Language Learning and Development最新文献

{"title":"Logic and felicity in the face of intellectual disability: linguistic scales and Williams syndrome.","authors":"Asya Achimova, Julien Musolino, Rennie Pasquinelli, Barbara Landau","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2026.2702526","DOIUrl":"10.1080/15475441.2026.2702526","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Quantifiers (<i>some, all</i>), numerals (<i>two, three</i>), and logical connectors (<i>and, or</i>) belong to the class of logical expressions that convey abstract and complex meaning, denoting properties of sets or relations between sets. In this paper, we show that individuals with Williams syndrome (WS), who display severe deficits in spatial and numerical cognition, and mild-to-moderate intellectual disability, can nevertheless carry out the semantic computations necessary for understanding these expressions. We report data from two experiments testing knowledge of (a) the set-theoretic properties of basic English quantifiers, numerals, and connectors and (b) the logical consequences of these properties (i.e. entailment relations). We compared the performance of 32 adults with WS and 32 neurotypical adult speakers of English. In Experiment 1, people with WS performed significantly above chance (and close to ceiling) on the tests that evaluate the truth-conditional meaning of logical expressions. Moreover, in trials that permit both a strictly logical interpretation and a pragmatically enriched interpretation involving an implicature, speakers with WS and neurotypical adults displayed similar interpretive preferences. In Experiment 2, the WS group scored correctly on more than 90% of trials that evaluated knowledge of the felicity conditions associated with each expression. We interpret these findings as evidence of deep semantic and pragmatic representations in people with WS, notwithstanding their other limitations. We maintain that the relatively small differences in performance between neurotypical adults and individuals with WS are a matter of degree, not of kind. This conclusion allows us to move beyond the question of whether language development in WS is \"typical\" and instead focus on the underlying computational mechanisms that support language use and understanding in adults with WS. We discuss our results in the context of questions about the independence of language from other cognitive systems, and more generally, the modularity debate.</p>","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13426231/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148654815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Limits to resilience: Investigating narratives in ASL signers who acquired their first language in adolescence.","authors":"Anne Therese Frederiksen, Rachel I Mayberry","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2025.2529901","DOIUrl":"10.1080/15475441.2025.2529901","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The present study investigated narrative abilities in five deaf adults who grew up with impoverished language access until learning American Sign Language (ASL) after age 12. We found that these signers generally provided sufficient information and structure, and that their referent tracking showed pragmatic awareness and ability to vary the explicitness of referring expressions according to addressee needs. However, both story structure and referent tracking patterns were highly variable among signers, resulting in incomplete stories and underspecified reference in some signers. Previous studies have argued that the narrative domain is resilient to age of acquisition effects, finding that narrative abilities in children who learn sign language in childhood are similar to those who learn from birth. Although based on a small sample, our results suggest that such resilience does not necessarily extend to cases where language is first acquired in adolescence. We offer suggestions for future research and discuss implications of comparing the language of individuals growing up deprived of accessible, conventional language input to the those with full access to language.</p>","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12360269/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144973924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"American Sign Language basic clause comprehension strategies used by late first-language learners: Plausibility, animacy, and linguistic structure.","authors":"Qi Cheng, Rachel I Mayberry","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2025.2524820","DOIUrl":"10.1080/15475441.2025.2524820","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Few studies to date have explored the role of early language experience on syntactic development during the early stages of language acquisition. Understanding the language outcomes of deaf individuals with severely delayed first language (L1) onset can provide valuable insights into the nature of the critical period for early syntactic development. The current study examines the use of linguistic versus extra-linguistic (plausibility, animacy) cues at the basic clausal level by deaf late first language (L1) signers of American Sign Language (ASL). Nine late L1 signers of ASL completed a sentence-picture matching task involving sentences that varied in linguistic structure, plausibility, and noun animacy. Overall, late L1 signers tended to rely on linguistic cues in noun-attribute and spatial classifier sentences even when the sentence meanings were implausible. In contrast, when faced with implausible and irreversible transitive sentences, they showed resilient but fragile use of word order, with overall high accuracy except when animacy conflicted with word order. These comprehension patterns resemble those of young children with an immersive early language environment, who often rely on a mix of linguistic and extra-linguistic cues before robustly relying on linguistic rules. Together, these findings suggest that late L1 signers exhibit a graded representation of basic syntactic structures, emphasizing the critical role of early language exposure in fostering the robust development of basic clausal structures.</p>","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12530140/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145330525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Acquisition of a rare variant: ne-realization in the negative utterances of French children and their caregivers","authors":"Yiran Chen, Kathryn Schuler","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2024.2380686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2024.2380686","url":null,"abstract":"A growing body of evidence suggests children acquire linguistic variation and follow grammatical constraints on its use from a young age. While prior research predominantly focuses on variables for...","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142185864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Thematic Content, Not Number Matching, Drives Syntactic Bootstrapping","authors":"Laurel Perkins, Tyler Knowlton, Alexander Williams, Jeffrey Lidz","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2024.2372663","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2024.2372663","url":null,"abstract":"Children use correlations between the syntax of a clause and the meaning of its predicate to draw inferences about word meanings. On one proposal, these inferences are underwritten by a structural ...","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141744394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An Online Survey of Picture Book Reading Practices with Children Between the Ages of 0 and 30 Months","authors":"Trisha N. Patel, Zeynep B. Marasli, Alyssa Choi, Jessica L. Montag","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2024.2372245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2024.2372245","url":null,"abstract":"There is a great deal of variability in how families read and interact with picture books. To understand why reading practices may (or may not) relate to language outcomes, a necessary step to unde...","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"64 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141744395","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Semantic Cues Facilitate Structural Generalizations in Artificial Language Learning","authors":"Erin Conwell, Jesse Snedeker","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2024.2342873","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2024.2342873","url":null,"abstract":"Natural languages contain systematic relationships between verb meaning and verb argument structure. Artificial language learning studies typically remove those relationships and instead pair verb ...","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140628378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Associations Between Joint Attention, Supported Joint Engagement and Language in TD Children and Children with ASD: Potential Sources of Individual and Group Differences in Language Outcomes","authors":"Ahmed Abdelaziz, Manuela Wagner, Letitia R. Naigles","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2024.2336047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2024.2336047","url":null,"abstract":"Joint Attention (JA) and Supported Joint Engagement (Supported JE) have each been reported to predict later language development in typically developing (TD) children and children with Autism Spect...","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"207 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140593661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Language-Specific Sound-Shape Matching at 12-Months of Age","authors":"Christine C. Muscat, Monika Molnar, Jovana Pejovic","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2024.2334213","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2024.2334213","url":null,"abstract":"By 12 months of age, infants exhibit behavioral sensitivity to sound symbolism (e.g. sound-shape correspondences) when they hear universally sound symbolic pseudowords (e.g. “bouba,” “kiki”). Here,...","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"60 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140603015","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Implicit Learning of Prepositions in Dutch Kindergartners with and without Developmental Language Disorder","authors":"Imme Lammertink, Eliane Segers, Annette Scheper, Loes Wauters, Constance Vissers","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2024.2313226","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2024.2313226","url":null,"abstract":"It has been proposed that an implicit learning deficit explains the difficulties with grammar commonly observed in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). The present study further inv...","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140199403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}