bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Aspects of linguistic awareness in reading comprehension
Authors: Bialystok Ellen 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThe relation between reading comprehension and linguistic awareness is discussed in terms of a set of processing skills common to both these activities. Two metalinguistic skill components are identified and examined for their relative contribution to reading comprehension. The general hypothesis is that these skill components explain a significant portion of the variance in reading comprehension. The two skill components are operationalized in terms of a battery of metalinguistic tasks, each of which is claimed (by means of task analysis) to rely primarily on one or the other processing component for its solution. A study is reported in which 8-year-old children are tested with these metalinguistic tasks, general measures of intelligence, and a test of reading comprehension. The results show that the relation among performance on the metalinguistic tasks is strongest for those tasks relying on the same processing skill component and that one of these components is most significant in determining the child's level of reading comprehension. These findings are interpreted in terms of the underlying linguistic processes involved in reading.
Learning words from context and dictionaries: An experimental comparison
Authors: Fischer Ute 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis research investigates the independent and interactive effects of contextual and definitional information on vocabulary learning. German students of English received either a text with unfamiliar English words or their monolingual English dictionary entries. A third group of subjects were given both text and dictionary entries. Subjects used each target word in an English sentence and then translated their sentences into German. The translations showed whether students had understood the meaning of a target word and permitted the specification of comprehension strategies. Subjects who had received text and dictionary entries tended to favor the dictionary and thus performed no better than students in the other experimental groups. Subjects learning words from context replaced unfamiliar words with familiar words conforming to contextual constraints. Subjects in the dictionary group commonly substituted a relevant part of the definition for the headword. Lexical errors occurred for different reasons: substitutions in the dictionary condition were unconstrained by context; substitutions in the text condition were not sufficiently constrained by context. The study shows that information about the contexts in which words are used is crucial for acquiring an adequate understanding of word meanings.1
Second language reading research: Problems and possibilities
Authors: Koda Keiko 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTA major purpose of this article is to examine first language (L1) reading theories from second language (L2) perspectives and, in so doing, to uncover significant research voids related to L2 problems. The article first considers the unique aspects of L2 reading in order to identify dimensions in which its theory must differ from accepted L1 constructs. It then discusses three fundamental distinctions that separate L1 and L2 reading: (a) the consequences of prior reading experience; (b) the effects of crosslinguistic processing; and (c) the compensatory devices stemming from the efforts of learners with limited linguistic knowledge to solve comprehension problems. Finally, several pedagogically oriented research themes which may be helpful in evaluating the instructional utility of current L2 reading theories are delineated.
Sentence processing in language-impaired children under conditions of filtering and time compression
Authors: Stark Rachel E. , Montgomery James W. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTNineteen language-impaired (LI) and 20 language-normal (LN) children participated in an on-line word-monitoring task. Words were presented in lists and in sentences readily comprehended by younger children. The sentences were unaltered, tow-pass filtered, and time- compressed. Both groups had shorter mean response times (MRTs), but lower accuracy, for words in sentences than words in lists. The LI children had significantly longer MRTs under sentence conditions and lower accuracy overall than the LN children. Filtering had an adverse effect upon accuracy and MRT for both subject groups. Time compression did not, suggesting that the reduction in high-frequency information and the rate of presentation exert different effects. Subject differences in attention, as well as in linguistic competence and motor control, may have influenced word-monitoring performance.
Is the relation between phonological memory and foreign language learning accounted for by vocabulary acquisition?
Authors: Service Elisabet , Kohonen Viljo 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTIn an earlier study, Service (1992) found that phonological short-term memory, reflected in the ability to repeat English-sounding pseudowords, was a good predictor of learning English as a foreign language over a period of three school years. This study attempts to find out to what extent foreign vocabulary learning is the critical learning process related to pseudoword repetition accuracy. Regression analyses on repetition data and learning measures revealed significant correlations between pseudoword repetition and foreign language learning, even after a measure of general academic achievement had been partialed out. In a fixed-order multiple regression analysis – with predictors entered in the order of general academic achievement, foreign language vocabulary, and pseudoword repetition – no additional variance in any foreign language measure studied could be accounted for by pseudoword repetition in the third step. When vocabulary in the second step was replaced by performance in foreign language essay writing or the correct reproduction of dictated discourse – both highly related to overall foreign language performance – repetition significantly increased the proportion of accounted variance, especially for two foreign language vocabulary tasks and a listening comprehension task. Phonological memory may, therefore, be specifically related to foreign vocabulary learning.
Attributing mental states to story characters: A comparison of narratives produced by autistic and mentally retarded individuals
Authors: Tager-Flusberg Helen , Sullivan Kate 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis study investigated narrative abilities and their relation to theory of mind in autistic and mentally retarded subjects, who were matched for their linguistic competence on standardized measures of comprehension and production. We asked 27 autistic, 27 mentally retarded, and 17 normal subjects (whose age range matched the verbal mental age ranges of the developmentally disordered groups) to tell the story from a wordless picture book. Following their spontaneous narratives, a set of probe questions was asked about the story characters' feeling states. The autistic and mentally retarded subjects were also given a standard test of false belief. The main findings were that, when closely matched on language ability, no significant group differences were found on measures of narrative length, use of lexical cohesion devices, and mental state terms. On the probed questions, the autistic and mentally retarded subjects gave fewer appropriate emotion responses than the normal subjects, and the autistic subjects had difficulty explaining the emotional states correctly. For the autistic sample, the narrative measures were significantly correlated with performance on the theory of mind task. The findings are interpreted in terms of the contributions of both linguistic and social–cognitive factors in narrative ability.
Longitudinal effects of manual English instruction on deaf children’s morphological skills
Authors: Gaustad Martha Gonter 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis study examined the imitation, comprehension, and production of twelve morphological features by groups of deaf subjects who were instructed through manually coded English. Their performances were compared with those of hearing subjects and also with their own follow-up scores from three years later. Results showed early deficits in the English skills of deaf subjects but steady improvement of scores on all tasks over time. Initially, subjects’ age predicted only imitation performance while time in an MCE program predicted production performance in addition to imitation. But neither age nor time in program was a significant predictor of any performance at the time of follow-up. Implications for intervention with manual English codes are discussed.
Effects of training on fricative identification in toddlers
Authors: Griffiths Scott K. , Johnson Cynthia J. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTResearchers who have attempted to relate phonemic identification in young children to their productive performance have met with little success. The failure to do so may reflect the difficulty of the task and uncontrolled stimulus familiarity. Fricative perception was investigated in toddlers using repeated tests to control for these factors. Each subject was tested on two contrasts, one the child produced distinctly in an imitation task and one the child produced as similar syllables. The final perceptual results were well matched to productive distinctiveness. Performance on the identification task over time is considered in terms of the relation between perception and production, the methodology, and competition at the phonological level in the learning of new words.
Phonological awareness in illterates: Observations from Serbo-Croatian
Authors: Lukatela Katerina , Carello Claudia , Shankweiler Donald , Liberman Isabelle Y. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTAdult illiterate and semiliterate speakers of Serbo-Croatian were assessed on reading, writing, phonological, and control tasks. Most subjects had acquired measurable literacy skills despite a documented lack of formal instruction. The individual differences in these skills were highly specific. They were related to measures of phoneme segmentation and alphabet knowledge, but only weakly related to general cognitive abilities. Three groups, categorized with respect to the subjects' ability to identify the letters of their Cyrillic alphabet, differed on phoneme deletion and phoneme-counting tasks, but not on syllable-counting, picture vocabulary, or tone-counting tasks. Alphabet knowledge was more tightly coupled with phoneme awareness than has been found in speakers of English. Cross-language similarities and differences are discussed, highlighting the role that phonological transparency of the orthography may play in the acquisition of literacy.
Parental speech to middle- and working-class children from two racial groups in three settings
Authors: Lawrence Valerie W. , Shipley Elizabeth F. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe speech of 9 middle-class black, 9 middle-class white, 9 working-class black, and 9 workingclass white parents to their preschool children was examined during picture identification, free play, and a meal. The groups were found to be similar in the level and form of parental labeling. The groups differed in the information the parents supplied about objects in the various settings, in the parent's direction of the child's behavior, and in parental sensitivity to the child's age. Within the working-class groups, the frequency of vernacular features in the parents' speech correlated with the quality of information they provided.
The effects of early bilingual schooling on first language skills
Authors: Harley Birgit , Hart Douglas , Lapkin Sharon 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTIn this study, the development of first language (L1) skills among native English-speaking students enrolled in early French immersion programs in Canadian schools is explored. It is hypothesized that the early bilingual schooling received by those majority children will serve to enhance their performance on various kinds of L1 tasks. Some preliminary evidence consistent with this hypothesis is found in a longitudinal comparison of English language test scores obtained over a six-year period by 22 immersion students and 22 regular English program students. Analysis of specific test items where the immersion students clearly outperform their regular program counterparts leads to the development of more specific hypotheses, which are tested via new measures on a larger sample of students in grade 6.
The functions of imitation in child language
Authors: Réger Zita 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTEarlier studies demonstrating the discourse function of imitation have been inconclusive for methodological reasons. In the present study three discourse-related formal aspects of model-imitation pairs are analysed longitudinally in successive samples from two Hungarian children. Examination of the types of modification introduced by the children revealed an unbroken developmental trend leading to lexically coherent conversational replies. As development progressed, questions were imitated significantly more often than nonquestions. The children's selection from multiword utterances showed convergence on a language specific discourse rule. Imitation served (i)lexical learning, (ii) the phonological approximation of adult word forms, and (iii)grammatical learning, in this temporal order. The high rate of grammatically and lexically progressive items in the earliest sample was attributed to nonselective echolalia, supposedly a genetically earlier form of imitation.
Levels of representation in verbal number production
Authors: Sokol Scott M. , Mccloskey Michael 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis article reports a single case study of a brain-damaged subject who presented with impaired performance on tasks involving production of verbal numbers (i.e., numbers in the form of words, such as eighty-six). Lexical errors occurred in spoken production but not in written production. Syntactic errors, however, occurred in both production modes. This pattern of performance provides empirical support for assumptions about the componential structure of the normal number processing system.
Relations of digit naming speed with three components of reading
Authors: Spring Carl , Davis John M. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe goal of the present investigation was to identify the reading processes that are impaired in children whose digit naming speeds are slow. Continuous digit naming speed was assumed to measure the automaticity with which character codes may be accessed in memory, and the automaticity of this process was assumed to be a prerequisite for the accurate performance of higher level reading processes. In Study I it was found, for children in grades 1 through 3, that digit naming speed was reliably correlated with reading of both irregularly spelled words and pronounceable nonsense words, and that most of the variance shared by irregular-word and nonsense-word reading was accounted for by digit naming speed. These results were interpreted as evidence that character-identification automaticity is equally important to the direct-access and speech-recoding routes of word recognition. Models of how character-identification automaticity might affect each of these routes are discussed. In Study 2 it was found, for children in grades 4 through 10, that the correlation of digit naming speed with reading comprehension was significantly smaller than its correlation with word recognition, and that the former correlation was completely accounted for when either WISC-R verbal IQ or word-recognition accuracy was controlled. These results are contrasted with comparable results reported by other investigators, and methodological differences are noted.
The language patterns mothers and fathers employ with their autistic boys and girls
Authors: Konstantareas M. Mary , Mandel Lisa , Homatidis Soula 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe special features of speech addressed to autistic children by their mothers and fathers were examined in an effort to clarify how the child's level of functioning influenced parental language style. A total of 12 children, 6 boys and 6 girls, half of whom were higher functioning and verbal and the remainder lower functioning and nonverbal, were videotaped in a 15-minute interaction with their mothers and fathers. The total number of utterances used was comparable for mothers and fathers, but mothers employed shorter mean lengths of utterance and more prompts to elicit speech or motoric activity when their children were lower functioning and nonverbal than when they were higher functioning and verbal. The higher functioning, verbal children were more frequently reinforced for speech, while the lower functioning, nonverbal children were more likely to be given indirect directives. Fathers issued direct directives more frequently than mothers, while mothers were more likely to employ prompts to stimulate their children's speech, particularly when they were lower functioning. Thus, both mothers and fathers of autistic children appear to be sensitive to their child's particular presenting characteristics, but differ in how they accommodate to them.
The learnability of the alphabetic principle: Children's initial hypotheses about how print represents spoken language
Authors: Byrne Brian 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis research examines the hypotheses about how print represents the speech that preliterate children select when they receive input compatible with several such hypotheses. In Experiment 1, preschoolers were taught to readhatandhatsandbookandbooks. Then, in generalization tests, they were probed for what they had learned about the letters. All of the children were able to transfer to other plurals (e.g., to decide thatbikessaid “bikes” rather than “bike,” and thatdogsaid “dog” and not “dogs”), but only those who knew the sound of the letter s prior to the experiment were able to decide, for example, thatbussaid “bus” and not “bug.” The failure to detect the phonemic value of s on the part of alphabetically naive children was replicated in Experiments 2, 3, and 4, which instituted a variety of controls. In Experiment 5, it was found that, although preschoolers who had been taught to read pairs of words distinguished by the comparative affixer(such assmall/smaller) were able to generalize to other comparatives (e.g.,mean/meaner), they could not generalize to pairs whereerhad no morphemic value (e.g.,corn/corner). A similar failure by alphabetically naive children to detect the syllabic, as compared with the morphemic, status of the superlative affixestwas found in Experiment 6. Overall, the results indicate that most preliterate children fail to select phonologically based hypotheses, even when these are available in the input. Instead, they focus on morphophonology and/or semantic aspects of words' referents. The research is couched in terms of the Learnability Theory (LT) (Gold, 1967), which provides a convenient framework for considering a series of interrelated questions about the acquisition of literacy. In particular, it is argued that if the data available to the child includes the pronunciation of written words, the alphabetic principle may be unlearnable, given the hypothesis selection procedures identified in these experiments.
List learning of second language vocabulary
Authors: Griffin Gerry , Harley Trevor A. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe learning of second language vocabulary in lists of word pairs is a widespread practice. A basic practical question in this respect is whether it is more effective for nonfluent bilinguals to learn word pairs in first language–second language order (Ll–L2), or vice versa. To date, experimental psychology has not given a clear answer to this question, partly because it has not addressed the relevant issues directly. This article reviews some aspects of psychology that are relevant to L2 vocabulary list learning and reports on an experiment conducted with comprehensive (high) school students, aged 11–13, who were learning French. The experiment examined the presentation of vocabulary items to be learned. It was found that presenting items in L1–L2 order was the more versatile form of presentation if both production and comprehension of L2 items were required on the part of the learner. The theoretical implications of the findings, relating to the structure of the bilingual lexicon, are also discussed.
Language choice and functional differentiation of languages in bilingual parent–child reading
Authors: Vedder Paul , Kook Hetty , Muysken Pieter 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTLanguage choice and functional differentiation between Papiamento and Dutch were studied in bilingual parent-child reading sessions in Antillian migrant families; the subjects, who were living in the Netherlands, were to some extent bilingual in Papiamento and Dutch. Mothers were asked to read three picture books to their child: one in Dutch, one in Papiamento, and one without text. Code choice was related to the text and contents of the book, as well as to restrictions imposed by the language proficiency in both languages of the mothers and children. It was expected that Dutch would be used more for more demanding cognitive functions because of its association with school. However, these parents did not categorize rnetalinguistic activity and reasoning as school-related, although they did categorize counting as such and tended to use Dutch to count.
Index of Productive Syntax
Authors: Scarborough Hollis S. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTA new method for evaluating the grammatical complexity of preschool natural language corpora is introduced. In the Index of Productive Syntax, occurrences of 56 syntactic and morphological forms are counted, yielding a total score and subscores for noun phrases, verb phrases, questions/negations, and sentence structures. Development of the index and analyses of its reliability and age-sensitivity when applied to language samples of 2- to 4-year-olds are described. Some advantages and limitations of the index as a research and clinical instrument are also discussed.
Toward understanding the problem in severely disabled readers Part 1: Vowel errors
Authors: Bryson Susan E. , Werker Janet F. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis experiment examined the vowel responses of severely disabled readers and normal control children in reading orthographically regular nonwords. The disabled readers were divided into three groups based on their relative Verbal and Performance IQs. Following the rationale of Fowler, Shankweiler, and Liberman (1979), vowel responses were classified as incorrect or correct. Correctness was determined according to either context-free or context-dependent criteria. The main finding was that the vowel responses of two out of three reading disabled groups paralleled those of their reading level peers. However, disabled readers with higher Performance than Verbal IQs made significantly more context-free responses and significantly fewer context-dependent responses than all other groups. Moreover, knowledge of how speech is segmented at the phonemic level predicted performance on the reading task. The findings suggest that disabled readers employ very local (context-independent) strategies in reading; these findings are discussed in terms of the idea that disabled readers suffer a basic deficit in phonological processing (Liberman, Liberman, & Mattingly, 1980) or linguistic processing (Siegel & Ryan, 1984).