how French children evaluate the conditions of use for modal expressions marking certainty and uncertainty. Sixty children aged four, six and eight were shown films involving verbal interactions in which a target speaker accused another of having performed a deed. The analysis examine children's responses during a subsequent interview in which they were asked to attribute an epistemic attitude of certainty/uncertainty to the target speaker as a function of three factors: (a) whether he had witnessed the deed; (b) whether his accusation was modalized by the verb croire ('think/believe'); and (c) whether the accusation was true or false. The results show that the four- and six-year-olds attribute certainty more often than the eight-year-olds. This dissymmetry is accompanied by a developmental progression in children's conceptions of these modal categories, which change from a 'realistic' conception (mainly based on truth/falsity) at four years to an increasingly metalinguistic and relativized conception thereafter.

Attitude↗
PubMed1992

The development of children's knowledge structures: events, slots, and taxonomies.

Seventeen preschool (age range 2; 10-3;6), 26 kindergarten (age range 5;5-6;7), and 26 fourth-grade (age range 9;5-10;5) children's knowledge structures were examined with a word association task and a match-to-sample picture task to determine whether or not children used slot-filler categories as a mediating structure between event-based and taxonomic knowledge structures, as proposed by Nelson (1985, 1986). In general, preschool children were able to provide event-based, but not slot-filler or taxonomic, relations; kindergarten children were able to provide event-based or slot-filler relations, but very few taxonomic relations; and fourth-grade children were able to provide all three relations. These findings support Nelson's hypothesis that taxonomic knowledge structures are derived from event-based knowledge structures with the aid of slot-filler categories.

Child Language↗
PubMed1998

Young children's understanding of promising: methodological considerations.

In her inceptive study of promising, Astington (1988) found that five-year-olds failed to distinguish promises from predictions when judging story characters' utterances. Instead, their responses were based on whether the promised event had actually occurred. There is reason to believe, however, that the children's poor performance was an artefact of Astington's procedures. We tested this possibility with 32 children (mean age 5;8: range 5;7-6;2) by including several variations of Astington's procedures, but found no effects on the pattern of results. This suggests that Astington's findings are an accurate reflection of the developmental course of knowledge about promising.

Child↗
PubMed1998

A developmental study of the acquisition of Russian colour terms.

We report a study of the acquisition of colour terms by Russian children which had two main aims: first, to test Berlin & Kay's (1969) theory of colour universals using acquisition order as a measure of basicness; and secondly, to see if the two BLUE terms of Russian are genuinely basic. Two hundred children aged from three to six-years-old were tested on three colour-tasks--colour term listing, colour term production and colour term comprehension. To a reasonable approximation, the order of colour term acquisition was in accord with Berlin & Kay's theory, but the data are also consistent with the weaker claim that primary terms tend to be learned before derived terms. On balance the data were consistent with Russian exceptionally, having an extra term for the BLUE region. But, the two BLUE terms--goluboj 'light blue' and sinij 'dark blue'--were confused more often than other pairs of terms even by the five- to six-year-old sample.

Child Language↗
PubMed1978

The effect of the gestural prompt on syntax training.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the facilitative effects of prompts in syntax training as compared to the same procedure without the gestural prompt. Ten normal children, ranging in age from four years to five years, five months were trained to produce the double object syntactic structure. In training the double object, the experimental group was presented a picture and asked by the examiner "What is the (person) doing? The (person) is (verbing) the --." The subject was to complete the intraverbal lead with the appropriate indirect-direct object combination. A gestural prompt was given at this point to aid the child in producing the correct response. The prompt was also presented in the subsequent event as corrective feedback or verbal reinforcement. The control group was presented the same picture stimuli and verbal stimuli, but without the gestural prompt accompanying the antecedent event or the subsequent events. The results obtained from this study indicated that there was no significant difference between the two groups regarding the number of sessions required to reach criterion. The data did show, however, that the experimental group made fewer errors within any one session than did the control group up to the sessions in which criterion was reached.

Child Language↗
PubMed1976

Elicited imitation of selected features of two american English dialects in Head Start children.

Three measures were used to check the bidialectal imitative facility of 100 black, white, and Spanish-speaking Head Start children. In general, blacks and Spanish-speaking subjects performed more accurately on black English markers than on Standard English markers and whites, the reverse. When the children did make an error on the feature marker they usually substituted the opposing dialectal marker. Blacks and Spanish-speaking subjects were more apt to be accurate on the total sentence when it was given in black English. Several explanations are offered for group similarities and differences.

Black or African American↗
PubMed1982

Development in the use and understanding of polite forms in children.

In two experiments, children's use and understanding of polite forms and the relationship these abilities share with an ability to adopt the perspective of another were examined. Development in the understanding of polite forms seemed best characterized as sensitivity to the function of these forms in an increasing number of sentence types. Development in the use of polite forms could be viewed as an increasing tendency to produce more than one polite form in the same utterance and to use a wider variety of interrogative types when expressing politeness. Emergence of the use and understanding of politeness in speech at age 3 seemed related to an emerging ability to adopt the perspective of another. However, development of politeness beyond this age seemed related only to a form of perspective taking in which knowledge of social roles plays a part.

Child↗
PubMed1986

Development of conversational repair strategies in response to requests for clarification.

Conversational repair sequences are an important aspect of communicative interaction. These sequences may occur in the event of communication failure if a listener requests clarification of a previous aspect of the speaker's message. The purpose of this study was to investigate the repair strategies employed in conversation by children at four age levels. Ten linguistically normal children were sampled from each of the following age levels: 2:7 to 3:10, 4:10 to 5:10, 6:10 to 7:10, and 8:10 to 9:10 (years:months), resulting in a total of 40 subjects. Each subject was asked to describe a series of action pictures for an examiner who was seated behind a screen. At regular intervals, the examiner responded to the child's description by initiating a stacked repair sequence. Results indicated that subjects at all age levels complied with the initial request for clarification the majority of the time. However, with increasing age, subjects became more adept at handling the stacked sequence of requests for clarification. Older children were more responsive to the requests, and 9-year-old subjects demonstrated a wider range of strategies in providing repairs.

Child↗
PubMed1995

Validity of parent report measures of vocabulary development for children with Down syndrome.

This study investigated the validity of a parent report measure of vocabulary development, the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences (CDI), in children with and without developmental disabilities. Concurrent validity was examined by comparing results from the CDI and laboratory measures of vocabulary in 44 children with Down syndrome and 46 typically developing children with mental ages from 12 to 27 months. Significant correlations between .70 and .82 were obtained. Predictive validity was examined by measuring the vocabulary of 20 children with Down syndrome and 23 typically developing children first at approximately 20 months mental age and later at a mental age of approximately 28 months. Significant correlations were obtained between the CDI at Time A and all but one of the vocabulary measures at Time B (r = .46 to .66). These results establish the validity of parent measures of vocabulary development for children with Down syndrome and confirm their validity for typically developing children.

Child↗