Article

Young children's phonological awareness and nonword repetition as a function of vocabulary development

March 1999
Journal of Educational Psychology 91(1):3-19

March 1999
91(1):3-19

DOI:10.1037//0022-0663.91.1.3

Authors:

Mount Saint Vincent University

The role of vocabulary growth in the development of two reading-related phonological processes was examined. In Experiments 1 and 2, 4- and 5-year-olds and a sample of first graders performed better on phonological awareness tasks for word versus pseudoword stimuli, and for highly familiar versus less familiar words. Three- and 4-year-olds in Experiment 3 performed better for words with many versus few similarly sounding items in a listener's lexicon. Vocabulary was strongly associated with nonword repetition scores for 3- to 5-year olds. The shared variance of this association was accounted for by phonological awareness measures and did not appear to be due to phonological shea-term memory, as previously argued. The author proposes that vocabulary growth, defined in terms of absolute size, word familiarity, and phonological similarity relations between word items, helps to explain individual differences in emerging phonological awareness and nonword repetition.

Risk Altındaki Çocuklarda Gillon Fonolojik Farkındalık Eğitim Programının Etkililiğinin İncelenmesi

Presentation

Full-text available

Nov 2023

Bu çalışmada Gillon Fonolojik Farkındalık Eğitim Programı’nın (Gillon FEP) Türkçe’ye uyarlanması ile Türkçe konuşan okuma güçlüğü açısından risk altında olan çocuklarda etkililiğinin incelenmesi amaçlanmıştır. Gillon FEP programının Türkçe’ye uyarlanması için yapılan Pilot uygulamada tipik gelişim gösteren 3 çocuk; Gillon FEP programının etkililiğinin incelendiği eğitim uygulamasında dil puanları ortalamanın altında olan, okuma güçlüğü açısından risk altındaki 9 çocuk yer almıştır. Gillon FEP’in etkililiği; Anlamsız Sözcük Tekrar Testinden ve Fonolojik Farkındalık Testinden alınan öntest, sontest ve izleme puanlarıyla incelenmiştir. Çalışmanın sosyal geçerliği belirlemek için için katılımcıların ebeveynleri ve öğretmenleri tarafından doldurulan anketler kullanılmıştır. Yapılan analizler risk altındaki çocukların anlamsız sözcük tekrarı ve fonolojik farkındalık becerilerinin Gillon FEP’in uygulandıktan sonra anlamlı bir şekilde arttığını ortaya koymaktadır. Gillon FEP, Türkçe konuşan risk altındaki çocukların anlamsız sözcük tekrarı ve fonolojik farkındalık becerilerini arttırmada etkilidir. Katılımcıların ebeveynleri ve öğretmenleri tarafından doldurulan anketlere göre çalışma yüksek bir sosyal geçerliğe sahiptir. Anahtar sözcükler: Fonolojik Farkındalık, Gillon Fonolojik Farkındalık Eğitim Programı, Erken okuryazarlık

Otizm Spektrum Bozukluğu Olan Çocuklarda Etkinlikle İlgilenme Davranışına Yönelik Araştırmaların İncelenmesi

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Oct 2023

Akın Gönen

Bu araştırma erken çocukluk döneminde (0-6/8 yaş) otizm spektrum bozukluğu (OSB) olan çocuklara etkinlikle ilgilenme davranışının kazandırılmasına yönelik araştırmaların betimsel olarak incelenmesi amacıyla gerçekleştirilmiştir. Çalışma kapsamında EBSCO Host, Web of Science, Dergi Park ve TR Dizin veri tabanlarında İngilizce “on-task”, “task engagement”, “autism” ve Türkçe “etkinlikle ilgilenme”, “meşgul olma”, “otizm” kelimeleri kullanılarak tarama yapılmıştır. Gerçekleştirilen ayrıntılı tarama sonucunda 193 makaleye ulaşılmıştır. Bu çalışmaların dâhil etme ölçütleri olarak (a) etkinlikle ilgilenme hedef davranışının bulunması, (b) 0-8 yaş arası OSB olan çocukların yer alması, (c) tek denekli araştırma modellerinden biriyle desenlenmesi, (d) elektronik veri tabanlarında İngilizce ve/veya Türkçe tam metinlerine erişiliyor olması ve (e) 2010-2022 yılları arasında yayımlanması açısından değerlendirilmiştir. Yapılan incelemeler sonucunda 17 makale ölçütlere uygun olarak belirlenmiş ve kapsamlı bir şekilde analiz edilmiştir. Elde edilen bulgularda OSB olan çocukların 3-8 yaş aralığında olduğu, çalışmaların genelinin okul ortamlarında yürütüldüğü, çeşitli uygulamaların (müdahale paketi, fiziksel aktivite, aile eğitimi, etkileşimli kitap okuma, sosyal öykü, kardeş aracılı uygulama, görsel destekler, işlevsel temelli müdahale, performans geri bildirimi, duyu bütünleme ve kendini izleme) kullanıldığı belirlenmiştir. Ayrıca araştırma sonuçlarının neredeyse tamamında uygulamaların otizm tanılı çocukların davranışları üzerinde etkili olduğunu göstermiştir. Elde edilen bulgular tartışılarak ileri araştırmalar için önerilerde bulunulmuştur.

Programa integrado de vocabulario y conciencia fonológica para preescolares con trastorno de desarrollo del lenguaje

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2022

El objetivo del presente trabajo es analizar el efecto que tiene un programa, que trabaja simultáneamente la conciencia fonológica y el vocabulario, en el incremento de estas habilidades en preescolares con trastorno de desarrollo del lenguaje (TDL). Para ello, se aplicó el programa a 20 preescolares con TDL que cursaban NT2. Además, se conformó un grupo control constituido por 23 niños con TDL del mismo nivel escolar. Los resultados mostraron que el trabajo simultáneo del vocabulario y la conciencia fonológica favorecen el desarrollo de ambas habilidades. Sin embargo, se observa un mayor impacto del programa en conciencia fonológica.

Speech processing and short-term memory in children with normal and atypical speech and language development

Thesis

Jan 2000

Margaret Anne Vance

This thesis is motivated by research evidence of significant relationships between short-term memory and speech and language development, and by clinical observations of poor short-term memory skills in some children with developmental language difficulties. It addresses the question 'to what degree do speech processing skills underpin short-term memory and language development'? A series of experiments were carried out, collecting data from children, aged 7 years and under, who were developing normally, and from children with speech and / or language difficulties. Performance on tasks of speech production and auditory discrimination were found to show significant developmental differences, and these speech processing skills were significantly correlated with non-word repetition performance. Different presentation and response mechanisms, and the phonological complexity of words to be recalled significantly affected short-term memory performance. These findings implicate speech input and output processing in short-term memory performance. Data from a longitudinal study showed that auditory discrimination skills significantly predicted the development of both short-term memory and receptive language development, but speech production skills were not related to short-term memory or language development. Short-term memory skills significantly predicted grammatical development. A series of case studies of children with speech and / or language difficulties demonstrated a range of individual, longitudinal profiles of performance across speech processing, short term memory and standardised language measures. Findings from the normative data did not explain the patterns of development in clinical cases, however, short-term memory skills were broadly in line with the level of receptive language development attained. Relationships between short-term memory, speech and language in normal development may not reflect the mechanisms by which short-term memory and language is impaired in disordered individuals.

A lexical advantage in four-year-old children's word repetition

Article

May 2020

This study examined a potential lexicality advantage in young children's early speech production: do children produce sound sequences less accurately in nonwords than real words? Children aged 3;3-4;4 completed two tasks: a real word repetition task and a corresponding nonword repetition task. Each of the 23 real words had a paired consonant-vowel sequence in the nonword in word-initial position (e.g., ‘su’ in [ˈsutkes] ‘ suitcase’ and [ˈsudrɑs]). The word-initial consonant-vowel sequences were kept constant between the paired words. Previous work on this topic compared different sequences of paired sounds, making it hard to determine if those results were due to a lexical or phonetic effect. Our results show that children reliably produced consonant-vowel sequences in real words more accurately than nonwords. The effect was most pronounced in children with smaller receptive vocabularies. Together, these results reinforce theories arguing for interactions between vocabulary size and phonology in language development.

Relationship between early phonological processing and later phonological awareness: Evidence from nonword repetition

Article

Jan 2020

This study investigated whether individual differences in receptive vocabulary, speech perception and production, and nonword repetition at age 2 years, 4 months to 3 years, 4 months predicted phonological awareness 2 years later. One hundred twenty-one children were tested twice. During the first testing period (Time 1), children’s receptive vocabulary, speech perception and production, and nonword repetition were measured. Nonword repetition accuracy in the present study was distinct from other widely used measures of nonword repetition in that it focused on narrow transcription of diphone sequences in each nonword that differed systematically in phonotactic probability. At the second testing period (Time 2), children’s phonological awareness was measured. The best predictors of phonological awareness were a measure of speech production and a measure of phonological processing derived from performance on the nonword repetition task. The results of this study suggest that nonword repetition accuracy provides an implicit measure of phonological skills that are indicative of later phonological awareness at an age when children are too young to perform explicit phonological awareness tasks reliably.

Predictive Examination of Phonological Awareness Among Hebrew-Speaking Kindergarten Children

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2019

The purpose of this study was to examine the development of phonological awareness (PA) skills among Hebrew-speaking kindergarten children. Specifically, the study examines the effects of cognitive, early literacy, and language skills to PA among Hebrew-speaking children at the middle (Early K) and end (End K) of kindergarten, and the contribution of various literacy and cognitive skills measured from the early kindergarten stage to the subsequent development of PA. Participants were 41 native Hebrew-speaking children (28 boys), ages 5–6, who were recruited from two kindergarten classrooms. A battery of cognitive, early literacy, and language measures was administered and ten PA skills were examined extensively. The results demonstrated the rapid growth of PA skills from Early K to End K. The participants were significantly better at manipulations at the syllable level, as compared to phonemes or consonants. Furthermore, deletion of a final consonant was found to be easier for them than deletion of an initial consonant. This finding emphasizes the body-coda segmentation tendency, which characterizes the Hebrew language structure. Strong-moderate positive correlations were found between PA and both letter naming and executive functioning at Early K. A strong correlation between letter naming and PA was found at End K. Regression analyses demonstrated that letter naming and executive functioning at Early K were the most significant predictors of PA at Early K, and that letter naming was the most significant predictor at End K. These findings highlight both universal and language-specific features of phonological awareness.

Training in Phonological Awareness Generalizes to Phonological Working Memory: A Preliminary Investigation Preliminary Investigation

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2009
J Speech Lang Pathol Appl Behav Anal

Early reading achievement relies on phonological awareness (PA) and phonological working memory (WM). Children with language impairment (LI) have problems with both. Three studies were conducted to determine whether treating PA would also improve phonological WM in preschoolers with LI. Study 1 confirmed that children with specific LI perform more poorly than age-matched peers on both PA and WM tasks. Study 2 showed that when children with and without LI are matched on a nonword WM task, differences between the groups on PA and on a word WM task are no longer statistically significant. In Study 3, sixteen preschool children with LI received intervention targeting PA skills and improved both their PA and WM abilities. These studies support the use of PA instruction to improve basic phonological mechanisms underlying working memory.

Cognitive-linguistic skills and vocabulary knowledge breadth and depth in children’s L1 Chinese and L2 English

Article

Jan 2023

This study examined the correlates of different aspects of vocabulary knowledge in L1 Chinese and L2 English in Hong Kong bilingual children ( N = 481, age = 6–12 years old). Their nonverbal IQ, cognitive-linguistic skills, receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge breadth, and vocabulary knowledge depth in Chinese and English were measured. Results demonstrated that morphological awareness was uniquely correlated with different aspects of vocabulary knowledge across Chinese and English. Phonological processing skills played different roles in vocabulary knowledge in L1 and L2. In addition, receptive vocabulary breadth uniquely contributed to expressive vocabulary breadth across languages. Moreover, both receptive and expressive vocabulary breadth contributed to vocabulary knowledge depth in L1 Chinese and L2 English. The findings highlight some shared and unique aspects of different vocabulary constructs across languages.

Attributes That Affect the Choice of Treatment for Preschool Age Children Who Stutter: An Observational Study

Article

Nov 2022

Introduction: Little is known about the clinical decision-making process that speech-language pathologists( (SLPs) make when they decide which treatment approach they will use with Preschool age Children who Stutter (PCWS). Frequently used approaches are the Lidcombe Program, RESTART-DCM, Mini-KIDS, the Palin Parent-Child Interaction program and the Social-Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. In this study, we explored which attributes play a role in the complex process that precedes this clinical decision. We also explored if SLPs from the Netherlands, who are expected to follow the recommendations formulated in the Dutch professional stuttering guidelines, use different treatment approaches than SLPs from Belgium, who do not have specific guidelines to follow. Finally, we explored whether the number of years of experience of SLPs had an impact on the choice for treatment. Methods: This study used an observational design in which 36 SLPs, additionally qualified in the treatment of stuttering, completed a questionnaire. The SLPs spoke Dutch, resided in the Netherlands or Belgium and used more than one treatment approach for PCWS in their standard practice. Results: The following attributes affected the choice for treatment approach of most SLPs: (1) the child's reactions to the stuttering, (2) the child's language (and speech) skills, (3) the child's age, (4) the family's lifestyle, (5) the parent's ease to understand a treatment approach as judged by the SLPs and (6) the amount and quality of published research-based evidence. The decision-making of experienced SLPs is significantly more affected by the child's stuttering severity and time since onset compared to less experienced SLPs (both U = 90, p = .05). Dutch SLPs did not take other attributes into account than Belgian SLPs. Discussion/conclusion: This study was a first attempt to explore which attributes affect the decision for a specific treatment. Further prospective research is needed.

EARLY LITERACY SKILLS OF GIFTED CHILDREN IN PRESCHOOL

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2022

In the preschool period gifted children are defined as children with the potential to perform at high levels due to their advanced or rapid development. The aim of this study is to examine the level of early literacy skills of gifted children in the preschool period and how this level differs from their peers with typical development. The comparison screening method from quantitative research was used in the study. The study group consists of 67 children, 34 are identified as gifted and 33 are with typical development. The data collection tools consisted of two groups: scales for determining gifted and typically developing children, and a scale for measuring early literacy skills. While Candidate Notification Scale for Preschool Gifted Children and Raven's Color Progressive Matrices Test were used to determine children who are gifted and typical development, the Early Literacy Scale was used to evaluate this skill. According to the results, it was observed that gifted children performed higher than their peers with typical development in the vocabulary, phonetic awareness, letter knowledge, listening comprehension skills and total score of early literacy.

Factors that influence non‐word repetition performance in children with and without persistent speech sound disorders

Article

Aug 2021

Background Nonword repetition (NWR) is a common phonological processing task that is reported to tap into many cognitive, perceptual, and motor processes. For this reason, NWR is often used in assessment batteries to aid in verifying the presence of a reading or language disorder. Aims To examine the extent to which child- and item-level factors predict the probability of a correct response on a non-word repetition (NWR) task in a sample of children with persistent speech sound disorders (P-SSDs) compared with their typically developing peers. Methods & Procedures A total of 40 American-English-speaking children were tested on an NWR task for which the stimuli were manipulated for phonological neighbourhood density and list length. Additional measures of vocabulary and word reading were also administered. Outcomes & Results Children who were typically developing were 1.82 times more likely than children with P-SSD to respond correctly. The item-level factor of phonological neighbourhood density influenced performance, but only for the P-SSD group, and only at certain list lengths. Vocabulary and word-reading ability also influenced NWR task performance. Conclusions & Implications Children with P-SSD present as a complex and heterogeneous group. Multiple factors contribute to their ability to perform phonological tasks such as NWR. As such, attention to the item-level factors in screenings and assessments is necessary to ensure that appropriate decisions are made regarding diagnosis and subsequent treatment. What this paper adds What is already known on the subject? Good expressive vocabulary is important for children with speech sound disorders; it can aid in their performance on phonological processing tasks like NWR. • Nonword repetition may be a helpful test/ subtest to add to assessment batteries when evaluating children with speech sound disorders. What this paper adds to existing knowledge? • Vocabulary and word reading abilities must also be measured for children with SSDs, to observe the bigger picture of their linguistic abilities. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? • The relation between word reading and speech sound production influences performance on phonological processing tasks.

Lack of Familiarity with the Language of Instruction: A Main Cause of Reading Failure by Grades 1 and 2 Pupils in Zambia

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2013

Reading is at the core of any educational experience and reading ability is key to success in society. Unfortunately, a good number of Zambian children are reading below the expected grade level. Currently, there is no empirical evidence to establish the causal factors underlying the persis�tent reading failure of Zambian pupils despite the rich literacy program in place. The present study sought to identify the factors that promote the acquisition of reading skills in the local Zambian language. Eight schools drawn from the six provinces participated in this study. The participants were 557 Grades 1 and 2 pupils (57% girls). Mean age was 8.05 years (SD = 1.47). Children were tested at the end of Grade 1 and Grade 2, respec�tively. The Basic Skills Assessment Tool (BASAT) administered in the seven official languages was primarily used as a measure of basic reading skills in a Zambian language. To test oral language skills, children told any story of interest to their teacher from memory in the language of instruction. Two important findings have emerged from this study. Firstly, the develop�ment of reading is influenced by oral language skills independent of effects through alphabetic knowledge. Secondly, one year of instruction is insuf�ficient to become proficient in a Zambian language.

An ear for language: Sensitivity to fast amplitude rise times predicts novel vocabulary learning

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2020

This study tested whether individual sensitivity to an auditory perceptual cue called amplitude rise time (ART) facilitates novel word learning. Forty adult native speakers of Polish performed a perceptual task testing their sensitivity to ART, learned associations between nonwords and pictures of common objects, and were subsequently tested on their knowledge with a picture recognition (PR) task. In the PR task participants heard each nonword, followed either by a congruent or incongruent picture, and had to assess if the picture matched the nonword. Word learning efficiency was measured by accuracy and reaction time on the PR task and modulation of the N300 ERP. As predicted, participants with greater sensitivity to ART showed better performance in PR suggesting that auditory sensitivity indeed facilitates learning of novel words. Contrary to expectations, the N300 was not modulated by sensitivity to ART suggesting that the behavioral and ERP measures reflect different underlying processes.

Article

Jun 2020

Purpose: The present cross-sectional study examined the individual role of rapid automatized naming (RAN), verbal short-term memory (VSTM), and phonological verbal fluency (PVF) along with word reading performance in predicting phonological awareness (PA). Materials and methods: A total of 225 Arabic speaking children from grades 2, 3, 4 and 5 took part in this study, divided into two groups of readers: typical developing readers and dyslexic readers. The participants were tested on word and pseudoword reading, phonological awareness, rapid naming, verbal short-term memory and phonological verbal fluency. Results: There are different predictive patterns between the two groups. Whereas Raven and Grade contributed directly in predicting PA in typical readers, VSTM and PVF directly predicted PA in children with dyslexia. However, word reading played a dual role in the both groups as direct predictors of PA, mediating the predictive relationships between PA and the other variables. Conclusion: The results suggest the potential existence of an underlying phonological representation processing ability shared between PA, phonological access (RAN and PVF), VSTM, and word reading ability.

Embodied word-form learning: The motoric and perceptual determinants of verbal sequence learning

Thesis

Full-text available

Sep 2019

Amanda Sjöblom

Perceptual and motor processes are often viewed as peripheral systems, subservient to central ‘higher level’ cognitive structures. An alternative approach adopted in the present project characterises the cognitive functioning classically considered to be supported by specialised modules as the product of the embodied processes involved in organising environmental input into candidate-objects for action and producing goal-appropriate behavioural outputs. The present project is the first to test the view that learning novel verbal sequences—attributed classically to the operation of a distinct phonological short-term store—can be reconstrued within this alternative framework. Experiments 1-3 (Chapter 2) used the Hebb sequence learning paradigm—the enhanced serial recall of a repeating sequence amongst otherwise non-repeating sequences—and provided several lines of support for a perceptual-motor account: First, Hebb sequence learning was attenuated when vocal-motor planning of the sequence was restricted by requiring participants to utter an irrelevant verbal sequence (‘articulatory suppression’) or when no recall-response was required. The effect of suppression was less smaller auditory sequences, however, suggesting that passive auditory perceptual organisation processes can independently support auditory Hebb sequence learning. Second, Hebb sequence learning was enhanced for phonologically similar compared to dissimilar sequences when that learning was driven solely by motor planning. Third, disturbing the consistency of the temporal grouping of the repeating sequence abolished learning but only when that grouping was instantiated within a motor-plan. Fourth, demonstrating more direct evidence for a contribution of passive perceptual organisation in learning an auditory-verbal sequence, promoting the perceptual grouping of every-other-item in the repeating sequence by presenting it in alternating male-female voices led to the learning of those non-adjacent-item sub-sequences. Experiments 4-6 provided evidence that motor planning processes also play a role in nonword learning in the paired-associate paradigm, where lists of nonwords (together with known words) are presented and recalled repeatedly. Nonword learning was attenuated when motor planning fluency was impeded either by articulatory suppression or as the result of phonological similarity within or between the nonwords. The findings are discussed in the context of the debate on modular versus embodied cognition as well as in terms of their implications for word-form learning.

Development and disorders of phonological processing in the brain

Preprint

Full-text available

Jan 2024

Phonological processing is measured behaviorally using phonological awareness, phonological memory, and rapid naming tasks. These tasks engage brain regions such as the superior temporal gyrus, inferior parietal cortex, and inferior frontal gyrus. This chapter is a selective review of behavioral and neural studies phonological processing as measured by these tasks. It focuses on the longitudinal development of phonological processing from early infancy to middle elementary years and its relations with language and reading skills. It also reviews how these tasks are related to neurodiversity, such as dyslexia, developmental language disorder, and cross-linguistic populations.

The Texts of Beginning Reading Instruction

Chapter

Full-text available

Apr 2001

The purpose of this review is to study the existing research on the effects that particular types of texts have on beginning readers. There were three questions of particular interest. The first considers how reading acquisition is facilitated or hindered by different types of texts. The limited number of existing studies on the effects of texts on children's reading acquisition is not surprising since isolating text effects is difficult. Even so, the policies of Texas and California--particularly those on decodable text--would suggest a much more substantial empirical foundation than currently exists. The second question addressed in this review was how different types of words are acquired. The literature on how words are learned individually or in phrases or single sentences is fairly extensive. This learning is typically evaluated in research contexts where an individual child interacts with an investigator. Despite the limitations of the texts and contexts of these studies, these studies provide the bulk of the available evidence on how children learn to read. Third and last, we examined the research on characteristics of current texts for beginning readers. Texts have changed substantially over the past two decades. Our interest lay in establishing how current texts matched the patterns from text and word learning studies.

Stop contrast acquisition in child Kriol: Evidence of stable transmission of phonology post Creole formation

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2023
J CHILD LANG

Many Aboriginal Australian communities are undergoing language shift from traditional Indigenous languages to contact varieties such as Kriol, an English-lexified Creole. Kriol is reportedly characterised by lexical items with highly variable phonological specifications, and variable implementation of voicing and manner contrasts in obstruents (Sandefur, 1986). A language, such as Kriol, characterised by this unusual degree of variability presents Kriol- acquiring children with a potentially difficult language-learning task, and one which challenges the prevalent theories of acquisition. To examine stop consonant acquisition in this unusual language environment, we present a study of Kriol stop and affricate production, followed by a mispronunciation detection study, with Kriol-speaking children (ages 4-7) from a Northern Territory community where Kriol is the lingua franca. In contrast to previous claims, the results suggest that Kriol-speaking children acquire a stable phonology and lexemes with canonical phonemic specifications, and that English experience would not appear to induce this stability.

Language Ability to Predict Subtypes of Speech Sound Disorder

Article

Sep 2022

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there are differences in vocabulary, grammar, pragmatics, and early literacy skills according to subgroups of speech sound disorders (SSDs). Additionally, this study attempted to examine whether language ability could predict the subtype of SSDs suggested by Dodd’s model for differential diagnosis. Methods: Sixty-two children with SSDs aged 3-9 years were classified into groups with articulation disorders (AD), phonological delays (PD), and consistent/inconsistent phonological disorders (CPD/IPD). Vocabulary and grammar skills were evaluated, and pragmatics and early literacy skills was evaluated based on parental reports. Results: Children with SSDs exhibited significant differences in receptive/expressive vocabulary, receptive/expressive grammar, and early reading performance; but no significant differences were found in pragmatics and early writing. In general, children with AD showed significantly better performance in language than children within the other SSD subgroups, and the children with IPD showed lowest performance. This study showed that grammar was the best predictor of the subtypes of children with SSDs and was most vulnerable to children with SSDs. Conclusion: This study is significant in investigating and examining all aspects of language - vocabulary, grammar, pragmatics, and early literacy - of children with SSDs. This study suggests that the reception and expression of the grammar skills of children with SSDs should be evaluated in the clinical field.

Nonwords Pronunciation Classification in Language Development Tests for Preschool Children

Conference Paper

Sep 2022

Nonwords Pronunciation Classification in Language Development Tests for Preschool Children

Preprint

Jun 2022

This work aims to automatically evaluate whether the language development of children is age-appropriate. Validated speech and language tests are used for this purpose to test the auditory memory. In this work, the task is to determine whether spoken nonwords have been uttered correctly. We compare different approaches that are motivated to model specific language structures: Low-level features (FFT), speaker embeddings (ECAPA-TDNN), grapheme-motivated embeddings (wav2vec 2.0), and phonetic embeddings in form of senones (ASR acoustic model). Each of the approaches provides input for VGG-like 5-layer CNN classifiers. We also examine the adaptation per nonword. The evaluation of the proposed systems was performed using recordings from different kindergartens of spoken nonwords. ECAPA-TDNN and low-level FFT features do not explicitly model phonetic information; wav2vec2.0 is trained on grapheme labels, our ASR acoustic model features contain (sub-)phonetic information. We found that the more granular the phonetic modeling is, the higher are the achieved recognition rates. The best system trained on ASR acoustic model features with VTLN achieved an accuracy of 89.4% and an area under the ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curve (AUC) of 0.923. This corresponds to an improvement in accuracy of 20.2% and AUC of 0.309 relative compared to the FFT-baseline.

Clinical Markers of Developmental Language Disorder in Arabic

Thesis

Full-text available

Sep 2021

Juhayna Taha

Data on the typical and impaired acquisition of Arabic is limited and only a few standardized Arabic language assessments are available. As a result, the identification of developmental language disorder (DLD) in Arabic is notoriously challenging. Developing new diagnostic language tools is thus imperative to facilitate early and accurate identification of DLD in Arabic-speaking children with a view to developing relevant interventions. This thesis addressed this issue by investigating potential clinical markers of DLD in Arabic through three theoretically grounded studies focusing on the linguistic and processing deficits that characterize Arabic speaking children with DLD and could be used as indicators of the presence of the disorder. Study 1 showed that the production of verb tense and subject-verb agreement is generally impaired in 5-year-old Arabic-speaking children with DLD relative to same-age peers. Study 1 showed that poor use of present tense and subject-verb feminine agreement could be potential grammatical markers of DLD in Arabic. Study 2 revealed that nonword repetition is an area of difficulty for 4 to 6-year-old Arabic-speaking children with DLD. Importantly, Study 2 found that poor nonword repetition accurately identified 93% of children with DLD and 93% of age-matched TD children, suggesting that poor nonword repetition could also be a possible clinical marker of DLD in Arabic. Study 3 reported poor sentence repetition abilities in 4 to 6-year-old Arabic-speaking children; the sentence repetition task correctly identified more than 90% of children with DLD and more than 90% of age-matched TD children. Study 3 thus suggests that poor sentence repetition may also hold promise as a potential clinical marker for the presence or absence of DLD in Arabic. The findings of this thesis could help enhance the diagnostic practices of DLD in Arabic-speaking children by focusing clinicians’ attention on relevant tasks which could aid diagnosis. The findings extend our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of DLD. Specifically, the language difficulties of Arabic-speaking children with DLD seem to reflect a combination of deficits in linguistic knowledge and processing capacity. This thesis is the first study to my knowledge to address the issue of clinical markers of DLD in Arabic and as such it paves the way and highlights the need for further research to better characterize the linguistic and non-linguistic, as well as the functional limitations in Arabic-speaking children with DLD.

Representation of sublexical structure of the word among bilingual and monolingual kindergartners: Is there an influence of L1 oral language structure?

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2022

Elena Zaretsky

Early spelling development is an important area of research as it presents an opportunity for our understanding of how children begin to represent sounds within words through application of letter-sound mapping. The development of spelling is often characterized by stage-like theories, although it has been suggested that children may draw on different patterns of representations ( Integration of Multiple Patterns ). This study examined early spelling acquisition among monolingual English-speaking and ELL kindergartners with Spanish as L1. ELLs receive all academic instruction, including written language, in English (L2) while continuously using oral L1 for all other communications. As languages differ in their linguistic and structural composition, our aim was to identify possible influences of oral L1 on spelling abilities in L2. We were particularly interested in representation of sublexical units within the words, as English and Spanish differ in their intrasyllabic awareness. Our results showed expected differences in psycholinguistic profiles of language groups as well as differences in allocation of resources in spelling attempts. While there were no statistically significant differences in representation of sublexical units between language groups, there were notable differences in percentage of correct responses pointing to language specific influences. These findings support the Dual System Model of phonological representations development among bilingual individual and suggests that in the early stages of spelling acquisition in L2, L1 Spanish kindergartners are still influenced by their native language although they use it in their oral modality only.

When Developmental Language Disorder Meets Diglossia: A Cross-Sectional Investigation of Listening Comprehension Among Native Arabic-Speaking Preschoolers

Article

Full-text available

May 2022
J PSYCHOLINGUIST RES

Diglossia in the Arabic language refers to the existence of two varieties of the same language: the Spoken Arabic (SA) and the Literary Arabic (LA). This study examined the development of listening comprehension (LC) among diglossic Arabic K1–K3. For this purpose, a large sample of typically developing (TD; N = 210) and developmental language disorder children (DLD; N = 118) were examined using SA and LA texts. The analysis of variance conducted on their performance in LC revealed significant effects of K-level, group (TD vs. DLD) and text affiliation (SA vs. LA): higher scores in TD and in SA. A significant interaction between text affiliation and K-level was observed among the TD but not the DLD group. This interaction indicated that the gap in LC between the SA and LA varieties decreased with age only among TD children. The theoretical and pedagogical implications of these results are discussed.

Exploring the Genetic and Environmental Etiologies of Phonological Awareness, Morphological Awareness, and Vocabulary Among Chinese–English Bilingual Children: The Moderating Role of Second Language Instruction

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Full-text available

Jan 2022
BEHAV GENET

This study investigated the associations among bilingual phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and vocabulary by focusing on their genetic and environmental etiologies. It also explored the influence of family socio-economic status (SES) and language exposure amount on the genetic and environmental effects. A twin study was conducted with 349 pairs of Chinese–English bilingual twins (mean age = 7.37 years). Cross-language transfer was found in phonological and morphological awareness but not in vocabulary knowledge. A common genetic overlap was found among these bilingual abilities. We also found a common shared environmental effect that may account for the cross-language transfer in phonological awareness and the associations among English abilities. SES and language exposure were significant environmental influences on bilingual phonological awareness and English vocabulary. More teaching in Chinese was related to a stronger genetic effect on Chinese morphological awareness, whereas more teaching in English was related to a stronger environmental impact on English abilities.

A Case Study of a Turkish-English Bilingual Child: Focus on the Advantages of Phonological Processing

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Full-text available

Oct 2021

Bora Demir

This study investigates the phonological awareness of a Turkish monolingual and a Turkish-English bilingual child in Turkish. As a case study, the main focus of this study is to explore whether a bilingual advantage exists in phonological processing. Theories of bilingualism and empirical data led to the prediction that the bilingual participant would perform better than the monolingual participant in tasks involving the segmentation of phonemes. With regard to current literature, four phonemic awareness tasks, namely, final phoneme deletion, initial phoneme deletion, phoneme detection, and phoneme substitution tasks were used to find out the levels of phonological awareness of the participants. The tasks were administered individually to each child and correct answers were calculated by percentages. The analysis of the data showed that bilingual child performed better in final phoneme deletion, initial phoneme deletion, phoneme detection tasks, while both children scored the same in the phoneme substitution task. To conclude, this study provided evidence for the positive effect of bilingualism for phonological language processing.

The effects of explicit instruction on written accent mark usage in basic and intermediate Spanish heritage language courses

Article

Jan 2021

This study measured the impact of explicit instruction on accent usage in the written production of Spanish heritage language (SHL) learners. 163 university students were divided into two types of basic—and intermediate—level SHL courses: one in which they received explicit instruction regarding accent marks (EI), and another in which they did not (non-EI). Findings suggest that the effectiveness of explicit instruction depends upon level of study and task type. In EI, the accuracy of first semester SHL students improved significantly, while their counterparts in non-EI course showed no appreciable gains. The case of intermediate-level learners, who had some prior formal study, was more variable. Although high-, mid-, and low-performing learners in second semester EI courses showed significant improvement in a dictation task (while their non-EI counterparts did not), performance on open-ended exam responses did not reflect significant improvement. In the analysis we consider task effects and within-group differences.

Listening effort and fatigue in native and non-native primary school children

Article

Jun 2021

Background noise makes listening effortful and may lead to fatigue. This may compromise classroom learning, especially for children with a non-native background. In the current study, we used pupillometry to investigate listening effort and fatigue during listening comprehension under typical (0 dB signal-to-noise ratio [SNR]) and favorable (+10 dB SNR) listening conditions in 63 Swedish primary school children (7–9 years of age) performing a narrative speech–picture verification task. Our sample comprised both native (n = 25) and non-native (n = 38) speakers of Swedish. Results revealed greater pupil dilation, indicating more listening effort, in the typical listening condition compared with the favorable listening condition, and it was primarily the non-native speakers who contributed to this effect (and who also had lower performance accuracy than the native speakers). Furthermore, the native speakers had greater pupil dilation during successful trials, whereas the non-native speakers showed greatest pupil dilation during unsuccessful trials, especially in the typical listening condition. This set of results indicates that whereas native speakers can apply listening effort to good effect, non-native speakers may have reached their effort ceiling, resulting in poorer listening comprehension. Finally, we found that baseline pupil size decreased over trials, which potentially indicates more listening-related fatigue, and this effect was greater in the typical listening condition compared with the favorable listening condition. Collectively, these results provide novel insight into the underlying dynamics of listening effort, fatigue, and listening comprehension in typical classroom conditions compared with favorable classroom conditions, and they demonstrate for the first time how sensitive this interplay is to language experience.

Explaining and Understanding Early Literacy

Article

Feb 2015

Susan Neuman

The last decade has brought a growing consensus on the range of skills that serve as the foundation for reading and writing ability (Neuman & Dickinson, 2011). To become a skilled reader, children need a rich language and conceptual knowledge base, a broad and deep vocabulary, and verbal reasoning abilities to understand messages that are conveyed through print. Children also must develop code-related skills, an understanding that spoken words are composed of smaller elements of speech (phonological awareness); the idea that letters represent these sounds (the alphabetic principle), the many systematic correspondences between sounds and spellings, and a repertoire of highly familiar words that can be easily and automatically recognized.But to attain a high level of skill, young children need opportunities to develop these strands, not in isolation, but interactively. Meaning, not sounds or letters, motivates children’s earliest experiences with print. Consequently, it is important to recognize that in practice, children acquire these skills in coordination and interaction with meaningful experiences. Given the tremendous attention that early literacy has received recently and the increasing diversity of the child population in most countries, it is important and timely to take stock of these critical dimensions as well as the strengths and gaps in our ability to measure these skills effectively. In the following sections, I describe the critical dimensions of early literacy and the implications for high quality practices in the early childhood setting.

Speech Perception and Reading Ability

Article

Apr 2021

This chapter focuses on research that has investigated whether speech perception, the initial encoding of linguistic input, may be a plausible candidate: several of the deficits accompanying poor reading achievement could conceivably stem from deficits in the underlying quality of phoneme percepts. Research conducted to investigate whether speech‐perception deficits are common for struggling readers has primarily used three measures of speech perception: categorical perception, nonword repetition, and speech in noise. Speech repetition has frequently been used to investigate phonological processes related to reading ability. Research aimed at investigating listening difficulties in noisy backgrounds highlights the impact of the spectral characteristics of the masker on the perception of a simultaneous speech signal. A further area of research using the categorical perception procedure has investigated the influence of developmental weighting strategies on identification responses. The majority of studies have looked at the relationship between speech perception in noise and reading abilities by using cross‐sectional designs.

Cross-Language Transfer of Phonological Processing Skills and the Development Among Chinese Young Learners of English

Article

Sep 2020

Dialnet-BateriaDeInicioALaLecturaBIL36-3235634 (1)

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Full-text available

Nov 2020

Introducción Cultura, aprendizaje, ciencia, progreso y pensa-miento crítico son términos que no pueden con-cebirse sin la lectura. Lejos quedan los tiempos en que el conocimiento sólo estaba en manos de unos pocos. La alfabetización masiva ha acerca-do el saber a todo el mundo y es una de las artí-fices del progreso del ser humano. Aunque hay otras formas de adquirir conocimientos, desde siempre la lectura ha sido fundamental en esta tarea y hoy en día incluso más con el auge de las Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación (TIC). Internet ha sido una revolución en nuestra sociedad, llegando a superar, sobre todo entre la población más joven, a otros medios de comu-nicación como pueden ser la prensa, la radio o, incluso, en algunos aspectos la televisión. En el acceso a Internet es fundamental saber leer en todas sus acepciones (decodificación y compren-sión del mensaje), además de ser capaz de utili-zar estrategias de búsqueda eficaces (la informa-ción que se nos proporciona es muy numerosa); por tanto, necesitamos leer de forma eficaz, exacta y fluida para poder seleccionar aquella informa-ción más relevante para nuestros intereses. En BATERÍA DE INICIO A LA LECTURA (BIL 3-6): DISEÑO Y CARACTERÍSTICAS PSICOMÉTRICAS Battery to assess the Abilities related with the Early Reading Acquisition (BIL 3-6): Design and Psychometric Characteristics PILAR SELLÉS NOHALES, TOMÁS MARTÍNEZ GIMÉNEZ Y EDUARDO VIDAL-ABARCA Universidad de Valencia Este trabajo trata sobre las habilidades relacionadas con el desarrollo inicial de la lectura. Entre los investigadores de la lectura existe un gran interés por encontrar qué factores afectan a la habilidad lectora. Tras realizar un minucioso análisis de las investigaciones relacionadas con el tema, hemos llegado a delimitar las habilidades que se ha demostrado, en mayor medida, relacionadas con la adquisición de la lectura: el conocimiento fonológico, el conocimiento alfabético, la velocidad de denominación, las habilidades lingüísticas, el conocimiento metalingüístico y ciertos procesos cog-nitivos, como la percepción visual y la memoria secuencial auditiva. Sería importante evaluar estas habilidades ya que su diagnóstico e intervención podría prevenir futuros déficits en lecto-escritu-ra. Para conseguir este objetivo, se diseñó una batería de pruebas orientadas a evaluar cada una de las habilidades mencionadas. En total la BIL 3-6 consta de 15 pruebas, con 143 ítems. Para anali-zar sus cualidades psicométricas se aplicó a una muestra de 344 niños con edades comprendidas entre los 3 y 6 años, teniendo en cuenta el tipo de zona (rural o urbana). Palabras clave: Evaluación preescolar, Pruebas de iniciación a la lectura, Alfabetización emer-gente, Factores relacionados con el comienzo de la lectura, Infancia.

Dialnet-BateriaDeInicioALaLecturaBIL36-3235634 (1)

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Nov 2020

The Emergence Of Phonological Categories

Article

Jan 2020

Aletheia Cui

While phonological features are often assumed to be innate and universal (Chomsky and Halle, 1968), recent work argues for an alternative view that phonological features are emergent and acquired from linguistic input (e.g., Dresher, 2004; Mielke, 2008; Clements and Ridouane, 2011). This dissertation provides support for the emergent view of phonological features and proposes that the structure of the lexicon is the primary driving force in the emergence of phonological categories. Chapter 2 reviews the relevant developmental and theoretical literature on phonological acquisition and offers a reconsideration of the experimental findings in light of a clear distinction between phonetic and phonological knowledge. Chapter 3 presents a model of phonological category emergence in first language acquisition. In this model, the learner acquires phonological categories through creating lexically meaningful divisions in the acoustic space, and phonological categories adjust or increase in number to accommodate the representational needs of the learner's increasing vocabulary. A computational experiment was run to test the validity of this model using acoustic measurements from the Philadelphia Neighborhood Corpus as the input. To provide evidence in support of a lexically based acquisition model, Chapter 4 uses the Providence Corpus to investigate developmental patterns in phonological acquisition. This corpus study shows that lexical contrast, not frequency, contributes to the development of production accuracy on both the word and phoneme levels in 1- to 3-year-old English-learning children. Chapter 5 extends the phonological acquisition model to study the role of lexical frequency and phonetic variation in the initiation and perpetuation of sound change. The results indicate that phonological change is overwhelmingly regular and categorical with little frequency effects. Overall, this dissertation provides substantive evidence for a lexically based account of phonological category emergence.

Dwujęzyczność u progu edukacji szkolnej – interdyscyplinarny projekt badawczy

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Full-text available

Jun 2012

The paper describes a Polish research project which aims at creating a cognitive and linguistic profile of the Polish-English bilingual child at the school entrance age. With the increase in the number of bilingual children due to economic migrations, researchers, educators and practitioners are often faced with diagnostic dilemmas which arise from similarities in bilingual language acquisition in natural settings and Specific Language Impairment (SLI). The study, which aims at disentangling the effects of bilingualism from those of SLI, is a part of European cooperation programme COST Action IS0408/Bi-SLI. The aim of the Polish team is to create and test a set of tools which can be used for developing norms of typical bilingual development for Polish-English children entering school education.

Explaining and Understanding Early Literacy

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Full-text available

Feb 2015

Susan Neuman

The International Journal of Multi-Disciplinary Research Implications of Oral Language Instruction on Phonemic Awareness of Hard of Hearing Pupils in Lower Grades in Lusaka, Zambia The International Journal of Multi-Disciplinary Research

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2019

This paper is an extract from a PhD thesis based on one of the objectives which sought to investigate the extent to which pupils with hard of hearing in grade one and two know about sounds of letters. There was evidence of poor performance in letter sound tasks in pupils with hard of hearing impairment. It was not known why the pupils with hard of hearing impairment perform poorly on letter sound tasks in Zambia. This study therefore sought to establish the predictive role of oral language in phonemic development of pupils with hard of hearing impairment in grades one and two in Lusaka Zambia. The study was conducted in selected primary schools in Lusaka District, Lusaka Province, Zambia. The study utilised ex post facto research design as all children in their respective grades were assessed. The sample comprised 60 pupils of which 31 were girls and 29 were boys. Pupils were tested individually at the start of grade two and three to tap the skills they had acquired having completed grades one and two using the Basic Skills Assessment Tool, Peabody and One Word Picture Vocabulary Assessment Tool. Descriptive statistics and t tests were computed to analyse data. Results revealed that hard of hearing pupils displayed insufficient knowledge in phonemic awareness tasks. It was established that both expressive and receptive vocabularies did not predict phonemic awareness in hard of hearing pupils due to lack of instruction in this area. Based on the findings, the study recommended that teachers of the hard of hearing pupils should utilize oral language when teaching letter sound knowledge tasks to hard of hearing pupils and that pupils with hearing impairment should be identified early by the teachers, possibly at entry into preschool or grade one so that they are provided with hearing aid device to help them speed up the acquisition of oral language skills. Keywords: Oral language, letter sound knowledge and hard of hearing.

Longitudinal investigation of endogenous and exogenous predictors of early literacy in Turkish-speaking kindergartners

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2019
Early Child Dev Care

This study investigated endogenous and exogenous predictors of early literacy in Turkish-speaking children. Whether children’s language and working memory performances (as the endogenous factors) and home literacy environment (as the exogenous factor) in the beginning of kindergarten predict the children’s current and year-end early literacy skills (phonological awareness, letter knowledge, receptive and expressive vocabulary) was examined. The participants consisted of 441 kindergarten children. Results showed that language development, working memory, and home reading environment predicted children’s both current and year-end phonological awareness. Language and home writing activities were significant predictors of the year-end letter knowledge. Working memory was a significant predictor for both the current and year-end letter knowledge. Language, working memory and home reading environment significantly predicted the acquisition of receptive and expressive vocabulary. In conclusion, results suggest that each of the early literacy skills is related to both the developmental characteristics of children and their home literacy environment.

From Cantonese Lexical Tone Awareness to Second Language English Vocabulary: Cross-Language Mediation by Segmental Phonological Awareness

Article

May 2019

Purpose Cantonese lexical tone awareness is closely associated with 1st language Cantonese vocabulary knowledge, but its role in 2nd language English vocabulary knowledge was unclear. We addressed this issue by investigating whether and, if so, how Cantonese lexical tone awareness contributes to English expressive vocabulary knowledge in Hong Kong Cantonese–English bilingual children. Method A sample of 112 Hong Kong Cantonese–English bilingual 2nd graders were tested on Cantonese lexical tone awareness, English lexical stress sensitivity, Cantonese– English segmental phonological awareness, and both Cantonese and English expressive vocabulary knowledge. Results Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that Cantonese lexical tone awareness contributed indirectly to English expressive vocabulary knowledge through English lexical stress sensitivity and Cantonese–English segmental phonological awareness. Conclusion These results demonstrate the role of Cantonese lexical tone awareness in Cantonese–English bilingual children's English vocabulary knowledge. This also underscores the importance of 1st language suprasegmental phonological awareness in 2nd language expressive vocabulary knowledge.

Trilingual Education of Uyghur Children: Phonological Awareness, Language Acquisition and Literacy Development

Book

Feb 2024

Wei Xiaobao

Language‐specific phonological skills and the relationship with reading accuracy in Sylheti‐English sequential bilinguals

Article

Dec 2022

This study investigated the influence of first language (L1) phonology on second language (L2) early reading skills in Sylheti‐English bilinguals (N = 58; 48% girls; British Bangladeshi) and their monolingual‐English peers (N = 43; 45% girls; 96% White British, 4% multiethnic British) in a diaspora context. Language‐specific phonological awareness and nonword repetition were tested at two time points (6;2–7;8 years‐old). At Time 1, the bilinguals had lower productive accuracy for phonological sequences that violated their L1 phonology (d = .56; .84), and these skills accounted for a significant amount of variance in their reading accuracy. At Time 2, the language‐specific effects were no longer present. These findings highlight the importance of considering language structure in multilingual early literacy development.

Standardization of a test to evaluate the ability to read and diagnose its difficulties for a child of 7 to 10 years in the Arabic-Algerian linguistic environment.

Article

Full-text available

May 2022

Ladjal Yassine

The article deals with the psychometric procedural steps for constructing and standardizing a test to assess the reading abilities of the schooled child in the primary stage and diagnose reading disability (dyslexia). The test was standardized on a total sample of 280 male and female students between the ages of 7 to 10 years. based on the dual reading model of Coltheart [1], [2] and the L'Alouette text test by researcher Lefevrais [3], [4].The experimental method was adopted to ascertain the psychometric stages represented mainly in the validity and reliability of the scale items. Which includes the reading text «City Garden in this study on 243 unfamiliar words for the child and outside the curriculum. in addition to lists of reading words. non-words and pseudo-words in order to determine the type of reading deficit (phonological or lexical) and to identify the way of reading used by the child (direct or indirect). The results resulted in the validity and reliability of the test for evaluating and classifying reading ability and dyslexia. The scale can also be used to diagnose cases of people with reading difficulties

Capovilla, F. C. (2015). Bibliografia do Novo Deit Libras, 3a. edição. Em Capovilla, F. C.; Raphael, W. D.; Mauricio, A. C. (2015). (Orgs.), Novo Deit-Libras: Dicionário enciclopédico ilustrado trilíngue da Língua de Sinais Brasileira (Libras) baseado em Linguística e Neurociências Cognitivas, 3ª edição, Volume 2 (3ª. ed., vol. 2, pp. 2701-2778). São Paulo, SP: Edusp. (ISBN: 978–85–314–1434-3).

Chapter

Full-text available

Apr 2015

Fernando Cesar Capovilla

Bibliografia do Novo Deit Libras, 3ª edição revista e ampliada (2015). A publicação lista 2.841 referências bibliográficas que foram consultadas para a elaboração da 3a. edição revista e ampliada do Novo Deit-Libras: Novo Dicionário Enciclopédico Ilustrado Trilíngue da Língua de Sinais Brasileira. As referências cobrem campos como os de Psicologia e Neuropsicologia Cognitivas e do Desenvolvimento, Linguística e Neuropsicolinguística Cognitiva, Educação, Educação de Surdos, História de Educação de Surdos, Filosofias educacionais em surdez, Fonoaudiologia, Antropologia Cultural, dentre muitos outros. Como esse dicionário propõe, em diversos capítulos associados, um novo modelo de lexicografia e lexicologia da Libras, grande esforço foi feito na justificação e explicação das bases desse modelo. O dicionário encarna, usa e ilustra esse novo modelo. References used in the New Encyclopedic Illustrated Dictionary of Brazilian Sign Language, 3rd edition (2015). The publication lists 2,841 references that were used to support the elaboration of the Brazilian Sign Language Encyclopedic Dictionary, 3rd edition. The references cover fields such as Cognitive and Developmental Psychology and Neuropsychology, Cognitive Linguistics and Neurolinguistics and Neuropsycholinguistics, Applied Linguistics, Lexicography, Lexicology, Education, Deaf Education, Special Education, History of Education, Bilingualism, History of Deaf Education, Speech Language Pathology, Cultural Anthropology, among many othes. In several chapters, this seminal dictionary advances a groundbreaking original model dicionário in sign language lexicography and lexicology. The chapters justify and explain such a model, which is embodied by the dictionary itself.

Effects of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and bilingualism on verbal short-term memory

Chapter

Nov 2021

Natalia Meir

Augmentative and Alternative Communication Supports for Language and Literacy in Preschool: Considerations for Down Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorder

Article

Aug 2021

Children with Down syndrome and children with autism spectrum disorder have a range of speech abilities during preschool that impacts access to both language and literacy instruction. It is the responsibility of the speech-language pathologist to advocate for and provide intervention using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) through individualized assessment. This article provides a review of the literature supporting the use of AAC during preschool for both language and literacy development in children with Down syndrome and children with autism spectrum disorder who have limited speech. A small scale exploratory report is discussed to highlight differences in early literacy skills found in children in each group. Implications for AAC intervention during preschool to support both language and literacy are discussed.

A Review of the Evolutionary Significance and Developmental Applications of the Phonological Loop and an Appraisal of the Conceptual Model as a Tool

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Full-text available

Mar 2020

Celia Glastris

This paper seeks to understand the usefulness of Baddeley & Hitch's phonological loop as an exemplar appraisal of the function of boxes-and-arrows in cognitive psychology as a whole.

ProVoc: An app to train vocabulary depth in order to foster children's reading comprehension

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2021
J COMPUT ASSIST LEAR

Many studies have demonstrated the crucial role of vocabulary in predicting reading performance in general. More recent work has indicated that one particular facet of vocabulary (its depth) is more closely related to language comprehension, especially inferential comprehension. On this basis, we developed a training application to specifically improve vocabulary depth. The objective of this study was to test the effectiveness of a mobile application designed to improve vocabulary depth. The effectiveness of this training was examined on 3rd and 4th grade children's vocabulary (breadth and depth), decoding and comprehension performances. A randomized waiting‐list control paradigm was used in which an experimental group first received the intervention during the first 4 weeks (between pretest and post‐test1), thereafter, a waiting control group received the training for the next 4 weeks (between postest1 and posttest2). Results showed that the developed application led to significant improvements in terms of vocabulary depth performance, as well as a significant transfer effect to reading comprehension. However, we did not observe such a beneficial effect on either vocabulary breadth or written word identification. These results are discussed in terms of the links between vocabulary depth and comprehension, and the opportunities the app presents for remedying language comprehension deficits in children.

Nonword Repetition Performance of Arabic-Speaking Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorder: A Study on Diagnostic Accuracy

Article

Jul 2021

Purpose: This study evaluates the effectiveness of a nonword repetition (NWR) task in discriminating between Palestinian Arabic-speaking children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and age-matched typically-developing (TD) children. Methods: Participants were 30 children with DLD aged between 4;00 and 6;10 and 60 TD children aged between 4;00 and 6;8 matched on chronological age. The Arabic version of a Quasi-Universal Nonword Repetition task was administered. The task comprises 30 nonwords that vary in length, presence of consonant clusters (CC) and wordlikeness ratings. Responses were scored using an item-level scoring method. To assess the diagnostic accuracy of the task. ROC curve analysis was conducted to determine the best cutoff point with the highest sensitivity and specificity values and likelihood ratios were calculated. Results: Children with DLD scored significantly lower on the NWR task than their age-matched TD peers. Only the DLD group was influenced by the phonological complexity of the nonwords, with nonwords with two CC being more difficult than nonwords with no or only one CC. For both groups, three-syllable nonwords were repeated less accurately than two and one-syllable nonwords. Also, high word-like nonwords were repeated more accurately than nonwords with low wordlikeness ratings. The best cutoff score had sensitivity and specificity of 93% and highly informative likelihood ratios. Conclusion: NWR was an area of difficulty for Palestinian Arabic-speaking children with DLD. NWR showed excellent discriminatory power in differentiating Arabic-speaking children diagnosed with DLD from their age-matched TD peers. NWR appears to hold promise for clinical use as it is a useful indicator of DLD in Arabic. These results need to be further validated using population-based studies.

The Phonological Form of Lexical Items Modulates the Encoding of Challenging Second-Language Sound Contrasts

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2020

The present study investigated whether the ability to encode the sounds of difficult second-language (L2) contrasts into novel nonnative lexical representations is modulated by the phonological form of the words to be learned. In 3 experiments, German learners of English were trained on word-picture associations with either novel minimal pairs only differing in the difficult /ε/-/æ/ contrast (Experiments 1 and 2; e.g., tendek-tandek) or pairs that additionally differed in their second syllables (Experiment 3; e.g., tenzer-tandek). Word recognition was assessed by means of a visual-world eye-tracking task. We asked whether learners would be more successful at encoding a distinction between the 2 vowels in the minimal-pair than in the nonminimal-pair items because of the central role of the contrast for accurate word learning with minimal pairs. Results from eye-fixation analyses at test showed that learners recognized /æ/-items faster than /ε/-items when they were minimal pairs and these pairs had already appeared together on the screen on a number of training trials (Experiment 1 vs. 2). This asymmetry could not be replicated with nonminimal pairs (Experiment 3). In line with previous studies, the asymmetry in Experiment 2 is taken as evidence of lexical separation for /ε/ and /æ/. Accordingly, we argue that exposure to the minimal-pair stimuli highlighted the challenging distinction by enhancing listeners' attention to the critical sounds and conclude that the encoding of difficult L2 contrasts into the lexicon is more likely when the phonological form of the words emphasizes relevant phonological differences that may otherwise remain unnoticed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Frequency and Neighborhood Effects on Lexical Access: Activation or Search?

Article

Full-text available

Sep 1989

Sally Andrews

Four experiments investigated the conjoint effects of word frequency and neighborhood size on performance in lexical decision, word naming, and delayed naming tasks. Neighborhood size refers to the number of words that can be created by changing one letter of a target word. Facilitatory effects of neighborhood size were observed for low- but not high-frequency effect in the lexical decision as compared with the naming task. This effect was influenced by the nature of the nonwords that had to be discriminated from words and therefore appeared to reflect the processes involved in the decision component of the lexical classification task. Overall, the results demonstrate that neighborhood size influences the lexical access process. The facilitatory nature of the neighborhood effect and its interaction with frequency provide strong support for the view that lexical access relies on an activation mechanism that is sensitive to word frequency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Phonological Working Memory in Very Young Children

Article

Full-text available

Jul 1993

This study was designed to establish whether phonological working memory skills could be assessed in children below 4 yrs of age. A group of 2- and 3-yr-old children were tested on 3 phonological memory measures (digit span, nonword repetition, and word repetition) and were also given tasks that tapped other cognitive skills. Scores on the 3 phonological memory tasks were closely related. In addition, repetition performance was linked with both vocabulary knowledge and articulation rate. Results indicate that phonological memory skills can be reliably assessed in very young children by using conventional serial span and repetition procedures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Spoken Word Recognition in Reading Disabled Children

Article

Full-text available

Mar 1997

Jamie Metsala

This study compared spoken word recognition in 39 reading disabled and 61 normally achieving children on a speech gating task and examined the relationships among speech recognition, phonemic awareness, and reading. Children listened to increasingly longer segments of the speech input from word onset and guessed the identity of the target word. Words were either high or low frequency arid had few or many similarly sounding word neighbors in the listener's lexicon. Reading disabled children needed more of the speech input than normally achieving peers to identify target words with few similarly sounding neighbors. The amount of speech input for recognition predicted the youngest children's reading performance, after variance due to measures of phonemic awareness and receptive vocabulary were accounted for. The argument is developed that spoken word recognition may be developmentally delayed in those with reading disabilities and may play a causal role in these children's failure to acquire adequate alphabetic knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Age-of-acquisition, imagery, concreteness, familiarity, and ambiguity measures for 1,944 words

Article

Full-text available

Jul 1980

Age-of-acquisition, imagery, concreteness, familiarity, and ambiguity measures for 1,944 words of varying length and frequency of occurrence are presented. The words can all be used as nouns. Intergroup reliabilities are satisfactory on all attributes. Correlations with previous word lists are significant, and the intercorrelations between measures match previous findings.

Age-of-acquisition effects in lexical and episodic memory tasks

Article

Full-text available

May 1979

This paper reports four experiments on the effects of word age of acquisition in verbal tasks. In all cases, multiple-regression analysis was used to assess the relative effects of age as opposed to other potentially relevant word attributes. Experiments 1 and 2 concerned lexical memory tasks. In Experiment 1, picture naming speeds were found to be mainly determined by picture codability and name age of acquisition. In Experiment 2, it was found that when subjects produced words in response to bigram cues, early acquired target words were more likely to be produced than later acquired words, even when frequency and other word attributes were taken into account. The remaining two experiments dealt with the episodic memory tasks of free recall and recognition. No age effects were found in these tasks. It was concluded that early age of acquisition facilitates retrieval from lexical memory but has no significant effect in episodic memory tasks.

First in, first out: Word learning age and spoken word frequency as predictors of word familiarity and word naming latency

Article

Full-text available

Jun 1987

This study is concerned with recent claims that subjective measures of word frequency are more suitable than are standard word frequency counts as indices of actual frequency of word encounter. A multiple regression study is reported, which shows that the major predictor of familiarity ratings is word learning age. Objective measures of spoken and written word frequency made independent contributions to the variance. It is concluded that rated familiarity is not an appropriate substitute for objective frequency measures. A multiple regression study of word naming latency is reported, and shows that rated word learning age is a better predictor of word naming latency than are spoken word frequency, written word frequency, rated familiarity, and other variables. Possible theoretical explanations for age-of-acquisition effects are discussed and it is concluded that early-learned words have a more complete representation in a phonological output lexicon. This conclusion is related to relevant developmental literature.

Note on Teaching Children to Hear Separate Sounds in Spoken Words

Article

Full-text available

Feb 1965

To test the hypothesis that children learn to identify sounds in spoken words better through practice with nonsense than with familiar words, 60 kindergarten children, divided into 2 matched groups, were individually taught by self-instructional materials. 1 group received training that required responding to the sounds as they appeared in nonsense terms, the other to sounds as they appeared in meaningful terms. Children trained with nonsense words made fewer errors during the training period and on the criterion test did significantly better in identifying sounds found in both nonsense and meaningful words (p < .01).

WHAT IS PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS

Article

Jun 1995

C MCBRIDECHANG

Phonological awareness was hypothesized to be composed of at least 3 component skills-IQ, verbal short-term memory, and speech perception. In addition, 4 linguistic manipulations within 3 phonological awareness tasks were theorized to affect item difficulties. Multiple measures of IQ, verbal short-term memory, speech perception, and phonological awareness were administered to 136 3rd and 4th graders. Application of structural equation modeling revealed that IQ, speech perception, and verbal short-term memory each contributed unique variance to the phonological awareness construct. All 4 experimental linguistic manipulations influenced phonological awareness item difficulties as well. Results underscore the importance of speech perception for phonological awareness.

Vocabulary growth and the knowing-learning distinction

Article

Jan 1989

J.M. Anglin

Speech perception in early infancy

Article

Jan 1971

Perceptual Development

Article

Jan 1988

R. Aslin

Word age-of-acquisition and lexical decision making

Article

Jan 1982
ACTA PSYCHOL

This paper reports two experiments concerning the effects of word age-of-acquisition and other word attributes on speed of lexical decision. Analyses of group average data indicated that word length, frequency and familiarity were the major determinants of decision speed. Previous reports of age-of-acquisition effects on lexical decision are attributed to failures to control for word familiarity.

Word Frequency and Age of Acquisition as Determiners of Picture-Naming Latency

Article

Feb 1973
Q J Exp Psychol

In multiple-regression analysis of picture-naming latencies from an experiment modelled on Oldfield and Wingfield's (1965), with 94 stimuli and 37 adult subjects, two word frequency measures had insignificant beta weights, while two measures estimating age at which the word was learned had highly significant weights. Objects whose names were learned early were named faster. This result may have important implications for the interpretation of studies using word frequency as a critical variable. It is suggested that word retrieval may be a one-stage process that depends upon the age at which a word was learned.

Chapter 8. Language Acquisition

Article

Dec 1995

Peter W. Jusczyk

outline some of the basic capacities that infants have for perceiving speech and when some of the major milestones appear to be achieved / discuss how these capacities evolve as the infant becomes engaged in acquiring a native language and relate some of these developments to concurrent changes in speech production basic capacities for perceiving phonetic contrasts [native language contrasts, foreign language contrasts, coping with variability in the speech signal, the role of memory and attention in infant speech perception] / learning native language sound patterns [distinguishing between native and foreign language patterns, learning about prosodic organization in the native language] / relating developments in speech perception and speech production (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Categorizing sounds and learning to read: A causal connection

Article

Feb 1983

Tested the hypothesis that the experiences that a child has with rhyme before he/she goes to school might have an effect on later success in learning to read and write. Two experimental situations were used: a longitudinal study and an intensive training program in sound categorization or other forms of categorization. 368 children's skills at sound categorization were measured before they started to read and then related to their progress in reading, spelling, and mathematics over 4 yrs. At the end of initial testing and during the 4 yrs Ss' IQ, reading, spelling, and mathematical abilities were tested. There were high correlations between initial sound categorization scores and Ss' reading and spelling over 3 yrs. At the onset of study, 65 Ss who could not read and had low sound-categorization skills were divided into 4 groups. Two received 2 yrs of training in categorizing sounds. Group 1 was taught that the same word shared common beginning, middle, and end sounds with other words and could be categorized in different ways. Group 2 was also taught how each common sound was represented by a letter of the alphabet. The other groups served as controls. Group 3 was taught only that the same word could be classified in several ways. At the end of training, Group 1 was ahead of Group 3 and Group 2 was ahead of Group 1 in reading and spelling. This suggests that training in sound categorization is more effective when it also involves an explicit connection with the alphabet. Results support the hypothesis. (5 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

The Role of Vocabulary Development in Children′s Spoken Word Recognition and Segmentation Ability

Article

Sep 1993

Amanda C. Walley

Reviews research on the development of spoken word recognition, from studies of speech perception in infancy and early word productions through investigations of word recognition proper and explicit phoneme segmentation ability in middle childhood. Most developmental research indicates that lexical representation and processing are not, at the outset, segmentally based, but are more holistic in nature. Segmental restructuring of lexical representations begins largely with a vocabulary growth spurt in late infancy and associated pressures for more detailed and efficient storage of lexical items. Variations in the segmental structure of basic lexical representations and the use of such structure for recognition in the preschool period may contribute to individual differences in explicit phoneme segmentation ability, and thus early reading success. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Metalinguistic ability and early reading achievement. Applied Psycholinguistics, 9, 367-383

Article

Dec 1988
APPL PSYCHOLINGUIST

This study explored the conceptual status of metalinguistic ability by determining whether or not metalinguistic ability can account for variation in early reading achievement independently of more general language abilities. First-grade children were given a test battery assessing phonemic awareness, syntactic awareness, receptive vocabulary, syntactic proficiency, word decoding ability, and reading comprehension ability. Strong zero-order correlations were observed among all experimental measures. However, multiple regression analyses revealed that metalinguistic ability did not contribute to the prediction of early reading achievement when general language ability effects were statistically controlled.

Words, nonwords, and phonological processes: Some comments on Gathercole, Willis, Emslie, and Baddeley

Article

Sep 1991
APPL PSYCHOLINGUIST

c1 Dr. Margaret J. Snowling, The National Hospital’s College of Speech Sciences, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London WC1N 1PG, England

Language Development, Metalinguistic Skills, and Print Awareness in 3-Year-Old Children

Article

Oct 1992
APPL PSYCHOLINGUIST

Carolyn Chaney

This is an investigation of the relationships among selected aspects of normal language development, emerging metalinguistic skills, and concepts about print in 3-year-old children. Forty–three normally developing children were given four tests of language development; twelve metalinguistic tasks measuring phonological awareness, word awareness, and structural awareness; and two measures of literacy knowledge. The results clearly demonstrated that most 3-year-olds can make metalinguistic judgments and productions in structured tasks, with overall metalinguistic performance improving with age in months. Specific metalinguistic tasks varied in difficulty and probably in developmental order. The major domains of metalinguistic awareness (phonological, word, and structural) were significantly intercorrelated and also correlated with overall linguistic skill. Literacy knowledge was positively correlated with overall metalinguistic skill and, specifically, with phonological awareness. It is concluded that, as young as age 3, children are already rapidly developing a mental framework for analyzing language structure separately from language meaning

The influence of syllables and wordlikeness on children's repetition of nonwords

Article

Sep 1991
APPL PSYCHOLINGUIST

It has recently been suggested that the developmental association between nonword repetition performance and vocabulary knowledge reflects the contribution of phonological memory processes to vocabulary acquisition (e.g., Gathercole & Baddeley, 1989). An alternative account of the association is that the child uses existing vocabulary knowledge to support memory for nonwords. The present article tests between these two alternative accounts by evaluating the role of phonological memory and linguistic factors in nonword repetition. In a longitudinal database, repetition accuracy in 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds was found to be sensitive to two independent factors: a phonological memory factor, nonword length, and a linguistic factor, wordlikeness. To explain these combined influences, it is suggested that repeating nonwords involves temporary phonological memory storage which may be supported by either a specific lexical analogy or by an appropriate abstract phonological frame generated from structurally similar vocabulary items.

Productive phonology and phonological awareness in preschool children

Article

Jan 1995
APPL PSYCHOLINGUIST

This article reports on a longitudinal examination of the relationship between productive phonological ability and phonological awareness in children under 6 years of age. This study followed 45 subjects with variant productive phonology levels from the mean age of 3;6 to 6;0. The Khan-Lewis Phonological Analysis (KLPA) (Khan & Lewis, 1976), which ranks children from 0 to 4 on phonological process usage, was given at 6-month intervals, along with two measures of phonological awareness. Logit analysis showed that children with poor productive phonology, as measured by process usage, had a lower probability of meeting criterion on both of the phonological awareness measures. Further, a change in KLPA rank from poor to good speech predicted significant exponential increases in the probability of success on the two dependent variables. We concluded that, as a child matures in productive phonology, accompanying exponential growth in phonological awareness occurs.

Lexical influence on non-word repetition

Article

Apr 1995
APPL PSYCHOLINGUIST

The present investigation explores the hypothesis that lexical information influences performance on nonword repetition tasks. The subjects – 30 normally achieving, school-aged boys – repeated multisyllabic nonword pairs, constructed to vary only in the lexicality of their constituent stressed syllables. Nonwords with stressed syllables corresponding to real words were repeated significantly more accurately than nonwords with non-lexical stressed syllables; stressed syllable lexicality primarily influenced repetition of the remaining unstressed syllables. Subsequent analyses revealed that the overwhelming majority of repetition errors operated to transform non-lexical sequences into real words, even when doing so violated both strong acoustic cues and articulatory ease. We conclude that lexical long-term memory information intrudes on nonword repetition performance, including stimuli that are within the limits of immediate memory span. These results suggest a number of caveats concerning the construction and interpretation of nonword repetition tasks and raise questions about the role of such tasks in assessing phonological working memory.

Language development, metalinguistic awareness, and emergent literacy skills of 3-year-old children in relation to social class

Article

Jul 1994
APPL PSYCHOLINGUIST

Carolyn Chaney

This is an investigation of the relationships among selected aspects of normal language development, emerging metalinguistic skills, concepts about print, and family literacy experiences in 3-year-old children who vary in their socioeconomic backgrounds. Forty-three normally developing children, whose family incomes ranged from under $10,000 to over $100,000, were given 4 tests of language development; 12 metalinguistic tasks measuring phonological awareness, word awareness, and structural awareness; and 2 measures of literacy knowledge. The children's family literacy experiences were described following a parent interview. The data analysis had two main purposes. The first was to examine the family literacy experiences of the children using a qualitative analysis. The second was to describe, in a quantitative way, the relationships among family literacy experiences, socioeconomic factors, language development, metalinguistic performance, and concepts about print. The interview data revealed that, while parents varied in the emphasis they placed on literacy activities, all of the children were at least somewhat involved in literacy activities at home; family report of literacy activities was associated with family income. Quantitative analyses revealed that amount of family literacy involvement and the children's race were related to oral language development, and language development was the most powerful predictor of metalinguistic awareness. When language development was controlled statistically, family literacy and socioeconomic factors had negligible effects on metalinguistic skills; however, knowledge of print concepts was related to metalinguistic performance, especially in the phonological domain, and was associated with the children's family literacy experiences, maternal education, and race.

The growth of lexical constraints on spoken word recognition

Article

May 1990

In this study, we examined the influence of various sources of constraint on spoken word recognition in a mispronunciation-detection task. Five- and 8-year-olds and adults were presented with words (intact or with word-initial or noninitial errors) from three different age-of-acquisition categories. “Intact” and “mispronounced” responses were collected for isolated words with or without a picture referent (Experiment 1) and for words in constraining or unconstraining sentences (Experiment2). Some evidence for differential attention to word-initial as opposed to non-initial acoustic-phonetic information (and thus the influence of sequential lexical constraints on recognition) was apparent in young children’s and adults’ response criteria and in older children’s and adults’ reaction times. A more marked finding, however, was the variation in subjects’ performance, according to several measures, with age and lexical familiarity (defined according to adults’ subjective age-of-acquisition estimates). Children’s strategies for responding to familiar and unfamiliar words in different contexts are discussed.

Word age-of-acquisition and residence time in lexical memory as factors in word naming

Article

Jun 1984

Ken Gilhooly

Previous reports of age-of-acquisition effects have been theoretically ambiguous since, in any particular individual, word age-of-acquisition is perfectly correlated with the length of time that a word has been known. The study reported in this article attempted to disentangle effects of word age-of-acquisition and length of word residence time in lexical memory. To this end, words varying in recency-of-introduction to British English were presented in a word-naming task to 46 native speakers whose ages ranged from 20 to 58 years. Using subjects’ ratings of the words on age-of-acquisition, it was possible to assess word residence times and to compare the effects on naming speeds of age-of-acquisition and residence times. Regression analyses indicated that age-of-acquisition was a more important factor than residence time in the word-naming task.

Metalinguistic awareness and language development

Article

Dec 1982

Thirty-six 3- and 4-year-old children were given a battery of six metalinguistic tasks and two measures of language development: the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and a sentence comprehension test. The results clearly showed that the majority of preschoolers were able to make at least some metalinguistic judgments, and that metalinguistic performance improved with age. Furthermore, overall performance on the metalinguistic tasks was significantly correlated with each language measure when the effects of age were partialed out. In contrast, the correlation between age and metalinguistic performance was not significant once the effects of both language measures were partialed out. These data demonstrate that preschoolers' metalinguistic abilities are more extensive than has been previously acknowledged, and that they are closely tied to other aspects of language development at this time.

Priming Lexical Neighbors of Spoken Words: Effects of Competition and Inhibition

Article

Oct 1989

Two experiments employing an auditory priming paradigm were conducted to test predictions of the Neighborhood Activation Model of spoken word recognition (Luce & Pisoni, 1989, Neighborhoods of words in the mental lexicon. Manuscript under review). Acousticphonetic similarity, neighborhood densities, and frequencies of prime and target words were manipulated. In Experiment 1, priming with low frequency, phonetically related spoken words inhibited target recognition, as predicted by the Neighborhood Activation Model. In Experiment 2, the same prime-target pairs were presented with a longer inter-stimulus interval and the effects of priming were eliminated. In both experiments, predictions derived from the Neighborhood Activation Model regarding the effects of neighborhood density and word frequency were supported. The results are discussed in terms of competing activation of lexical neighbors and the dissociation of activation and frequency in spoken word recognition.

Young children's age-of-acquisition estimates for spoken words

Article

Apr 1992

This study was concerned with the impact of stimulus familiarity on young children's ability to recognize spoken words and make explicit judgments about them. In Experiment 1, 5-year-olds made age-of-acquisition (AOA) estimates for a set of words that were very similar to estimates made by older children and adults. In Experiment 2, young children's picture recognition, mispronunciation detection, and vocabulary monitoring performance all varied systematically with these AOA estimates and with a stimulus-type (intact-mispronounced) manipulation. Subjective AOA estimates (whether from children or from adults) proved to be a better predictor of performance than did two objective familiarity measures and subjective imageability. These results point to considerable metalexical knowledge on the part of young children or explicit sensitivity regarding their own vocabulary knowledge. In addition, the results lend some support to the notion that actual AOA contributes to subjective AOA estimates.

Acoustic-phonetic representations in word recognition

Article

Apr 1987
COGNITION

This paper reviews what is currently known about the sensory and perceptual input that is made available to the word recognition system by processes typically assumed to be related to speech sound perception. In the first section, we discuss several of the major problems that speech researchers have tried to deal with over the last thirty years. In the second section, we consider one attempt to conceptualize the speech perception process within a theoretical framework that equates processing stages with levels of linguistic analysis. This framework assumes that speech is processed through a series of analytic stages ranging from peripheral auditory processing, acoustic-phonetic and phonological analysis, to word recognition and lexical access. Finally, in the last section, we consider several recent approaches to spoken word recognition and lexical access. We examine a number of claims surrounding the nature of the bottom-up input assumed by these models, postulated perceptual units, and the interaction of different knowledge sources in auditory word recognition. An additional goal of this paper was to establish the need to employ segmental representations in spoken word recognition.

Is nonword repetition a test of phonological memory or long term knowledge? It depends on the nonwords

Article

Feb 1995

Susan Gathercole

The extent to which children's performance on tests of nonword repetition is constrained by phonological working memory and long-term lexical knowledge was investigated in a longitudinal study of 70 children tested at 4 and 5 years of age. At each time of testing, measures of nonword repetition, memory span, and vocabulary knowledge were obtained. Reading ability was also assessed at 5 years. At both ages, repetition accuracy was greater for nonwords of high- rather than low-rated wordlikeness, and memory-span measures were more closely related to repetition accuracy for the low-wordlike than for the high-wordlike stimuli. It is argued that these findings indicate that nonword repetition for unwordlike stimuli is largely dependent on phonological memory, whereas repetition for wordlike items is also mediated by long-term lexical knowledge and is therefore less sensitive to phonological memory constraints. Reading achievement was selectively linked with earlier repetition scores for low-wordlike nonwords, suggesting a phonological memory contribution in the early stages of reading development. Vocabulary knowledge was associated with repetition accuracy for both low- and high-wordlike nonwords, consistent with the notion that lexical knowledge and nonword repetition share a reciprocal developmental relationship.

An examination of word frequency and neighborhood density in the development of spoken-word recognition

Article

Feb 1997

Jamie Metsala

In this study, the effects of word-frequency and phonological similarity relations in the development of spoken-word recognition were examined. Seven-, 9-, and 11-year-olds and adults listened to increasingly longer segments of high- and low-frequency monosyllabic words with many or few word neighbors that sounded similar (neighborhood density). Older children and adults required less of the acoustic-phonetic information to recognize words with few neighbors and low-frequency words than did younger children. Adults recognized high-frequency words with few neighbors on the basis of less input than did all three of the children's groups. All subjects showed a higher proportion of different-word guesses for words with many versus few neighbors. A frequency x neighborhood density interaction revealed that recognition is facilitated for high-frequency words with few versus many neighbors; the opposite was found for low-frequency words. Results are placed within a developmental framework on the emergence of the phoneme as a unit in perceptual processing.

Connectionism, Phonology, Reading, and Regularity in Developmental Dyslexia

Article

Oct 1997

Gordon Brown

Tests of the "phonological deficit" account of developmental dyslexia have produced apparently inconsistent results. We show how a connectionist approach to dyslexic reading development can resolve the paradox. A "dyslexic" model of reading was created by reducing the quality of the phonological representations available to the model during learning. The model behaved similarly to dyslexic children in that it had a selectively reduced ability to process nonwords, but showed normal effects of words' spelling-to-sound regularity. An experimental test of the model's predictions confirmed that dyslexic children perform similarly, in that they are impaired on irregular words to the same extent as nondyslexic children. It is concluded that developmentally dyslexic reading can indeed be understood in terms of impaired phonological representations and that the adoption of a modeling approach resolves an apparent paradox in the experimental literature.

Young children's phonological awareness and nonword repetition as a function of vocabulary development

Abstract

No full-text available

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