Dynamic assessment of multilingual children's word learning

Assessing vocabulary acquisition using a fast-mapping task in an Android application: A pilot study

PURPOSE

The aim of this study was to explore whether a fast mapping task embedded in an Android application (FastMApp) is a valid tool to assess referent selection abilities in Spanish-speaking children aged between 18 and 30 months. Traditional assessment tools for lexical development use static quantitative methods that assign children a final score to represent their overall vocabulary level. These methods fail to provide insights into the learning process, despite their potential relevance for clinical and educational purposes.

METHOD

Sixty Spanish-speaking children participated in this study. They completed the FastMApp (a 22-trials' fast mapping noun task including 4- and 5-item trials, with one unknown object), and their caregivers rated their child's vocabulary on a parent-rated vocabulary inventory measure.

RESULT

The data show a high percentage of responses to the task, indicating that the children were actively complied with the task. The scores for known labels are significantly higher compared to unknown labels, and the scores for 4-item trials are significantly higher compared to 5-item trials. We observed a strong and significant relationship between the scores in this task and the scores on the parent-rated vocabulary inventory measure.

CONCLUSION

The results suggest that FastMApp is suitable for assessing early vocabulary acquisition in Spanish-speaking children.

Unraveling individual differences in learning potential: A dynamic framework for the case of reading development

Children show an enormous capacity to learn during development, but with large individual differences in the time course and trajectory of learning and the achieved skill level. Recent progress in developmental sciences has shown the contribution of a multitude of factors including genetic variation, brain plasticity, socio-cultural context and learning experiences to individual development. These factors interact in a complex manner, producing children's idiosyncratic and heterogeneous learning paths. Despite an increasing recognition of these intricate dynamics, current research on the development of culturally acquired skills such as reading still has a typical focus on snapshots of children's performance at discrete points in time. Here we argue that this 'static' approach is often insufficient and limits advancements in the prediction and mechanistic understanding of individual differences in learning capacity. We present a dynamic framework which highlights the importance of capturing short-term trajectories during learning across multiple stages and processes as a proxy for long-term development on the example of reading. This framework will help explain relevant variability in children's learning paths and outcomes and fosters new perspectives and approaches to study how children develop and learn.

Early Identification of Children at Risk of Communication Disorders: Introducing a Novel Battery of Dynamic Assessments for Infants

PURPOSE

Many children with communication disorders (CDs) experience lengthy gaps between parental reporting of concerns and formal identification by professionals. This means that children with CDs are denied access to early interventions that may help support the development of communication skills and prevent possible negative sequelae associated with long-term outcomes. This may be due, in part, to the lack of assessment instruments available for children younger than 3 years of age. This study therefore reports on promising preliminary data from a novel set of valid dynamic assessment (DA) measures designed for infants.

METHOD

We recruited 53 low-risk children and two groups of children considered to be at high risk for CDs (n = 17, social high risk, and n = 22, language high risk) due to family members with language and social communication difficulties. The children were between 1 and 2 years of age and were assessed using a battery of five DA tasks related to receptive vocabulary, motor imitation, response to joint attention, turn taking, and social requesting. A set of standardized measures were also used.

RESULTS

The DA tasks showed high levels of interrater reliability and relationships with age across a cross-sectional sample of children from the low-risk group. Three tasks showed moderate to strong correlations with standardized measures taken at the same age, with particularly strong correlations between the DA of receptive vocabulary and other receptive language measures. The DA of receptive vocabulary was also the only task to discriminate between the three risk groups, with the social high risk group scoring lower.

CONCLUSIONS

These results provide preliminary information about early DA tasks, forming the basis for further research into their utility. DA tasks might eventually facilitate the development of new methods for detecting CDs in very young children, allowing earlier intervention and support.

A new dynamic word learning task to diagnose language disorder in French-speaking monolingual and bilingual children

Tools to effectively assess the language performance of bilingual children are lacking. Static tests assessing vocabulary knowledge (e.g., naming task) are not appropriate for testing bilingual children due to different types of bias. Alternative methods have been developed to diagnose bilingual children, including measuring language learning (e.g., word learning) through dynamic assessment. Research conducted with English-speaking children indicates that DA of word learning is effective in diagnosing language disorders in bilingual children. In this study, we examine whether a dynamic word learning task, using shared-storybook reading, can differentiate French-speaking (monolingual and bilingual) children with developmental language disorder (DLD) from those with typical development (TD). Sixty children (4-8 years), 43 with TD and 17 with DLD, participated: 30 were monolinguals and 25 were bilinguals. The dynamic word-learning task used a shared-storybook reading context. The children had to learn four non-words, paired with novel objects, as well as their semantic characteristics (a category and a definition) during the reading of a story. Post-tests assessed the recall of the phonological form and the semantic features of the objects. Phonological and semantic prompts were given if the child was unable to name or describe the objects. Results indicated that children with DLD performed less well than those with TD on phonological recall, leading to fair sensitivity and good specificity at delayed post-test for young children (4-6 years). Semantic production did not differentiate the two groups: all children performed well at this task. In sum, children with DLD have more difficulties encoding the phonological form of the word. Our findings suggest that a dynamic word learning task using shared-storybook reading is a promising approach for diagnosing lexical difficulties in young French-speaking, monolingual and bilingual, children.