Irene Cadime, Ana Lúcia Santos, Iolanda Ribeiro, Fernanda Leopoldina Viana, María Teresa Martín-Aragoneses
{"title":"Living the first years in a pandemic: children's linguistic development and related factors in and out of the COVID-19 lockdowns.","authors":"Irene Cadime, Ana Lúcia Santos, Iolanda Ribeiro, Fernanda Leopoldina Viana, María Teresa Martín-Aragoneses","doi":"10.1017/S0305000924000412","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000924000412","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This retrospective study provides insights on linguistic development in exceptional circumstances assessing 378 children (between 2;6 and 3;6) who lived their first years during the COVID-19 pandemic and comparing it with normative data collected before this period (<i>CDI-III-PT;</i> Cadime et al., 2021). It investigates the extent to which linguistic development was modulated by a complex set of factors, including sex, maternal education, book reading, language-promoting practices, COVID-19 infection, parental stress and sleeping problems, considering three periods (during lockdowns, out of lockdowns and at present). The results show a substantial negative effect of the pandemic on both lexical and syntactic development. Considering individual variation, structural equation modelling unveiled a complex scenario in which age, sex, book reading, language-promoting practices, sleeping problems and COVID-19 infection showed a direct effect on linguistic development. Maternal education and parental stress had an indirect effect on children's language, mediated by book reading and sleeping problems, respectively.</p>","PeriodicalId":48132,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Child Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142510546","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}
Allison Fitch, Amy M. Lieberman, Michael C. Frank, Jessica Brough, Matthew Valleau, Sudha Arunachalam
{"title":"Referential transparency of verbs in child-directed input by Japanese and American caregivers","authors":"Allison Fitch, Amy M. Lieberman, Michael C. Frank, Jessica Brough, Matthew Valleau, Sudha Arunachalam","doi":"10.1017/s0305000924000382","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000924000382","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Children acquiring Japanese differ from those acquiring English with regard to the rate at which verbs are learned (Fernald & Morikawa, 1993). One possible explanation is that Japanese caregivers use verbs in referentially transparent contexts, which facilitate the form-meaning link. We examined this hypothesis by assessing differences in verb usage by Japanese and American caregivers during dyadic play with their infants (5-22 months). We annotated verb-containing utterances for elements associated with referential transparency and compared across groups. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found that Japanese caregivers used verbs in fewer referentially transparent contexts than American caregivers, or did not significantly differ from American caregivers, depending on the measure. These findings cast doubt on cross-cultural differences in referential transparency between Japanese and American child-directed input.</p>","PeriodicalId":48132,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Child Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142488730","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}
Melanie Soderstrom, Joscelin Rocha-Hidalgo, Luis E Muñoz, Agata Bochynska, Janet F Werker, Barbora Skarabela, Amanda Seidl, Yana Ryjova, Jennifer L Rennels, Christine E Potter, Markus Paulus, Mitsuhiko Ota, Nonah M Olesen, Karli M Nave, Julien Mayor, Alia Martin, Lauren C Machon, Casey Lew-Williams, Eon-Suk Ko, Hyunji Kim, Natalia Kartushina, Marina Kammermeier, Andrew Jessop, Jessica F Hay, Naomi Havron, Erin E Hannon, J Kiley Hamlin, Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez, Anja Gampe, Tom Fritzsche, Michael C Frank, Samantha Durrant, Catherine Davies, Cara Cashon, Krista Byers-Heinlein, Veronica Boyce, Alexis K Black, Christina Bergmann, Laura Anderson, Mohammed K Alshakhori, Ali H Al-Hoorie, Angeline S M Tsui
{"title":"Testing the relationship between preferences for infant-directed speech and vocabulary development: A multi-lab study.","authors":"Melanie Soderstrom, Joscelin Rocha-Hidalgo, Luis E Muñoz, Agata Bochynska, Janet F Werker, Barbora Skarabela, Amanda Seidl, Yana Ryjova, Jennifer L Rennels, Christine E Potter, Markus Paulus, Mitsuhiko Ota, Nonah M Olesen, Karli M Nave, Julien Mayor, Alia Martin, Lauren C Machon, Casey Lew-Williams, Eon-Suk Ko, Hyunji Kim, Natalia Kartushina, Marina Kammermeier, Andrew Jessop, Jessica F Hay, Naomi Havron, Erin E Hannon, J Kiley Hamlin, Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez, Anja Gampe, Tom Fritzsche, Michael C Frank, Samantha Durrant, Catherine Davies, Cara Cashon, Krista Byers-Heinlein, Veronica Boyce, Alexis K Black, Christina Bergmann, Laura Anderson, Mohammed K Alshakhori, Ali H Al-Hoorie, Angeline S M Tsui","doi":"10.1017/S0305000924000254","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000924000254","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>From early on, infants show a preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS), and exposure to IDS has been correlated with language outcome measures such as vocabulary. The present multi-laboratory study explores this issue by investigating whether there is a link between early preference for IDS and later vocabulary size. Infants' preference for IDS was tested as part of the ManyBabies 1 project, and follow-up CDI data were collected from a subsample of this dataset at 18 and 24 months. A total of 341 (18 months) and 327 (24 months) infants were tested across 21 laboratories. In neither preregistered analyses with North American and UK English, nor exploratory analyses with a larger sample did we find evidence for a relation between IDS preference and later vocabulary. We discuss implications of this finding in light of recent work suggesting that IDS preference measured in the laboratory has low test-retest reliability.</p>","PeriodicalId":48132,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Child Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142477904","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":"Syntactic priming as implicit learning in German child language","authors":"Michelle Tafuri, Katherine Messenger","doi":"10.1017/s0305000924000369","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000924000369","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We investigated syntactic priming in German children to explore crosslinguistic evidence for implicit learning accounts of language production and acquisition. Adult descriptions confirmed that German speakers (N=27) preferred to spontaneously produce active versus passive transitive and DO versus PO dative forms. We tested whether German-speaking children (N=29, M<span><span>age</span></span>=5.3, 15 girls/14 boys) could be primed to produce these dispreferred forms and whether such priming effects would persist across a target phase. Children first heard a block of priming sentences and then described a block of target pictures. They demonstrated significant priming effects for passive and PO dative structures, and these priming effects did not differ between the first and second halves of the block of target trials. These patterns of German child language production are consistent with implicit learning accounts of syntactic priming.</p>","PeriodicalId":48132,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Child Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142444512","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":"Predictors of sentence recall performance in children with and without DLD: Complexity matters","authors":"Janet L. McDonald, Janna B. Oetting","doi":"10.1017/s0305000924000345","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000924000345","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Using archival data from 106 children with and without DLD who spoke two dialects of English, we examined the independent contributions of vocabulary, morphological ability, phonological short term memory (pSTM), and verbal working memory (WM) to exact sentence recall, ungrammatical repetition, and incorrect tense production. For exact repetitions on simpler sentences, performance of the DLD group was predicted by morphological ability, pSTM and WM, while that of the TD group was predicted by vocabulary and sometimes pSTM. On complex sentences, performance of the DLD group was predicted by morphological ability, and the TD group was predicted by pSTM and WM. For ungrammatical repetitions and incorrect tense, morphological ability was a factor for both groups, with WM also affecting the DLD group for ungrammatical production. Thus, sentence recall taxes multiple resources, with more and different factors being taxed at lower levels of complexity for children with DLD than those without.</p>","PeriodicalId":48132,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Child Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142440170","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":"Frequency, perceptual salience, and semantic complexity: The acquisition of possessor inflection in Northern East Cree.","authors":"Ryan E Henke","doi":"10.1017/s0305000924000230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000924000230","url":null,"abstract":"This paper engages longstanding questions regarding how children acquire morphology in polysynthetic languages. It examines the roles of frequency, perceptual salience, and semantic complexity for morphemes in the acquisition of Northern East Cree possessive inflection, where prefixes and suffixes interact to encode possessors. Two studies analyze naturalistic video recordings of one adult and two children. Study 1 describes the frequency, salience, and complexity of possessor-encoding morphemes in the input. Study 2 traces the acquisition of these morphemes in child speech. Results indicate the acquisition of possessor inflection involves a combination of factors whose influences shift over time. Perceptual salience plays a key role in early noun production, but frequency later corresponds more clearly to acquisitional order for high-frequency morphemes. Complexity is hard to isolate from frequency, although neither factor clearly determines acquisitional order for low-frequency morphemes. The paper concludes by considering implications for science and potential applications for Cree communities.","PeriodicalId":48132,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Child Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142439240","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":"Size sound symbolism in mothers’ speech to their infants","authors":"Catherine Laing, Ghada Khattab, Shayne Sloggett, Tamar Keren-Portnoy","doi":"10.1017/s0305000921000799","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000921000799","url":null,"abstract":"Six-month-olds infer object size based on pitch: they map high-pitched vowels onto smaller objects and low-pitched vowels onto larger objects (Peña et al., 2011). The ‘sound symbolism bootstrapping hypothesis’ (Imai & Kita, 2014) proposes that this may support understanding of word-meaning correspondences; by drawing on iconic pairings between linguistic cues and corresponding referents (e.g., higher pitch for smaller objects), infants develop understanding of word-referent associations. Here we analyse mother-child interactions, testing whether sound-symbolic pitch-size correspondences occur in infant-directed speech. 40 dyads engaged in (semi-)naturalistic interaction around picture books containing images of toys of varying sizes. We compare mothers’ pitch when referring to small versus large toys, analysing i) actual size (bigger vs. smaller toys); ii) relative toy size congruence (i.e., congruent vs. incongruent with real-world expectation); and iii) transparency of the test paradigm as regards its focus on size contrastiveness (non-transparent, moderately transparent, highly transparent) to observe the nuances of size sound symbolism in infant-directed speech.","PeriodicalId":48132,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Child Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142431306","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":"Preferential use of full glottal stops in vowel-initial glottalization in child speech: Evidence from novel words.","authors":"Gemma Repiso-Puigdelliura","doi":"10.1017/S0305000924000242","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000924000242","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Vowel-initial glottalization constitutes a cue to prosodic prominence, realized on a strength continuum from creaky phonation to complete glottal stops. While there is considerable research on children's early utilization of acoustic cues for stress marking, less is understood about the specific implementation of vowel-initial glottalization in American English. Eight sequences of function + novel words were elicited from groups of 5-to-8-year-olds, 8-to-11-year-olds, and adults. Children exhibit a similar rate of prevocalic glottalization to adults but differ in its phonetic implementation, producing a higher rate of glottal stops compared to creaky phonation with respect to adults.</p>","PeriodicalId":48132,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Child Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142367025","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":"Late Talkers can generalise trained labels by object shape similarities, but not unfamiliar labels.","authors":"Cecilia Zuniga-Montanez, Andrea Krott","doi":"10.1017/S0305000924000163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000924000163","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Late talkers (LTs) exhibit delayed vocabulary development, which might stem from a lack of a typical word learning strategy to generalise object labels by shape, called the 'shape bias'. We investigated whether LTs can acquire a shape bias and whether this accelerates vocabulary learning. Fourteen LTs were randomly allocated to either a shape training group (<i>M</i><sub>age</sub> = 2.76 years, 6 males), which was taught that objects similar in shape have the same name, or a control group (<i>M</i><sub>age</sub> = 2.61 years, 4 males), which was taught real words without any focus on object shape. After seven training sessions, children in the shape training group generalised trained labels by shape (<i>d</i> = 1.28), but not unfamiliar labels. Children in the control group extended all labels randomly. Training did not affect expressive vocabulary.</p>","PeriodicalId":48132,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Child Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142367024","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":"Chinese mothers use idioms in shared book reading: A predictor for children's Chinese vocabulary growth?","authors":"Junyi Yang, Vibeke Grøver, Joshua F Lawrence","doi":"10.1017/S0305000924000266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000924000266","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Idioms play an important role in language; however, little research has examined idioms in children's natural language settings. This study explored idioms usage in maternal talk during mother-child shared book reading and its relation to children's vocabulary development. Thirty-three Chinese children in Norway (aged 3;0-5;5) and their mothers participated. We observed shared reading at the onset of the study and assessed children's receptive and expressive vocabulary in Chinese three times across one year. Results demonstrated that mothers used an average of 1.8 idioms and explained one-third of the idioms. Maternal idiom usage was correlated with their talk amount and lexical diversity. Individual growth modeling revealed that the number of idioms mothers used predicted the growth of children's receptive vocabulary in Chinese. We speculate that idiom usage could be an effective and understudied marker of parental linguistic sophistication. This study underscores the importance of idiom exposure in children's language environment.</p>","PeriodicalId":48132,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Child Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2024-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142362271","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}