bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Referential style and maternal directiveness: Different measures yield different results
Authors: Pine Julian M. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTSince the publication of Nelson's (1973) monograph, a number of studies have documented negative relationships between referential style and some form of maternal directiveness. However, the precise nature of these relationships is still far from clear. The present study represents an attempt to resolve this confusion by investigating the relationship between different measures of maternal directiveness and different measures of referential style in the same group of eight mother–infant dyads. A distinction is made, first, between attentional directiveness and behavioral directiveness, and, second, between referential vocabulary measures based on a fixed number of vocabulary items (i.e., 50 words) and measures taken at particular age points (in this case, 1;4). Correlational analysis of these different measures shows not only that attentional and behavioral directiveness are not significantly related, but also that they are differentially predictive of different measures of referential style. Attentional directiveness is significantly related to referential style at 1;4, but not to referential style at 50 words; behavioral directiveness is significantly related to referential style in the child's subsequent 50 words, but not to referential style at 1;4. These findings suggest that, although the attentional regulation hypothesis may be potentially useful in explaining differences in children's actual rate of vocabulary development, it may be less valuable as a means of explaining stylistic variation in early vocabulary composition. This conclusion underlines the need to distinguish relationships between mothers' interactional behavior and stylistic variation in their children's early language from more general effects of maternal behavior on children's overall rate of language development.
Children's narrative productions: A comparison of personal event and fictional stories
Authors: Allen Marybeth S. , Kertoy Marilyn K. , Sherblom John C. , Pettit John M. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTPersonal event narratives and fictional stories are narrative genres which emerge early and undergo further development throughout the preschool and early elementary school years. This study compares personal event and fictional narratives across two language-ability groups using episodic analysis. Thirty-six normal children (aged 4 to 8 years) were divided into high and low language-ability groups using Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS). Three fictional stories and three personal event narratives were gathered from each subject and were scored for length in communication units, total types of structures found within the narrative, and structure of the whole narrative. Narrative genre differences significantly influenced narrative structure for both language-ability groups and narrative length for the high language-ability group. Personal events were told with more reactive sequences and complete episodes than fictional stories, while fictional stories were told with more action sequences and multiple-episode structures. Compared to the episodic story structure of fictional stories, where a prototypical ‘good” story is a multiple-episode structure, a reactive sequence and/or a single complete episode structure may be an alternate, involving mature narrative forms for relating personal events. These findings suggest that narrative structures for personal event narratives and fictional stories may follow different developmental paths. Finally, differences in productive language abilities contributed to the distinctions in narrative structure between fictional stories and personal event narratives. As compared to children in the low group, children in the high group told narratives with greater numbers of complete and multiple episodes, and their fictional stories were longer than their personal event narratives.
Bimodal bilingual language development in a hearing child of deaf parents
Authors: Johnson Jeanne M. , Watkins Ruth V. , Rice Mabel L. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis study examined the spoken English development of a hearing child of deaf parents who used American Sign Language (ASL). The child first learned ASL in interactions with his parents and later developed spoken English outside the home environment. It was hypothesized that the child's acquisition of spoken English would systematically reflect both expected monolingual developmental patterns and interlinguistic transfer. Four areas of mismatch between ASL and spoken English were identified. Language sample data from ages 2;9–5;2 were examined for evidence to evaluate the hypotheses. Features that reflected the simultaneous versus sequential mismatch between ASL and English, undifferentiated versus differentiated aspects, free versus bound morpheme mechanisms, and word-order differences provided evidence of ASL influence on spoken English acquisition. Although not extensive, ASL appears to have exerted consistent influence on several areas of the child's spoken English development.
Greater intelligibility in verbal routines with young children with developmental delays
Authors: Yoder Paul J. , Davies Betty 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe unintelligible speech of many developmentally delayed children poses problems for language intervention and language assessment efforts. Eighteen developmentally delayed children in Brown's (1973) stage I and their parents participated in two studies of the relationship between verbal routines and the intelligibility of developmentally delayed children's speech. The first study demonstrated that more intelligible child speech was found in routines than in nonroutines. To determine if routine utterances were articulated more accurately than nonroutine utterances, the second study extracted a representative sample of routine and nonroutine utterances from their visual and discourse contexts and asked two naive observers to transcribe them. To investigate the possible effect of contextual information, the naive observers transcribed the extracted utterances under context-information-present and context-information- absent conditions. The results indicated that extracted utterances were more intelligible under context-information-present conditions. The results were interpreted as indicating that child speech was more intelligible in routines than nonroutines because routines provide adults with more context information for interpreting ambiguous child utterances.
Grammatical morphology in language–impaired children acquiring English or German as their first language: A functional perspective
Authors: Lidner Katrin , Johnston Judith R. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTFourteen matched pairs of German-speaking and English-speaking language-impaired children, aged 4;5–6;11, were tested for their knowledge of grammatical morphology and expressive vocabulary, using the Grammatical Closure subtest of the ITPA or its German adaptation, Grammatik in the PET, and the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test or the Aktiver Wortschatztest. Children were matched pairwise on the basis of their chronological age, nonverbal IQ, and scores in a sentence imitation and a sentence production task. As predicted, the German-speaking language-impaired children earned higher scores in grammatical morphology and vocabulary than did the English-speaking children. These findings add to a growing body of literature that documents language-specific sensitivity to particular sorts of syntactic devices. They also suggest that the morphological difficulties seen in English-speaking language-impaired children stem in part from the minor functional role played by these forms during the early language learning years.
New perspective on intrasentential code-switching: A study of Korean– English switching
Authors: Yoon Keumsil Kim 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThis article explores typology-based differences in patterns of bilingual behavior by analyzing code-switches of Korean-English bilingual speakers, a language group that has not received much study so far. Data collected from 20 balanced bilinguals was analyzed to address the issues of linguistic constraints on code-switching and applicability of the concepts of nonce borrowing, language assignment, and neutrality to the phenomena observed. Two interesting code-switching phenomena were found: a change of the part of speech in the process of making small-size nonequivalence constituent switches and an introduction of Korean “operating verbs,” which are inflected to indicate the degree of respect to the interlocutor. Four subjects (two males, two females), who were taped in two different contexts, showed a reduction in social code-switching and a higher rate of English monolingual sentences when talking to their spouses than to an acquaintance.
Language development, metalinguistic skills, and print awareness in 3-year-old children
Authors: Chaney Carolyn 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThis is an investigation of the relationships among selected aspects of normal language development, emerging metalinguistic skills, and concepts about print in 3-year-old children. Forty–three normally developing children were given four tests of language development; twelve metalinguistic tasks measuring phonological awareness, word awareness, and structural awareness; and two measures of literacy knowledge. The results clearly demonstrated that most 3-year-olds can make metalinguistic judgments and productions in structured tasks, with overall metalinguistic performance improving with age in months. Specific metalinguistic tasks varied in difficulty and probably in developmental order. The major domains of metalinguistic awareness (phonological, word, and structural) were significantly intercorrelated and also correlated with overall linguistic skill. Literacy knowledge was positively correlated with overall metalinguistic skill and, specifically, with phonological awareness. It is concluded that, as young as age 3, children are already rapidly developing a mental framework for analyzing language structure separately from language meaning
Tone and intonation in Mandarin babytalk to presyllabic infants: Comparison with registers of adult conversation and foreign language instruction
Authors: Papoušek Mechthild , Hwang Shu-Fen C. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTSix native speakers of Mandarin Chinese recorded 140 preselected utterances in three role-play contexts that differentially elicited registers of babytalk to presyllabic infants (BTP), foreign language instruction (FLI), and adult conversation (AC). Sound spectrograms were used to obtain 10 measures of fundamental frequency (Fo) patterns for comparisons among the three registers. In FLI, the speakers expanded Fo patterns in time and Fo range in comparison with AC. They clarified lexical tonal information and seemed to reduce suprasegmental information. In BTP, the speakers raised peak and minimum Fo, reduced the rate of Fo fluctuations, and increased the proportion of terminal rising contours. The speakers reduced, neglected, or modified lexical tonal information in favor of simplified and clarified intonation contours. The significance of the results is discussed in relation to tone acquisition in children and to a universal intuitive didactic competence in caretakers.
The synergy of sign and speech in simultaneous communication
Authors: Maxwell Madeline , Bernstein Mark E. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTMany schools encourage deaf children to speak and sign simultaneously; however, there have been no satisfactory descriptions of this behavior. The research reported in this paper explored the correspondence between speech and sign and the resulting correspondence of the messages conveyed by each channel. The results suggest a synergistic model for this bimodally coded form of English.
Deficits in sentence comprehension: Are they syntactic? Comments on Stein, Cairns, and Zurif
Authors: Goodluck Helen 
Published: December 2008

In a recent paper in Applied Psycholinguistics, Stein, Cairns, and Zurif (1984) demonstrate that reading disabled children perform at a less advanced level relative to normals of the same age in comprehending a number of complex sentence types, including sentences with temporal adverbial clauses, such as (1): 1. The pig kissed the cow after jumping over the fence. (Please see erratum page at back of this issue for the corrected figures concerning this sentence from the Stein, Cairns, and Zurif article.)While adults require the (missing) subject of jump in (1) to be interpreted as coreferential with the main clause subject (the pig in the example), normal children are frequently 6 or older before they develop this restriction, permitting a direct object NP (the cow in the example) to be made subject of (to control) the temporal clause. Stein et al. demonstrate that reading disabled children are slower than normals to develop the adult rule, a finding that generalized over both their comprehension of written and spoken language. In what follows, I point out some difficulties with the analysis of the adult grammar and normal development that Stein et al. adopt, and speculate on alternative ways of dealing with the facts of grammar and development for sentences of type (1). To the extent that these speculations are correct, our view of the nature of deficits may also be changed.
Writing in preschoolers: An age-related analysis
Authors: Tolchinsky-Landsmann Liliana , Levin Iris 
Published: December 2008

AbstractWe investigated the development in preschoolers' conceptualization of the written system from its graphic rendering and its mapping onto meaning by analyzing children's writings and readings of their writings. Forty-two Israeli children aged 3.4 – 5.8 years were asked to draw, write, and interpret a number of utterances. By the age of four, children's writings became constricted in size relative to their drawings and were composed of linearly organized units separated by regular blanks. These units increased in their adherence to conventional Hebrew letters throughout the age range examined. Children's interpretations of their own writing were classified into five modes: Interpretation unrelated to the utterance; preserving the content of the utterance but not its verbal form; complete reiteration; dividing the utterance into phonetic units; and description of the written characters. These modes were related to age and to conventionality of characters used.
The spelling's the thing: Knowledge of derivational morphology in orthography and phonology among older students
Authors: Templeton Shane , Scarborough-Franks Linda 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThis study examines the ability of good and poor spellers at grades six and ten to generate orthographic and phonetic derivatives for three predominant vowel alternation patterns characteristic of internal derivational morphology. Results support the hypothesis that a productive knowledge of these patterns in orthography precedes a productive knowledge of these patterns in phonology. Further, orthographic (visual) information was found to be superior to phonetic (aural) information in accessing the appropriate derivational morphological rules. An order is identified for the acquisition of a productive knowledge of the three vowel alternation patterns in both orthography and phonology. Based on these results and analyses, instructional implications for both spelling and vocabulary are offered.
The ability of language-disordered children to use and modify hypotheses in discrimination learning
Authors: Kamhi Alan G. , Nelson Lauren K. , Lee René Friemoth , Gholson Barry 
Published: December 2008

AbstractBlank-trial probe discrimination learning tasks were used to evaluate the hypothesis-testing abilities of 15 language-disordered and 30 normally developing children matched for mental age and language age. Children were presented with a series of two-dimensional learning set and orthogonal problems. No significant group differences were found in the learning set problems. All the children reached learning set criterion quickly, used a high proportion of simple object hypotheses, and maintained a high proportion of confirmed hypotheses. On the orthogonal problems, however, the language-disordered and mental-aged- (MA) matched children performed significantly better than the younger normal children. These findings suggest that the cognitive and linguistic deficits language-disordered children exhibit do not reflect an underlying failure to generate and test hypotheses. This conclusion, however, does not seem to apply to all language-disordered children. In the final section of the paper, language-disordered children's cognitive strengths and weaknesses are interpreted within the context of an information-processing model.
Acquired surface dyslexia: The evidence from Hebrew
Authors: Birnboim Smadar 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTMost research on dyslexia deals with native speakers of English. This study, however, investigates the specific symptoms of acquired surface dyslexia in Hebrew. It is assumed that Hebrew has a number of distinctive properties that would affect the definition of symptoms differently from those in English. In this study, four acquired surface dyslexic adults were compared with eight normal second graders in terms of reading strategy. The comparison was carried out mainly to discover whether certain symptoms were specific to surface dyslexia or whether they were normal in reading acquisition and thus could be defined in terms of a general non-lexical strategy of reading. Two main conclusions emerged from this research study. (1) Homophones and homographs were a major source of difficulty for native Hebrew surface dyslexic readers; vowel misreadings were the most common error. These phenomena were not common to English surface dyslexia, where difficulty with irregular words is the main symptom and regularization errors are the most frequent. It should be noted, however, that difficulty with homophones also occurs in English surface dyslexia. (2) The normal second graders tended to read using a non-lexical strategy. Their reading was similar to that of surface dyslexic subjects.
Examination of the stability of two methods of defining specific language impairment
Authors: Cole Kevin N. , Schwartz Ilene S. , Notari Angela R. , Dale Philip S. , Mills Paulette E. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTTwo commonly applied methods of differentially classifying language-delayed children as either specifically language impaired or developmental lag language impaired (i.e., children with low IQ and low language performance) were examined for stability over 1-and 2-year periods. One classification method, following the DSM III.R guidelines, was based on an absolute cut-off level for performance on a measure of cognitive ability, in conjunction with other exclusionary criteria (i.e., language delay that is not the result of hearing loss, social– emotional disorder, etc.). The second classification method included the same absolute cut-off for cognitive ability as the DSM III-R guidelines, but it also required that a minimum relative difference be present between the general cognitive performance and the language performance. These two methods were examined for differences in classification of children, as well as for stability of classification across time. We used the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities Perceptual-Performance Index as the cognitive measure and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised and the Test of Early Language Development as language performance measures. Results indicated significant differences in classification between the two methods of defining SLI, as well as substantial changes in classification over time using either method. Alternative classification systems are discussed.
The Communicative Intention Inventory: A system for observing and coding children's early intentional communication
Authors: Coggins Truman E. , Carpenter Robert L. 
Published: December 2008

ABSTRACTThe Communicative Intention Inventory, an observational system for describing children's early gestural, vocal, and verbal communicative behaviors, is presented in this paper. The Inventory is comprised of eight intentional categories which are included because of their content and construct validity, their likelihood of occurrence in a clinical setting, and their high observerscorer reliability. The rank order of frequency of occurrence of the eight intentional categories is compared across 16 subjects resulting in a reliability coefficient of .66. The value of using the Inventory as a criterion-referenced measure of communicative intentions is explored.
Subject-specific and task-specific characteristics of metalinguistic awareness in bilingual children
Authors: Galambos Sylvia Joseph , Hakuta Kenji 
Published: December 2008

AbstractThe relationship between bilingualism and metalinguistic awareness was explored in Puerto Rican Spanish- and English-speaking children. All subjects were from low-income backgrounds and were enrolled in a transitional bilingual education program in the United States. Two longitudinal studies were conducted. The first study examined the abilities to note and correct ungrammatical sentences in Spanish. Subjects were 104 children in first and second grade at the beginning of the study. They were followed over a period of 2 years. The second study looked at the ability to detect ambiguity in sentences, and to paraphrase the different meanings. There were 107 subjects who were in fourth and fifth grades, and were also followed over a 2-year period. The results from both studies indicated that native language proficiency as well as the degree of bilingualism affected metalinguistic awareness. The results also indicated that these effects interacted with the types of items in the metalinguistic tasks. This suggests that both subject-specific and task-specific factors are important in understanding the relationship between bilingualism and metalinguistic awareness.
The effect of mothers' communication mode on language development in preschool deaf children
Authors: Musselman Carol Reich , Lindsay Peter H. , Wilson Anne Keeton 
Published: December 2008

AbstractA longitudinal study was conducted of the effect of mothers' communication mode on the language development of 149 children with severe and profound hearing losses. The relationship of several subject and family characteristics to mode selection was also investigated. The children were between 3 and 5 years of age at the commencement of the 4-year study. Mothers' mode was coded from videotapes of structured and semistructured interactions. Findings indicated that children whose mothers used oral communication had higher scores on measures of spoken language, whereas children whose mothers used manual communication had higher scores on measures of receptive language and mother-child communication. Within the oral group, children whose mothers made extensive use of gestures had lower scores than children whose mothers did not. Within the manual group, children receiving limited sign input had lower scores on most measures than children receiving extensive input.