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PubMed2004

Sentence memory of individuals with Down's syndrome and typically developing children.

BACKGROUND: Individuals with Down's syndrome (DS) have an auditory short-term memory span disproportionately shorter than the non-verbal mental age (MA). This study evaluated the Baddeley model's claim that verbal short-term memory deficits might arise from slower speaking rates (and thus less material rehearsed in a 2 s passive store) by using the sentence memory subtest of the Stanford-Binet. Previous work had shown digit span recall speaking rate to be comparable to the examiner's slow rate (one syllable per second) for both DS and language-matched participants. METHOD: Thirty individuals with DS were compared to two control groups [non-verbal MA-matched and mean length of utterance (MLU)-matched] on the sentence span and speaking rate for the longest verbatim recalled sentence. Sentence stimuli were presented at a normal speaking rate. RESULTS: The DS group had shorter sentence memory span than the MA-matched group and a faster, rather than slower, speaking rate (syllables per second) than the MLU-matched controls. CONCLUSIONS: Language production level accounted for a substantial portion of the variance in the sentence memory span in the DS group. Thus, language production skill, rather than speaking rate, predicts variability in verbal memory span.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Training 2;6-year-olds to produce the transitive construction: the role of frequency, semantic similarity and shared syntactic distribution.

Childers and Tomasello (2001) found that training 2 1/2-year-olds on the English transitive construction greatly improves their performance on a post-test in which they must use novel verbs in that construction. In the current study, we replicated Childers and Tomasello's finding, but using a much lower frequency of transitive verbs and models in training. We also used novel verbs that were of a different semantic class to our training verbs, demonstrating that semantic homogeneity is not crucial for generalization. We also replicated the finding that 4-year-olds are significantly more productive than 2 1/2-year-olds with the transitive construction, with the new finding that this is also true for verbs of emission. In addition, 'shared syntactic distribution' of novel verb and training verbs was found to have no observable effect on the number of 2 1/2-year-olds who were productive in the post-test.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed2004

The language-specific nature of grammatical development: evidence from bilingual language learners.

The fact that early lexical and grammatical acquisition are strongly correlated has been cited as evidence against the view that the language faculty is composed of dissociable and autonomous modules (Bates & Goodman, 1997). However, previous studies have not yet eliminated the possibility that lexical-grammar associations may be attributable to language-general individual differences (e.g. children who are good at learning words are good at learning grammar). Parent report assessments of toddlers who are simultaneously learning English and Spanish (n = 113) allow an examination of the specificity of lexical-grammar relationships while holding child factors constant. Within-language vocabulary-grammar associations were stronger than cross-language relationships, even after controlling for age, proportion of language exposure, general language skill and reporter bias. Similar patterns were found based on naturalistic language samples (n = 22), ruling out a methodological artifact. These results are consistent with the view that grammar learning is specifically tied to lexical progress in a given language and provide further support for strong lexical-grammatical continuity early in acquisition.

Child Language↗
PubMed2004

Changes in reality monitoring and episodic memory in early childhood.

The purposes of this research were to examine the developmental relation between reality monitoring and episodic memory, to link reality monitoring to autobiographical memory by using extended naturalistic events, and to examine prefrontal functioning as a potential contributor to development in reality monitoring and episodic memory. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds were worse than 6- or 8-year-olds at reality monitoring after a week delay, despite the fact that they remembered more about real than imagined events and remembered different aspects of each. In Experiments 2 and 3, reality monitoring and episodic memory were evaluated for 4- and 6-year-olds immediately after the events occurred and, in Experiment 3, again after a week delay. Reality monitoring was at higher levels for both age groups, but age differences remained. These data suggest that preschoolers' difficulties with reality monitoring result from a combination of episodic memory deficits and strategic differences. In addition, correlation analyses more directly linked preschoolers' reality monitoring to episodic memory and supported the hypothesis that episodic memory development is related to prefrontal functioning.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2004

Attention and inhibition in bilingual children: evidence from the dimensional change card sort task.

In a previous study, a bilingual advantage for preschool children in solving the dimensional change card sort task was attributed to superiority in inhibition of attention (Bialystok, 1999). However, the task includes difficult representational demands to encode and interpret the task stimuli, and bilinguals may also have profited from superior representational abilities. This possibility is examined in three studies. In Study 1, bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on versions of the problem containing moderate representational demands but not on a more demanding condition. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that bilingual children were more skilled than monolinguals when the target dimensions were perceptual features of the stimulus and that the two groups were equivalent when the target dimensions were semantic features. The conclusions are that bilinguals have better inhibitory control for ignoring perceptual information than monolinguals do but are not more skilled in representation, confirming the results of the original study. The results also identify the ability to ignore an obsolete display feature as the critical difficulty in solving this task.

Attention↗
PubMed2004

Perceptual complexity and form class cues in novel word extension tasks: how 4-year-old children interpret adjectives and count nouns.

Two experiments examined the role of perceptual complexity, object familiarity and form class cues on how children interpret novel adjectives and count nouns. Four-year-old children participated in a forced-choice match-to-target task in which an exemplar was named with a novel word and children were asked to choose another one that matched the exemplar in either shape or material In experiment 1, 56 children were provided with lexical form class cues suggestive of adjectives. The results of Experiment 1 showed that perceptual complexity and not object familiarity determined whether children made material or shape matches. In Experiment 2, 56 children were provided with lexical form class cues suggestive of count nouns. The results of Experiment 2 showed that neither perceptual complexity nor object familiarity affected children's selections in the matching task. When provided with lexical form class cues suggestive of a count noun, children selected shape matches. Thus the results suggest that the perceptual properties of the objects presented to children coupled with the particular lexical form class cue determine which features of objects children attend to when interpreting novel words.

Child Language↗
PubMed2005

Twelve- and 18-month-olds copy actions in terms of goals.

In the context of an imitation game, 12- and 18-month-old infants saw an adult do such things as make a toy mouse hop across a mat (with sound effects). In one condition (House), the adult ended by placing the mouse in a toy house, whereas in another condition (No House) there was no house present at the final location. Infants at both ages usually simply put the mouse in the house (ignoring the hopping motion and sound effects) in the House condition, presumably because they interpreted the adult's action in terms of this final goal and so ignored the behavioral means. In contrast, infants copied the adult's action (both the hopping motion and the sound effects) when no house was present, presumably because here infants saw the action itself as the adult's only goal. From very early, infants' social learning is flexible: infants focus on and copy either the end or the means of an adult action as required by the context.

Child Development↗
PubMed2005

Language-specific effects on number computation in toddlers.

A fundamental question in developmental science is how brains with and without language compute numbers. Measuring young children's verbal reactions in France (Paris) and in England (Oxford), here we show that, although there is a general arithmetic ability for small numbers that is shared by monkeys and preverbal infants, the development of such initial knowledge in humans follows specific performance patterns, depending on what language the children speak.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2005

Toddlers recognize verbs in novel situations and sentences.

Toddlers' (MA=22 and 27 months) ability to extend newly taught verbs to new situational and sentential contexts was investigated. Children were interactively taught two novel verbs, presented in only the transitive frame (e.g. You're lorping the ball), in a playroom setting. They then viewed the verb actions presented on side-by-side monitors and were asked to distinguish the verbs in three test frames (transitive, intransitive, neutral (e.g. lorping)). Both groups demonstrated learning of the verbs in the new situation and generalized the verbs to the intransitive sentence frame, but neither generalized reliably to the neutral frame. We conclude that even 22-month-olds demonstrate considerable context independence in their verb representations.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1986

Process of change during social skills training with preadolescents and its relation to treatment outcome.

Videotaped excerpts of treatment sessions from a recent intervention study were examined to explore the changes occurring during social skills training and their relation to treatment outcome. 27 unpopular preadolescents who showed few conversational skills during pretreatment observations engaged in cooperative activities with 2 socially accepted classmates for 10 half-hour sessions. Half of these triads received coaching in conversational skills, while the others received nonspecific adult support during these activities. The quality of social interactions among triad members was evaluated during the sixth and tenth sessions. Children who received social skills training displayed more conversational skills and received more positive peer support during treatment than children who did not receive coaching. Coached children increased skill performance over time while noncoached children did not change. Furthermore, both conversational skills displayed and positive peer responses received during treatment sessions were positively related to treatment outcome.

Behavior Therapy↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Genetic influences in different aspects of language development: the etiology of language skills in 4.5-year-old twins.

The genetic and environmental etiologies of diverse aspects of language ability and disability, including articulation, phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and verbal memory, were investigated in a U.K. sample of 787 pairs of 4.5-year-old same-sex and opposite-sex twins. Moderate genetic influence was found for all aspects of language in the normal range. A similar pattern was found at the low end of the distribution with the exception of two receptive measures. Environmental influence was mainly due to nonshared factors, unique to the individual, with little influence from shared environment for most measures. Genetic and environmental influences on language ability and disability are quantitatively and qualitatively similar for males and females.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Getting there faster: 18- and 24-month-old infants' use of function words to determine reference.

Infants of 18 and 24 months acquiring English were tested in a preferential looking task on their ability to detect ungrammaticalities caused by manipulating a single function word in sentences. Infants heard grammatical sentences in which the determiner the preceded a target noun, as well as three ungrammatical conditions in which the was either dropped, replaced by a nonsense function word (el), or replaced by an alternate English function word (and). Both the 18- and 24-month-old infants oriented faster and more accurately to a visual target following grammatical sentences. The results suggest that by 18 months of age, infants use their knowledge of determiners in sentence computation and in establishing reference.

Child Language↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Ties between the lexicon and grammar: cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of bilingual toddlers.

Studies using the English and Spanish MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories demonstrated that the grammatical abilities of 20-30-month-old bilingual children were related more strongly to same-language vocabulary development than to broader lexical-conceptual development or maturation. First, proportions of different word types in each language varied with same-language vocabulary size. Second, individual changes in predicate and closed class word proportion scores were linked to growth in same-language vocabulary but not to total conceptual vocabulary. Third, increases in English utterance length and English and Spanish sentence complexity were related to growth in same-language vocabulary but not to growth in conceptual vocabulary. Increases in Spanish utterance length were linked to growth in both Spanish vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary. Possible mechanisms underlying these patterns are considered.

Aptitude↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Becoming a social partner with peers: cooperation and social understanding in one- and two-year-olds.

One- and two-year-old peer dyads were presented with a simple cooperative task. Age differences were found in amount of coordinated activity, monitoring the peer's activity and location in relation to the goal, and attempting to achieve the goal when the peer was (or was not) available as a partner. One-year-olds' coordinated actions appeared more coincidental than cooperative whereas older children appeared to be more actively cooperating toward a shared goal. Differences in coordinated activity with peers were associated with differences in attention sharing with an adult and with language about self and other. The ability to cooperate with peers, becoming a true social partner, develops over the 2nd and 3rd years of life in concert with growing social understanding.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2006

When actions speak louder than words: improving children's flexibility in a card-sorting task.

People often perseverate, or repeat habitual behaviors when they are no longer appropriate. For example, after sorting cards by one rule, children will reliably perseverate with this rule even when they are clearly and repeatedly instructed to switch to a new rule. Such perseveration may result from limitations in working memory abilities for holding instructions actively in mind. If so, children may switch more readily to a new rule following experiences that are less demanding on working memory, such as guided practice with the new rule. In a study testing this prediction, 3-year-old children received direct instructions to switch to a new rule, guided practice with the new rule, or both. Providing children with guided practice was much more effective than telling them what to do. These findings support theories of perseveration based on competing memory systems, challenge alternative theories, and suggest effective methods for countering prepotent behaviors.

Child, Preschool↗