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Łuniewska M, Krysztofiak M, Haman E. Parental report of vocabulary in 3- to 6-year-old Polish children: Reliable but not valid. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE & COMMUNICATION DISORDERS 2024. [PMID: 39123303 DOI: 10.1111/1460-6984.13101] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/27/2023] [Accepted: 07/26/2024] [Indexed: 08/12/2024]
Abstract
BACKGROUND For over 30 years, parental reports have been used to study the vocabulary of children under 4 years of age. Research exploring parental checklists as a measure of vocabulary in older children is very limited. Typically, authors of parental checklists report the reliability of the developed tools but do not explore validity in terms of the agreement between parental assessments and the children's actual word knowledge. AIMS We aimed to explore the reliability and validity of a parental checklist for assessing vocabulary in children aged between 3 and 6 years. Furthermore, we aimed to evaluate the agreement between indirect (parental checklist) and direct (picture naming and picture recognition tasks) assessments of children's vocabulary. METHODS AND PROCEDURES A group of 94 typically developing monolingual Polish-speaking children aged between 3 and 6 years were first directly tested onsite with picture naming and picture recognition tasks (Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks). Subsequently, the participants' parents completed an online checklist containing the same set of 128 items and marked all the words that they had ever heard in their child's spontaneous speech. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS The parental checklist demonstrated very high internal consistency. The scores of the parental checklist and vocabulary tasks were moderately correlated. We compared the total number of words marked by parents and the number of items correctly identified by children in the picture naming and picture recognition tasks. In picture naming, we found no difference between the children's scores and the number of words selected by parents. However, parents selected significantly fewer words than children correctly recognised in the picture recognition task. When data were analysed at the level of individual items (i.e., whether parents selected exactly the same items that children answered correctly), we found that the level of agreement was low. The level of agreement correlated negatively with the children's vocabulary; that is, the more words a child knew, the lower the agreement between the direct measure and the parental checklist. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS Parental checklists should be used with caution in children aged between 3 and 6 years, especially if the assessed children have a large vocabulary and if item analysis is planned. Such checklists may be of more use in younger children or in children with limited vocabulary. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS What is already known on the subject Parental checklists are commonly used to assess the vocabulary of children younger than 4 years of age. Previous research has indicated that parental checklists are reliable in terms of internal consistency and valid in terms of predictive and convergent validity. What this paper adds to the existing knowledge This study introduces a parental checklist designed for assessing the vocabulary of monolingual Polish-speaking children aged between 3 and 6 years. Statistical analyses reveal that while the parental checklist exhibits high reliability, and the scores on the checklist correlate with direct measures of vocabulary, the agreement between parental reports and direct vocabulary measures (i.e., validity) is notably low, particularly when examining individual test items. What are the clinical implications of this work? These findings underscore the importance of exercising caution when using parental vocabulary checklists with children aged between 3 and 6 years. These checklists can serve as a replacement for direct vocabulary tests only when the general/overall score is needed. However, when specific words are the subject of interest, parental reports may not be a valid measure.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Ewa Haman
- Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warszawa, Poland
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2
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Verbeek L, Kleemans T, Vissers CTWM, Segers E, Verhoeven L. Individual variation in bilingual vocabulary in preschoolers with developmental language disorder. RESEARCH IN DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES 2024; 147:104695. [PMID: 38394957 DOI: 10.1016/j.ridd.2024.104695] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/25/2023] [Revised: 11/17/2023] [Accepted: 02/06/2024] [Indexed: 02/25/2024]
Abstract
BACKGROUND It is unclear how speech production, selective attention, and phonological working memory are related to first- (L1) and second-language (L2) vocabularies in bilingual preschoolers with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). AIMS To study individual variation in vocabularies in DLD bilingual preschoolers by (1) comparing them to typically developing (TD) bilingual, and TD and DLD monolingual peers; (2) differentially predicting L2 vocabulary; and (3) identifying and characterizing bilinguals' L1/L2 vocabulary profiles. METHODS We measured the selective attention, working memory, and L1 Turkish/Polish (where applicable) and L1/L2 Dutch speech and vocabulary abilities of 31 DLD bilingual, 37 TD bilingual, and 61 DLD and 54 TD Dutch monolingual three-to-five year-olds. RESULTS DLD bilinguals scored lower than TD bilinguals and TD/DLD monolinguals on all measures, except L2 vocabulary, where all bilinguals underperformed all monolinguals. Selective attention predicted Dutch vocabulary across groups. Three bilingual vocabulary profiles emerged: DLD bilinguals were less likely to be L1 dominant, TD/DLD bilinguals with better attention more often had a Balanced high L1/L2 profile, while those with poorer selective attention and L1 speech tended to be L2 dominant. CONCLUSIONS These findings highlight the roles of L1 speech and selective attention, rather than L2 speech and working memory, in understanding bilingual vocabulary variation among DLD preschoolers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lisa Verbeek
- Radboud University, Behavioural Science Institute, Thomas van Aquinostraat 4, 6525 GD Nijmegen, the Netherlands; Royal Kentalis, PO box 89, 3500 AB Utrecht, the Netherlands.
| | - Tijs Kleemans
- Radboud University, Behavioural Science Institute, Thomas van Aquinostraat 4, 6525 GD Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Constance T W M Vissers
- Radboud University, Behavioural Science Institute, Thomas van Aquinostraat 4, 6525 GD Nijmegen, the Netherlands; Royal Kentalis, PO box 89, 3500 AB Utrecht, the Netherlands
| | - Eliane Segers
- Radboud University, Behavioural Science Institute, Thomas van Aquinostraat 4, 6525 GD Nijmegen, the Netherlands
| | - Ludo Verhoeven
- Radboud University, Behavioural Science Institute, Thomas van Aquinostraat 4, 6525 GD Nijmegen, the Netherlands; Royal Kentalis, PO box 89, 3500 AB Utrecht, the Netherlands
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3
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Soto G, Tönsing K. Is there a 'universal' core? Using semantic primes to select vocabulary across languages in AAC. Augment Altern Commun 2024; 40:1-11. [PMID: 37682080 DOI: 10.1080/07434618.2023.2243322] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/06/2022] [Accepted: 07/21/2023] [Indexed: 09/09/2023] Open
Abstract
Core vocabulary lists and vocabulary inventories vary according to language. Lists from one language cannot and should not be assumed to be translatable, as words represent language-specific concepts and grammar. In this manuscript, we (a) present the results of a vocabulary overlap analysis between different published core vocabulary lists in English, Korean, Spanish, and Sepedi; (b) discuss the concept of universal semantic primes as a set of universal concepts that are posited to be language-independent; and (c) provide a list of common words shared across all four languages as exemplars of their semantic primes. The resulting common core words and their corresponding semantic primes can assist families and professionals in thinking about the initial steps in the development of AAC systems for their bilingual/multilingual clients.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gloria Soto
- Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, and Department of Special Education, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, United States
| | - Kerstin Tönsing
- Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
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Rodriguez-Cuadrado S, Hinojosa JA, Guasch M, Romero-Rivas C, Sabater L, Suárez-Coalla P, Ferré P. Subjective age of acquisition norms for 1604 English words by Spanish L2 speakers of English and their relationship with lexico-semantic, affective, sociolinguistic and proficiency variables. Behav Res Methods 2023; 55:4437-4454. [PMID: 36477592 PMCID: PMC10700429 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-022-02026-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 11/12/2022] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
Psycholinguistic studies have shown that there are many variables implicated in language comprehension and production. At the lexical level, subjective age of acquisition (AoA), the estimate of the age at which a word is acquired, is key for stimuli selection in psycholinguistic studies. AoA databases in English are often used when testing a variety of phenomena in second language (L2) speakers of English. However, these have limitations, as the norms are not provided by the target population (L2 speakers of English) but by native English speakers. In this study, we asked native Spanish L2 speakers of English to provide subjective AoA ratings for 1604 English words, and investigated whether factors related to 14 lexico-semantic and affective variables, both in Spanish and English, and to the speakers' profile (i.e., sociolinguistic variables and L2 proficiency), were related to the L2 AoA ratings. We used boosted regression trees, an advanced form of regression analysis based on machine learning and boosting algorithms, to analyse the data. Our results showed that the model accounted for a relevant proportion of deviance (58.56%), with the English AoA provided by native English speakers being the strongest predictor for L2 AoA. Additionally, L2 AoA correlated with L2 reaction times. Our database is a useful tool for the research community running psycholinguistic studies in L2 speakers of English. It adds knowledge about which factors-linked to the characteristics of both the linguistic stimuli and the speakers-affect L2 subjective AoA. The database and the data can be downloaded from: https://osf.io/gr8xd/?view_only=73b01dccbedb4d7897c8d104d3d68c46 .
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Affiliation(s)
- Sara Rodriguez-Cuadrado
- Departamento Interfacultativo de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Facultad de Formación del Profesorado y Educación, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, C/ Francisco Tomás y Valiente, n° 3, 28049, Madrid, Spain.
| | - José Antonio Hinojosa
- Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- Departamento Psicología Experimental, Procesos Cognitivos y Logopedia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
- Centro de Investigación Nebrija en Cognición (CINC), Universidad Nebrija, Madrid, Spain
| | - Marc Guasch
- Departamento de Psicología y CRAMC, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
| | - Carlos Romero-Rivas
- Departamento Interfacultativo de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Facultad de Formación del Profesorado y Educación, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, C/ Francisco Tomás y Valiente, n° 3, 28049, Madrid, Spain
| | - Lucía Sabater
- Departamento Interfacultativo de Psicología Evolutiva y de la Educación, Facultad de Formación del Profesorado y Educación, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, C/ Francisco Tomás y Valiente, n° 3, 28049, Madrid, Spain
- Instituto Pluridisciplinar, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Paz Suárez-Coalla
- Departamento de Psicología y Grupo de Investigación INCO, Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain
| | - Pilar Ferré
- Departamento de Psicología y CRAMC, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
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Portelance E, Duan Y, Frank MC, Lupyan G. Predicting Age of Acquisition for Children's Early Vocabulary in Five Languages Using Language Model Surprisal. Cogn Sci 2023; 47:e13334. [PMID: 37695825 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13334] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/03/2023] [Revised: 07/26/2023] [Accepted: 08/14/2023] [Indexed: 09/13/2023]
Abstract
What makes a word easy to learn? Early-learned words are frequent and tend to name concrete referents. But words typically do not occur in isolation. Some words are predictable from their contexts; others are less so. Here, we investigate whether predictability relates to when children start producing different words (age of acquisition; AoA). We operationalized predictability in terms of a word's surprisal in child-directed speech, computed using n-gram and long-short-term-memory (LSTM) language models. Predictability derived from LSTMs was generally a better predictor than predictability derived from n-gram models. Across five languages, average surprisal was positively correlated with the AoA of predicates and function words but not nouns. Controlling for concreteness and word frequency, more predictable predicates and function words were learned earlier. Differences in predictability between languages were associated with cross-linguistic differences in AoA: the same word (when it was a predicate) was produced earlier in languages where the word was more predictable.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Yuguang Duan
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
| | | | - Gary Lupyan
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Wolna A, Łuniewska M, Haman E, Wodniecka Z. Polish norms for a set of colored drawings of 168 objects and 146 actions with predictors of naming performance. Behav Res Methods 2023; 55:2706-2732. [PMID: 35915359 PMCID: PMC10439080 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-022-01923-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 06/28/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
In this study, we present the first database of pictures and their corresponding psycholinguistic norms for Polish: the CLT database. In this norming study, we used the pictures from Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (CLT): a set of colored drawings of 168 object and 146 actions. The CLT pictures were carefully created to provide a valid tool for multicultural comparisons. The pictures are accompanied by norms for Naming latencies, Name agreement, Goodness of depiction, Image agreement, Concept familiarity, Age of acquisition, Imageability, Lexical frequency, and Word complexity. We also report analyses of predictors of Naming latencies for pictures of objects and actions. Our results show that Name agreement, Concept familiarity, and Lexical frequency are significant predictors of Naming latencies for pictures of both objects and actions. Additionally, Age of acquisition significantly predicts Naming latencies of pictures of objects. The CLT database is freely available at osf.io/gp9qd. The full set of CLT pictures, including additional variants of pictures, is available on request at osf.io/y2cwr.
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Affiliation(s)
- Agata Wolna
- Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland.
| | | | - Ewa Haman
- Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
| | - Zofia Wodniecka
- Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland.
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The Naming Assessment in Multicultural Europe (NAME): Development and Validation in a Multicultural Memory Clinic. J Int Neuropsychol Soc 2023; 29:92-104. [PMID: 35039100 DOI: 10.1017/s135561772100148x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/01/2023]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE Traditional naming tests are unsuitable to assess naming impairment in diverse populations, given the influence of culture, language, and education on naming performance. Our goal was therefore to develop and validate a new test to assess naming impairment in diverse populations: the Naming Assessment in Multicultural Europe (NAME). METHOD We carried out a multistage pilot study. First, we generated a list of 149 potentially suitable items - e.g. from published cross-linguistic word lists and other naming tests - and selected those with a homogeneous age of acquisition and word frequency across languages. We selected three to four colored photographs for each of the 73 remaining items; 194 controls selected the most suitable photographs. Thirteen items were removed after a pilot study in 15 diverse healthy controls. The final 60-item test was validated in 39 controls and 137 diverse memory clinic patients with subjective cognitive impairment, neurological/neurodegenerative disease or psychiatric disorders in the Netherlands and Turkey (mean age: 67, SD: 11). Patients were from 15 different countries; the majority completed primary education or less (53%). RESULTS The NAME showed excellent reliability (Spearman-Brown coefficient: 0.95; Kuder-Richardson coefficient: 0.94) and robust correlations with other language tests (ρ = .35-.73). Patients with AD/mixed dementia obtained lower scores on most (48/60) NAME items, with an area under the curve of 0.88. NAME scores were correlated with age and education, but not with acculturation or sex. CONCLUSIONS The NAME is a promising tool to assess naming impairment in culturally, educationally, and linguistically diverse individuals.
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Botarleanu RM, Dascalu M, Watanabe M, Crossley SA, McNamara DS. Age of Exposure 2.0: Estimating word complexity using iterative models of word embeddings. Behav Res Methods 2022; 54:3015-3042. [PMID: 35167112 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-022-01797-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 01/12/2022] [Indexed: 12/16/2022]
Abstract
Age of acquisition (AoA) is a measure of word complexity which refers to the age at which a word is typically learned. AoA measures have shown strong correlations with reading comprehension, lexical decision times, and writing quality. AoA scores based on both adult and child data have limitations that allow for error in measurement, and increase the cost and effort to produce. In this paper, we introduce Age of Exposure (AoE) version 2, a proxy for human exposure to new vocabulary terms that expands AoA word lists through training regressors to predict AoA scores. Word2vec word embeddings are trained on cumulatively increasing corpora of texts, word exposure trajectories are generated by aligning the word2vec vector spaces, and features of words are derived for modeling AoA scores. Our prediction models achieve low errors (from 13% with a corresponding R2 of .35 up to 7% with an R2 of .74), can be uniformly applied to different AoA word lists, and generalize to the entire vocabulary of a language. Our method benefits from using existing readability indices to define the order of texts in the corpora, while the performed analyses confirm that the generated AoA scores accurately predicted the difficulty of texts (R2 of .84, surpassing related previous work). Further, we provide evidence of the internal reliability of our word trajectory features, demonstrate the effectiveness of the word trajectory features when contrasted with simple lexical features, and show that the exclusion of features that rely on external resources does not significantly impact performance.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Mihai Dascalu
- University Politehnica of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania.
- Academy of Romanian Scientists, Bucharest, Romania.
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Corpus-based age of word acquisition: Does it support the validity of adult age-of-acquisition ratings? PLoS One 2022; 17:e0268504. [PMID: 35613107 PMCID: PMC9132288 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0268504] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/09/2021] [Accepted: 05/03/2022] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Age of acquisition (AoA) is presumed to reflect the age or relative order in which words are learned, but is often measured using adult ratings or adult-reported observations and might thus reflect more about the adult language than about the acquisition process. Objective AoA estimates are often limited to words whose referents can be shown in pictures. We created a corpus-derived AoA estimate based on first word occurrences in a longitudinal corpus of child English, and evaluated its reliability and validity against other measures of AoA. Then we used these different measures as concurrent predictors of adult lexical decision times. Our results showed adequate reliability and good relations with other AoA measures, especially with parent-reported AoA (r = 0.56). Corpus AoA did not predict unique variance in lexical decision times, while adult AoA ratings and parent-reported AoA did. We argue that this pattern is due to two factors. First, the adult AoA ratings and parent-reported AoA are confounded with adult memory, lexical processing and reading difficulty variables. Second, the adult AoA ratings are related to actual age of acquisition only for words acquired during later preschool and school age. Our analyses support the utility of corpus-derived AoA estimates as an objective measure of acquisition age, especially for early-acquired words.
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Tjuka A, Forkel R, List JM. Linking norms, ratings, and relations of words and concepts across multiple language varieties. Behav Res Methods 2022; 54:864-884. [PMID: 34357536 PMCID: PMC9046307 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-021-01650-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 06/10/2021] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Psychologists and linguists collect various data on word and concept properties. In psychology, scholars have accumulated norms and ratings for a large number of words in languages with many speakers. In linguistics, scholars have accumulated cross-linguistic information about the relations between words and concepts. Until now, however, there have been no efforts to combine information from the two fields, which would allow comparison of psychological and linguistic properties across different languages. The Database of Cross-Linguistic Norms, Ratings, and Relations for Words and Concepts (NoRaRe) is the first attempt to close this gap. Building on a reference catalog that offers standardization of concepts used in historical and typological language comparison, it integrates data from psychology and linguistics, collected from 98 data sets, covering 65 unique properties for 40 languages. The database is curated with the help of manual, automated, semi-automated workflows and uses a software API to control and access the data. The database is accessible via a web application, the software API, or using scripting languages. In this study, we present how the database is structured, how it can be extended, and how we control the quality of the data curation process. To illustrate its application, we present three case studies that test the validity of our approach, the accuracy of our workflows, and the integrative potential of the database. Due to regular version updates, the NoRaRe database has the potential to advance research in psychology and linguistics by offering researchers an integrated perspective on both fields.
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Affiliation(s)
- Annika Tjuka
- Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Kahlaische Str. 10, 07745, Jena, Germany.
| | - Robert Forkel
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Johann-Mattis List
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany
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Lüke C, Ritterfeld U, Liszkowski U. In Bilinguals' Hands: Identification of Bilingual, Preverbal Infants at Risk for Language Delay. Front Pediatr 2022; 10:878163. [PMID: 35722488 PMCID: PMC9201278 DOI: 10.3389/fped.2022.878163] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/17/2022] [Accepted: 05/11/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Studies with monolingual infants show that the gestural behavior of 1-2-year-olds is a strong predictor for later language competencies and, more specifically, that the absence of index-finger pointing at 12 months seems to be a valid indicator for risk of language delay (LD). In this study a lack of index-finger pointing at 12 months was utilized as diagnostic criterion to identity infants with a high risk for LD at 24 months in a sample of 42 infants growing up bilingually. Results confirm earlier findings from monolinguals showing that 12-month-olds who point with the extended index finger have an advanced language status at 24 months and are less likely language delayed than infants who only point with the whole hand and do not produce index-finger points at 12 months.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carina Lüke
- Special Education and Therapy in Language and Communication Disorders, Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
| | - Ute Ritterfeld
- Department of Language and Communication, Faculty of Rehabilitation Sciences, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany
| | - Ulf Liszkowski
- Department of Developmental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
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12
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Rofes A, Sampedro B, Abusamra L, Cañataro P, Jonkers R, Abusamra V. What Drives Task Performance in Fluency Tasks in People With HIV? Front Psychol 2021; 12:721588. [PMID: 34721177 PMCID: PMC8548841 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.721588] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/07/2021] [Accepted: 09/21/2021] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Introduction: Fluency tasks require language (i.e., semantics, phonological output lexicon, and phonological assembly) and executive functions (i.e., inhibition; mental set shifting; updating, and monitoring). Little is known about whether people with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are more impaired on a specific type of fluency task and what aspects of language and executive functions drive such performance. Aims: To understand (1) whether people with HIV are more impaired in animal, letter, or unconstrained fluency relative to a normative sample; (2) whether there exist differences between tasks relative to the total number of words; and (3) which aspects of executive function and language are involved in their performance. Methods: Data from animal, letter, and unconstrained fluency of 50 Spanish-speaking people with HIV were analyzed. The number of switches and mean cluster size for each task and 10 word properties (e.g., frequency, age of acquisition, length in graphemes) for each of the correct words were measured. A chi-square test was used to address Aim 1, linear mixed effects models for Aim 2, and random forests and conditional inference trees for Aim 3. The results were cross-validated with a normative sample. Results: People with HIV were not more impaired in animal, letter, or unconstrained fluency relative to a normative sample. People with HIV produced fewer words in letter fluency compared to animal and unconstrained fluency. In addition, they produced fewer words in animal fluency compared to unconstrained fluency. Number of switches emerged as the most important variable to predict the total number of correct words when considering the three tasks together and for each task separately. Word frequency was relevant to predict animal fluency, age of acquisition to predict letter fluency, and cluster size to predict unconstrained fluency. These results were cross-validated with the exception cluster size. Conclusion: People with HIV rely on language (phonological output lexicon, not necessarily semantics) and executive functioning (updating and monitoring) to produce words in fluency tasks. These results concur with the current literature. Future work may correlate fluency scores with other tests measuring language and executive functions or study other types of fluency tasks (e.g., action, cities, supermarket, and professions).
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Affiliation(s)
- Adrià Rofes
- Center for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG), University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
| | - Bárbara Sampedro
- Linguistics School, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
| | | | | | - Roel Jonkers
- Center for Language and Cognition Groningen (CLCG), University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
| | - Valeria Abusamra
- Linguistics School, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.,Argentina's National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina.,Hospital Interzonal General de Agudos Eva Perón, Buenos Aires, Argentina
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VAN Wonderen E, Unsworth S. Testing the validity of the Cross-Linguistic Lexical Task as a measure of language proficiency in bilingual children. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE 2021; 48:1101-1125. [PMID: 33200721 DOI: 10.1017/s030500092000063x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
The Cross-linguistic Lexical Task (CLT; Haman, Łuniewska & Pomiechowska, 2015) is a vocabulary task designed to enable cross-linguistic comparisons both across and within (bilingual) children. In this paper we assessed the validity of the CLT as a measure of language proficiency in bilingual children, by determining the extent to which (i) age-matched, monolingual Spanish-speaking and Dutch-speaking children obtained similar scores, (ii) the CLT correlated with other measures of language proficiency in monolingual and bilingual children, and (iii) whether the factors underlying the CLT's construction, i.e., target words' estimated Age of Acquisition and Complexity Index, were predictive of children's scores. Our results showed that, while the CLT correlated with other measures and is therefore a valid means of tapping into language proficiency, caution is required when using it to compare children's language proficiency cross-linguistically, as scores for Dutch-speaking and Spanish-speaking monolinguals sometimes differed.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Sharon Unsworth
- Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
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Objective ages of acquisition for 3300+ simplified Chinese characters. Behav Res Methods 2021; 54:311-323. [PMID: 34159513 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-021-01626-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 05/16/2021] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
We report the construction of two age-of-acquisition (AoA) norms for 3300+ characters in simplified Chinese, which make up about 99% of the texts used in daily life. We determined a character's AoA according to the time in which the character is formally learned in two sets of leading textbooks of Chinese in compulsory education, published respectively on the basis of the 2001 and 2011 national curriculum. Apart from having a significantly larger coverage of characters than previous norms, the current norms also outperformed them in explaining accuracy and reaction times in four large-scale databases for character decision, character naming, or character handwriting, even after controlling for the effects of frequency, number of meanings, and number of strokes. The explanatory advantage of the current norms suggests that, compared to earlier norms, the current norms capture more up-to-date character AoAs; these findings also highlight the diachronic nature of some lexical variables such as AoA and frequency. The developed objective AoA norms can be used for subsequent research on Chinese character recognition or production.
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15
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The Croatian psycholinguistic database: Estimates for 6000 nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Behav Res Methods 2021; 53:1799-1816. [PMID: 33904142 PMCID: PMC8367916 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-020-01533-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 12/21/2020] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Psycholinguistic databases containing ratings of concreteness, imageability, age of acquisition, and subjective frequency are used in psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies which require words as stimuli. Linguistic characteristics (e.g. word length, corpus frequency) are frequently coded, but word class is seldom systematically treated, although there are indications of its significance for imageability and concreteness. This paper presents the Croatian Psycholinguistic Database (CPD; available at: https://doi.org/10.17234/megahr.2019.hpb ), containing 6000 Croatian nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, rated for concreteness, imageability, age of acquisition, and subjective frequency. Moreover, we present computationally obtained extrapolations of concreteness and imageability to the remainder of the Croatian lexicon (available at: https://github.com/megahr/lexicon/blob/master/predictions/hr_c_i.predictions.txt ). In the two studies presented here, we explore the significance of word class for concreteness and imageability in human and computationally obtained ratings. The observed correlations in the CPD indicate correspondences between psycholinguistic measures expected from the literature. Word classes exhibit differences in subjective frequency, age of acquisition, concreteness and imageability, with significant differences between nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. In the computational study which focused on concreteness and imageability, concreteness obtained higher correlations with human ratings than imageability, and the system underpredicted the concreteness of nouns, and overpredicted the concreteness of adjectives and adverbs. Overall, this suggests that word class contains schematic conceptual and distributional information. Schematic conceptual content seems to be more significant in human ratings of concreteness and less significant in computationally obtained ratings, where distributional information seems to play a more significant role. This suggests that word class differences should be theoretically explored.
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16
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Cassani G, Bianchi F, Marelli M. Words with Consistent Diachronic Usage Patterns are Learned Earlier: A Computational Analysis Using Temporally Aligned Word Embeddings. Cogn Sci 2021; 45:e12963. [PMID: 33877700 PMCID: PMC8244097 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.12963] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/08/2020] [Revised: 02/15/2021] [Accepted: 02/21/2021] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
In this study, we use temporally aligned word embeddings and a large diachronic corpus of English to quantify language change in a data-driven, scalable way, which is grounded in language use. We show a unique and reliable relation between measures of language change and age of acquisition (AoA) while controlling for frequency, contextual diversity, concreteness, length, dominant part of speech, orthographic neighborhood density, and diachronic frequency variation. We analyze measures of language change tackling both the change in lexical representations and the change in the relation between lexical representations and the words with the most similar usage patterns, showing that they capture different aspects of language change. Our results show a unique relation between language change and AoA, which is stronger when considering neighborhood-level measures of language change: Words with more coherent diachronic usage patterns tend to be acquired earlier. The results support theories positing a link between ontogenetic and ethnogenetic processes in language.
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Affiliation(s)
- Giovanni Cassani
- Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg University
| | - Federico Bianchi
- Bocconi Institute for Data Science and Analytics, Bocconi University
| | - Marco Marelli
- Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca
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17
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Wagner D, Eslinger PJ, Sterling NW, Du G, Lee EY, Styner M, Lewis MM, Huang X. Lexical-semantic search related to side of onset and putamen volume in Parkinson's disease. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2020; 209:104841. [PMID: 32818719 PMCID: PMC8189666 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2020.104841] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/29/2019] [Revised: 07/20/2020] [Accepted: 07/21/2020] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by dopaminergic cell loss and reduced striatal volume. Prior studies have demonstrated striatal involvement in access to lexical-semantic knowledge and damage to this structure may be evident in the lexical properties of responses. Semantic fluency task responses from early stage, non-demented PD participants with right (PD-R) or left (PD-L) lateralizing symptoms were compared to matched controls on lexical properties (word frequency, age of acquisition) and correlated with striatal volumes segmented from T1-weighted brain MR images. PD-R participants produced semantic fluency responses of a lower age of acquisition than PD-L and control participants (p < 0.05). PD-R age of acquisition responses correlated positively with putamen volume (p < 0.05), while age of acquisition of responses correlated negatively with caudate volume in controls (p < 0.05). Findings provide evidence for a role of the striatum in lexical-semantic access and qualitative changes in lexical access in select PD patients.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daymond Wagner
- Departments of Neurology, Pennsylvania State University-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033, United States.
| | - Paul J Eslinger
- Departments of Neurology, Pennsylvania State University-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033, United States; Departments of Neural and Behavioral Sciences, Pennsylvania State University-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033, United States; Departments of Radiology, Pennsylvania State University-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033, United States.
| | - Nicholas W Sterling
- Departments of Neurology, Pennsylvania State University-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033, United States.
| | - Guangwei Du
- Departments of Neurology, Pennsylvania State University-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033, United States.
| | - Eun-Young Lee
- Departments of Neurology, Pennsylvania State University-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033, United States.
| | - Martin Styner
- Departments of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, United States; Departments of Computer Science, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, United States.
| | - Mechelle M Lewis
- Departments of Neurology, Pennsylvania State University-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033, United States; Departments of Pharmacology, Pennsylvania State University-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033, United States.
| | - Xuemei Huang
- Departments of Neurology, Pennsylvania State University-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033, United States; Departments of Pharmacology, Pennsylvania State University-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033, United States; Departments of Neurosurgery, Pennsylvania State University-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033, United States; Departments of Kinesiology, Pennsylvania State University-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA 17033, United States.
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18
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Łuniewska M, Wodniecka Z, Miller CA, Smolík F, Butcher M, Chondrogianni V, Hreich EK, Messarra C, A. Razak R, Treffers-Daller J, Yap NT, Abboud L, Talebi A, Gureghian M, Tuller L, Haman E. Age of acquisition of 299 words in seven languages: American English, Czech, Gaelic, Lebanese Arabic, Malay, Persian and Western Armenian. PLoS One 2019; 14:e0220611. [PMID: 31393919 PMCID: PMC6687123 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0220611] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/18/2019] [Accepted: 07/19/2019] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
We present a new set of subjective Age of Acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in seven languages from various language families and cultural settings: American English, Czech, Scottish Gaelic, Lebanese Arabic, Malaysian Malay, Persian, and Western Armenian. The ratings were collected from a total of 173 participants and were highly reliable in each language. We applied the same method of data collection as used in a previous study on 25 languages which allowed us to create a database of fully comparable AoA ratings of 299 words in 32 languages. We found that in the seven languages not included in the previous study, the words are estimated to be acquired at roughly the same age as in the previously reported languages, i.e. mostly between the ages of 1 and 7 years. We also found that the order of word acquisition is moderately to highly correlated across all 32 languages, which extends our previous conclusion that early words are acquired in similar order across a wide range of languages and cultures.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Zofia Wodniecka
- Jagiellonian University, Institute of Psychology, Krakow, Poland
- Pennsylvania State University, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America
| | - Carol A. Miller
- Pennsylvania State University, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America
| | - Filip Smolík
- Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Psychology, Prague, Czech Republic
| | - Morna Butcher
- University of Edinburgh, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
| | - Vasiliki Chondrogianni
- University of Edinburgh, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
| | | | - Camille Messarra
- Saint Joseph University of Beirut, High Institute of Speech and Language Therapy, Beirut, Lebanon
| | - Rogayah A. Razak
- Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Faculty of Health Science, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
| | - Jeanine Treffers-Daller
- University of Reading, Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics, Reading, United Kingdom
| | - Ngee Thai Yap
- Universiti Putra Malaysia, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Serdang, Malaysia
| | - Layal Abboud
- Saint Joseph University of Beirut, Faculty of Medicine, Beirut, Lebanon
| | - Ali Talebi
- Allameh Tabatabai University, Department of Linguistics and Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages, Teheran, Iran
| | - Maribel Gureghian
- Saint Joseph University of Beirut, Faculty of Medicine, Beirut, Lebanon
| | | | - Ewa Haman
- University of Warsaw, Faculty of Psychology, Warsaw, Poland
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19
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Normative ratings for perceptual and motor attributes of 750 object concepts in Spanish. Behav Res Methods 2019; 50:1632-1644. [PMID: 29052168 DOI: 10.3758/s13428-017-0970-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/22/2023]
Abstract
Subjective ratings of perceptual and motor attributes were obtained for a set of 750 concrete concepts in Spanish by requiring scale-based judgments from a sample of university students (N = 539). Following on the work of Amsel, Urbach, and Kutas (2012), the seven attributes were color, motion, sound, smell, taste, graspability, and pain. Normative data based on the obtained ratings are provided as a tool for future investigations. Additionally, the relationships of these attributes to other lexical dimensions (e.g., familiarity, frequency, concreteness) and the factorial organization of concepts around the main components were analyzed. The pattern of results is consistent with prior findings that highlight the relevance of dimensions related to survival as being crucially involved in conceptual processing.
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20
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Wikse Barrow C, Nilsson Björkenstam K, Strömbergsson S. Subjective ratings of age-of-acquisition: exploring issues of validity and rater reliability. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE 2019; 46:199-213. [PMID: 30348232 DOI: 10.1017/s0305000918000363] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/08/2023]
Abstract
This study aimed to investigate concerns of validity and reliability in subjective ratings of age-of-acquisition (AoA), through exploring characteristics of the individual rater. An additional aim was to validate the obtained AoA ratings against two corpora - one of child speech and one of adult speech - specifically exploring whether words over-represented in the child-speech corpus are rated with lower AoA than words characteristic of the adult-speech corpus. The results show that less than one-third of participating informants' ratings are valid and reliable. However, individuals with high familiarity with preschool-aged children provide more valid and reliable ratings, compared to individuals who do not work with or have children of their own. The results further show a significant, age-adjacent difference in rated AoA for words from the two different corpora, thus strengthening their validity. The study provides AoA data, of high specificity, for 100 child-specific and 100 adult-specific Swedish words.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carla Wikse Barrow
- Division of Speech and Language Pathology,Karolinska Institutet,Stockholm,Sweden
| | | | - Sofia Strömbergsson
- Division of Speech and Language Pathology,Karolinska Institutet,Stockholm,Sweden
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21
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Montefinese M, Vinson D, Vigliocco G, Ambrosini E. Italian Age of Acquisition Norms for a Large Set of Words (ItAoA). Front Psychol 2019; 10:278. [PMID: 30814969 PMCID: PMC6381031 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00278] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/26/2018] [Accepted: 01/28/2019] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Age of acquisition (AoA) is an important psycholinguistic variable that affects the performance of healthy individuals and patients in a large variety of cognitive tasks. For this reason, it becomes more and more compelling to collect new AoA norms for a large set of stimuli in order to allow better control and manipulation of AoA in future research. An important motivation of the present study is to extend previous Italian norms by collecting AoA ratings for a much larger range of Italian words for which concreteness and semantic-affective norms are now available thus ensuring greater coverage of words varying along these dimensions. In the present study, we collected AoA ratings for 1,957 Italian content words (adjectives, nouns, and verbs), by asking healthy adult participants to estimate the age at which they thought they had learned the word in a Web survey procedure. First, we found high split-half correlation within our sample, suggesting strong internal reliability. Second, our data indicate that the ratings collected in this study are as valid and reliable as those collected in previous studies for Italian across different age populations (adult and children) and other languages. Finally, we analyzed the relation between AoA ratings and other lexical-semantic variables (e.g., word frequency, imageability, valence, arousal) and showed that these correlations were generally consistent with the correlations reported in other normative studies for Italian and other languages. Therefore, our new AoA norms are a valuable source of information for future research in the Italian language. The full database is available at the Open Science Framework (osf.io/3trg2).
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Affiliation(s)
- Maria Montefinese
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.,Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy
| | - David Vinson
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Gabriella Vigliocco
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Ettore Ambrosini
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.,Department of Neuroscience, University of Padua, Padua, Italy
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22
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Borelli E, Crepaldi D, Porro CA, Cacciari C. The psycholinguistic and affective structure of words conveying pain. PLoS One 2018; 13:e0199658. [PMID: 29958269 PMCID: PMC6025857 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0199658] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/17/2018] [Accepted: 06/12/2018] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Despite the flourishing research on the relationships between affect and language, the characteristics of pain-related words, a specific type of negative words, have never been systematically investigated from a psycholinguistic and emotional perspective, despite their psychological relevance. This study offers psycholinguistic, affective, and pain-related norms for words expressing physical and social pain. This may provide a useful tool for the selection of stimulus materials in future studies on negative emotions and/or pain. We explored the relationships between psycholinguistic, affective, and pain-related properties of 512 Italian words (nouns, adjectives, and verbs) conveying physical and social pain by asking 1020 Italian participants to provide ratings of Familiarity, Age of Acquisition, Imageability, Concreteness, Context Availability, Valence, Arousal, Pain-Relatedness, Intensity, and Unpleasantness. We also collected data concerning Length, Written Frequency (Subtlex-IT), N-Size, Orthographic Levenshtein Distance 20, Neighbor Mean Frequency, and Neighbor Maximum Frequency of each word. Interestingly, the words expressing social pain were rated as more negative, arousing, pain-related, and conveying more intense and unpleasant experiences than the words conveying physical pain.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eleonora Borelli
- Department of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy
- Center for Neuroscience and Neurotechnology, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy
- * E-mail:
| | - Davide Crepaldi
- Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Trieste, Italy
- Milan Center for Neuroscience (NeuroMi), Department of Neurology and Neuroscience, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
| | - Carlo Adolfo Porro
- Department of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy
- Center for Neuroscience and Neurotechnology, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy
| | - Cristina Cacciari
- Department of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy
- Center for Neuroscience and Neurotechnology, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy
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23
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Mass is more: The conceiving of (un)countability and its encoding into language in 5-year-old-children. Psychon Bull Rev 2018; 24:1330-1340. [PMID: 27812960 DOI: 10.3758/s13423-016-1187-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Is the mass-count distinction merely a linguistic issue, or is it coded in representations other than language? We hypothesized that a difference between mass and count properties should be observed even in absence of linguistic distinctions driven by the morphosyntactic context. We tested 5-6-year-old children's ability to judge sentences with mass nouns (sand), count nouns (ring), and neutral nouns (i.e., those that appear in mass and count contexts with similar frequency; cake). Children refused neutral nouns embedded in uncountable morphosyntactic contexts, showing a preference for a count interpretation. This suggests that linguistic features alone are not sufficient to define the mass-count distinction. Additional analyses showed that children's performance with mass-but not count-morphosyntax correlated with their performance in tasks concerning logical and conservation operations. Altogether, these results suggest that the processing of mass features is not more demanding than count features from a linguistic point of view; rather, mass features entail additional abstraction abilities.
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24
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The basic reproductive ratio as a link between acquisition and change in phonotactics. Cognition 2018; 176:174-183. [PMID: 29558722 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.03.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/24/2017] [Revised: 02/22/2018] [Accepted: 03/06/2018] [Indexed: 11/24/2022]
Abstract
Language acquisition and change are thought to be causally connected. We demonstrate a method for quantifying the strength of this connection in terms of the 'basic reproductive ratio' of linguistic constituents. It represents a standardized measure of reproductive success, which can be derived both from diachronic and from acquisition data. By analyzing phonotactic English data, we show that the results of both types of derivation correlate, so that phonotactic acquisition indeed predicts phonotactic change, and vice versa. After drawing that general conclusion, we discuss the role of utterance frequency and show that the latter exhibits destabilizing effects only on late acquired items, which belong to phonotactic periphery. We conclude that - at least in the evolution of English phonotactics - acquisition serves conservation, while innovation is more likely to occur in adult speech and affects items that are less entrenched but comparably frequent.
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25
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Zhou D, Chen Q. Color Image Norms in Mandarin Chinese. Front Psychol 2017; 8:1880. [PMID: 29118730 PMCID: PMC5660975 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01880] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/09/2017] [Accepted: 10/10/2017] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
The present study comprises two parts, an object picture naming task and rating tasks, and reports naming latencies and norms for 435 color images in Mandarin Chinese. These norms include name agreement (%), H-value, concept agreement, familiarity, visual complexity, age of acquisition (AOA) based on adult ratings, object agreement, viewpoint agreement, word frequency, and word length. We examined correlations between the norms and explored the internal structure among these correlative variables by a factor analysis. Four factors were extracted, which accounted for 74.86% of the total variance. These data were analyzed to identify variables with significant contributions to naming latencies using multiple regression analysis, including norms of name agreement (%), familiarity, word frequency, concept agreement, AOA, and object agreement. These variables explained 54.70% of the total variance of naming latencies. This work presents a new set of photo stimuli and a large set of normalized variables. We expect that this study will provide useful materials for further researches.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dandan Zhou
- School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Qi Chen
- School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
- Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China
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26
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Simonsen HG, Haman E. LITMUS-CLT: A new way to assess bilingual lexicons. CLINICAL LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS 2017; 31:811-817. [PMID: 28662350 DOI: 10.1080/02699206.2017.1307454] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/07/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Hanne Gram Simonsen
- a MultiLing, Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies , University of Oslo , Oslo , Norway
| | - Ewa Haman
- b Faculty of Psychology , University of Warsaw , Warsaw , Poland
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27
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Altman C, Goldstein T, Armon-Lotem S. Quantitative and qualitative differences in the lexical knowledge of monolingual and bilingual children on the LITMUS-CLT task. CLINICAL LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS 2017; 31:931-954. [PMID: 28481641 DOI: 10.1080/02699206.2017.1312533] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/07/2023]
Abstract
While bilingual children follow the same milestones of language acquisition as monolingual children do in learning the syntactic patterns of their second language (L2), their vocabulary size in L2 often lags behind compared to monolinguals. The present study explores the comprehension and production of nouns and verbs in Hebrew, by two groups of 5- to 6-year olds with typical language development: monolingual Hebrew speakers (N = 26), and Russian-Hebrew bilinguals (N = 27). Analyses not only show quantitative gaps between comprehension and production and between nouns and verbs, with a bilingual effect in both, but also a qualitative difference between monolinguals and bilinguals in their production errors: monolinguals' errors reveal knowledge of the language rules despite temporary access difficulties, while bilinguals' errors reflect gaps in their knowledge of Hebrew (L2). The nature of Hebrew as a Semitic language allows one to explore this qualitative difference in the semantic and morphological level.
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Affiliation(s)
- Carmit Altman
- a School of Education, Bar Ilan University , Ramat Gan , Israel
| | | | - Sharon Armon-Lotem
- b Department of English Literature and Linguistic and the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center , Bar Ilan University , Ramat Gan , Israel
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28
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Haman E, Łuniewska M, Hansen P, Simonsen HG, Chiat S, Bjekić J, Blažienė A, Chyl K, Dabašinskienė I, Engel de Abreu P, Gagarina N, Gavarró A, Håkansson G, Harel E, Holm E, Kapalková S, Kunnari S, Levorato C, Lindgren J, Mieszkowska K, Montes Salarich L, Potgieter A, Ribu I, Ringblom N, Rinker T, Roch M, Slančová D, Southwood F, Tedeschi R, Tuncer AM, Ünal-Logacev Ö, Vuksanović J, Armon-Lotem S. Noun and verb knowledge in monolingual preschool children across 17 languages: Data from Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT). CLINICAL LINGUISTICS & PHONETICS 2017; 31:818-843. [PMID: 28441085 DOI: 10.1080/02699206.2017.1308553] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/07/2023]
Abstract
This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly developed lexical assessment tool Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT). LITMUS-CLT is a part the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery (Armon-Lotem, de Jong & Meir, 2015). Here we analyse results on receptive and expressive word knowledge tasks for nouns and verbs across 17 languages from eight different language families: Baltic (Lithuanian), Bantu (isiXhosa), Finnic (Finnish), Germanic (Afrikaans, British English, South African English, German, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Swedish), Romance (Catalan, Italian), Semitic (Hebrew), Slavic (Polish, Serbian, Slovak) and Turkic (Turkish). The participants were 639 monolingual children aged 3;0-6;11 living in 15 different countries. Differences in vocabulary size were small between 16 of the languages; but isiXhosa-speaking children knew significantly fewer words than speakers of the other languages. There was a robust effect of word class: accuracy was higher for nouns than verbs. Furthermore, comprehension was more advanced than production. Results are discussed in the context of cross-linguistic comparisons of lexical development in monolingual and bilingual populations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ewa Haman
- a Faculty of Psychology , University of Warsaw , Warsaw , Poland
| | | | | | | | | | - Jovana Bjekić
- d Institute for Medical Research , University of Belgrade , Serbia
| | | | - Katarzyna Chyl
- a Faculty of Psychology , University of Warsaw , Warsaw , Poland
| | | | | | - Natalia Gagarina
- g Research Area Language Development and Multilingualism (FB II), Leibniz-ZAS Berlin , Berlin , Germany
| | - Anna Gavarró
- h Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona , Barcelona , Catalonia , Spain
| | | | - Efrat Harel
- j Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and Arts , Tel-Aviv , Israel
| | | | | | - Sari Kunnari
- l Research Unit of Logopedics, University of Oulu , Oulu , Finland
| | | | | | | | | | - Anneke Potgieter
- o Department of General Linguistics , Stellenbosch University , Stellenbosch , South Africa
| | | | | | - Tanja Rinker
- q Department of Linguistics , University of Konstanz , Konstanz , Germany
| | - Maja Roch
- m University of Padua , Padua , Italy
| | | | - Frenette Southwood
- o Department of General Linguistics , Stellenbosch University , Stellenbosch , South Africa
| | - Roberta Tedeschi
- a Faculty of Psychology , University of Warsaw , Warsaw , Poland
| | - Aylin Müge Tuncer
- s Health Sciences Faculty, Health Sciences Faculty , Anadolu University , Eskişehir , Turkey
| | - Özlem Ünal-Logacev
- t School of Health Science, Istanbul Medipol University , Istanbul , Turkey
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Test-based age-of-acquisition norms for 44 thousand English word meanings. Behav Res Methods 2016; 49:1520-1523. [DOI: 10.3758/s13428-016-0811-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 48] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
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