Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in young children: spanish, dutch, French, hebrew, italian, korean, and american english

Lexical development in Kuwaiti Arabic in typically developing children and late talkers

INTRODUCTION

This study explored vocabulary development and lexical composition in young typically developing (TD) Kuwaiti children and late talkers (LT) using the Kuwaiti Arabic Communicative Development Inventory-Words and Sentences (KACDI-WS) Abdalla et al., 2016). The sample included 161 children aged 20 to 37 months: 127 TD and 34 children who were late talkers (LT group). The late talkers were first identified based on a background questionnaire answered by the parents. All the caregivers completed a 698-item web-based KACDI expressive vocabulary inventory by selecting non-imitative words that their children produced.

RESULTS

Lexical size and composition (nouns, predicates, and closed-class words) were analyzed. Across the TD age groups (20-26, 27-31, 32-37 months), a significant age effect for vocabulary size and composition was found in favor of the older groups. Nouns were more prevalent than predicates or closed-class words in within-group comparisons. The vocabulary size of the TD (M= 263.8) was significantly larger than that of the LT group (M= 69.2). The development of their lexical composition followed a similar pattern.

CONCLUSIONS

The results suggested that the KACDI parent report instrument has the potential for measuring vocabulary development in TD children and could serve as an initial screening tool to identify late talkers.

Intonation words in initial intentional communication of Mandarin-speaking children

Intonation words play a very important role in early childhood language development and serve as a crucial entry point for studying children's language acquisition. Utilizing a natural conversation corpus, this paper thoroughly examines the intentional communication scenes of five Mandarin-speaking children before the age of 1;05 (17 months). We found that children produced a limited yet high-frequency set of intonation words such as " [a], [æ], [ε], [ən], [ə], eng [əŋ], [o], and [i]." These intonation words do not express the children's emotional attitudes toward propositions or events; rather, they are utilized within the frameworks of imperative, declarative, and interrogative intents. The children employ non-verbal, multimodal means such as pointing, gesturing, and facial expressions to actively convey or receive commands, provide or receive information, and inquire or respond. The data suggests that the function of intonation words is essentially equivalent to holophrases, indicating the initial stage of syntactic acquisition, which is a milestone in early syntactic development. Based on the cross-linguistic universality of intonation word acquisition and its inherited relationship with pre-linguistic intentional vocalizations, this paper proposes that children's syntax is initiated by the prosodic features of intonation. The paper also contends that intonation words, as the initial form of human vocal language in individual development, naturally extend from early babbling, emotional vocalizations, or sound expressions for changing intentions. They do not originate from spontaneous gesturing, which seems to have no necessary evolutionary relationship with the body postures that chimpanzees use to change intentions, as suggested by existing research. Human vocal language and non-verbal multimodal means are two parallel and non-contradictory forms of communication, with no apparent evidence of the former inheriting from the latter.

It's All in the Interaction: Early Acquired Words Are Both Frequent and Highly Imageable

Prior studies have found that children are more likely to learn words that are frequent in the input and highly imageable. Many theories of word learning, however, predict that these variables should interact, particularly early in development: frequency of a form is of little use if you cannot infer its meaning, and a concrete word cannot be acquired if you never hear it. The present study explores this interaction, how it changes over time and its relationship to syntactic category effects in children acquiring American English. We analyzed 1461 monolingual English-speaking children aged 1;4-2;6 from the MB-CDI norming study (Fenson et al., 1994). Word frequency was estimated from the CHILDES database, and imageability was measured using adult ratings. There was a strong over-additive interaction between frequency and imageability, such that children were more likely to learn a word if it was both highly imageable and very frequent. This interaction was larger in younger children than in older children. There were reliable differences between syntactic categories independent of frequency and imageability, which did not interact with age. These findings are consistent with theories in which children's early words are acquired by mapping frequent word forms onto concrete, perceptually available referents, such that highly frequent items are only acquired if they are also imageable, and vice versa.

Is there a 'universal' core? Using semantic primes to select vocabulary across languages in AAC

Core vocabulary lists and vocabulary inventories vary according to language. Lists from one language cannot and should not be assumed to be translatable, as words represent language-specific concepts and grammar. In this manuscript, we (a) present the results of a vocabulary overlap analysis between different published core vocabulary lists in English, Korean, Spanish, and Sepedi; (b) discuss the concept of universal semantic primes as a set of universal concepts that are posited to be language-independent; and (c) provide a list of common words shared across all four languages as exemplars of their semantic primes. The resulting common core words and their corresponding semantic primes can assist families and professionals in thinking about the initial steps in the development of AAC systems for their bilingual/multilingual clients.

Language outcomes in children who underwent surgery for the removal of a posterior fossa tumor: A systematic review

BACKGROUND

Children who underwent posterior fossa tumor removal may have spoken or written language impairments. The present systematic review synthesized the literature regarding the language outcomes in this population. Benefits of this work were the identification of shortcomings in the literature and a starting point toward formulating guidelines for postoperative language assessment.

METHODS

A systematic literature search was conducted, identifying studies with patients who had posterior fossa surgery before 18 years of age. Included studies were narratively synthesized to understand language outcomes by language function (e.g., phonology, morphosyntax) at a group and individual level. Furthermore, the influence of several mediators (e.g., postoperative cerebellar mutism syndrome (pCMS), tumor type) was investigated. A critical evaluation of the language assessment tools was conducted.

RESULTS

The narrative synthesis of 66 studies showed that a broad spectrum of language impairments has been described, characterized by a large interindividual heterogeneity. Patients younger at diagnosis, receiving treatment for a high-grade tumor and/or radiotherapy and diagnosed with pCMS seemed more prone to impairment. Several gaps in language assessment remain, such as a baseline preoperative assessment and the assessment of pragmatics and morphosyntax. Further, there were important methodological differences in existing studies which complicated our ability to accurately guide clinical practice.

CONCLUSION

Children who had posterior fossa surgery seem to be at risk for postoperative language impairment. These results stress the need for language follow-up in posterior fossa tumor survivors.

Expressive Language Profiles in a Clinical Screening Sample of Mandarin-Speaking Preschool Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

PURPOSE

This cross-sectional study aimed to depict expressive language profiles and clarify lexical-grammatical interrelationships in Mandarin-speaking preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during the administration of the simplified Chinese Psychoeducational Profile-Third Edition screening.

METHOD

We collected naturalistic language samples from 81 (74 boys, seven girls) 2- to 7-year-old (Mage = 55.6 months, SD = 15.17) Mandarin-speaking children with ASD in clinician-child interactions. The child participants were divided into five age subgroups with 12-month intervals according to their chronological age. Computer-assisted part-of-speech tagging, constituency analysis, and dependency analysis addressed the developmental trajectories of early lexical and grammatical growth in each age subgroup.

RESULTS

Significant within-ASD differences were observed in content words, function words, and lexical categories. Nouns and verbs were the predominant lexical categories, while noun types overwhelmed verb types in children over 3 years old. The grammatical development of 5- to 6-year-old Mandarin-speaking children with ASD was better than that of 3- to 4-year-old children. The trends of syntactic structures, grammatical relations, and grammatical complexity in each age group were similar.

CONCLUSIONS

Mandarin-speaking preschoolers with ASD produce more lexicons with increasing age. They preserve the noun bias as a universal mechanism in early lexical learning. Moreover, their developmental trajectories of grammatical growth were comparable in each age subgroup. In addition, their lexicons and grammar were synchronically developed during early language acquisition.

How the communicative development inventories can contribute to clinical assessments of children with speech and language disorders

Introduction

The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether information from the Swedish version of the Communicative Development Inventories III (SCDI-III) is informative to the Speech and Language Pathologist (SLP) when examining children with suspected speech and language disorders at a SLP unit.

Method

Parents to 50 children (25 girls, 25 boys, age 30-80 months) that had been referred to the local SLP unit completed the SCDI-III. Nine children came from multilingual families and 41 children came from monolingual, Swedish speaking homes. The children were diagnosed as having developmental speech disorders (12) or developmental language disorders (33). Five children were not diagnosed with any disorder.

Results

The results showed that the referred children performed significantly lower on scales for word production, grammar, and metalinguistic awareness, compared to a subset from the norms with a similar age and gender composition. Most children fell below the 10th percentile on word production and grammatical constructions. The intercorrelation between the three scales were in general substantial. Comparisons of children's performance on the vocabulary and grammar scales of SCDI-III, and the medical records revealed 18 cases of discordance that would have motivated further examination. The parents rated sometimes their child's vocabulary and grammar skills as higher and sometime as lower to the medical records.

Discussion

Limitations due to attrition and sample size were discussed. It was concluded that the SCDI-III can provide valuable information to the examination at the SLP clinic in addition to parent interviews, observations of children, and various tests, and that the potential for adapted versions would be particularly high for examinations of multilingual children.

Word type and modality in the emerging expressive vocabularies of preschool children with Down syndrome

BACKGROUND

Previous studies have explored the size and word type composition (nouns, predicates, etc.) of expressive vocabularies of preschool children with Down syndrome, both spoken and signed. Separately, overall preferences for modality of expression have also been explored.

AIMS

To extend previous findings by describing the relationships between expressive vocabulary size and both word type and modality of expression in the preschool period including changes to modality preference over time.

METHODS & PROCEDURES

Mothers of 35 children with Down syndrome, aged 36-66 months and attending the same early intervention programme, completed a version - with both spoken word and sign options - of the New Zealand MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI): Words and Sentences. Most mothers completed the CDI on multiple occasions across the duration of the study. Completions (n = 114) were analysed cross-sectionally and longitudinally in terms of (1) word type relative to vocabulary size, (2) modality of expression relative to word type and vocabulary size, and (3) individual trajectories in vocabulary size and modality of expression.

OUTCOMES & RESULTS

(1) Word type relative to vocabulary size was similar to previous studies with a greater proportion of the SOCIAL words being present in the children's vocabularies throughout, followed by NOUNS, PREDICATES and CLOSED class words, with proportions converging as vocabulary sizes increase. (2) An initial spoken word preference for SOCIAL and CLOSED class words and sign preference for NOUNS and PREDICATES was found, with more spoken words in larger vocabularies overall. (3) Individual trajectories were highly variable and also revealed temporary points of regression in overall expressive vocabulary size in some children. Children who shifted from reliance on sign to predominantly spoken word expression did so at different ages and at different vocabulary sizes. At school entry, while most of the children used both modalities, some children continued to rely on sign for most vocabulary items whereas others used only spoken words.

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS

An appreciation of both the general trends and potential for individual variation in vocabulary structure, modality of expression and change over time will better position clinicians and education specialists to provide individually tailored support to both preschool and school-aged children with Down syndrome.

WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS

What is already known on this subject Preschool children with Down syndrome have been shown to demonstrate developmental patterns in overall conceptual vocabulary size and word type development broadly similar to typical development. The use of signed vocabulary has also been explored, but independently from word type development and with less attention to individual trajectories in either vocabulary size development or modality preferences throughout the preschool period than is necessary for clinical use. What this paper adds to existing knowledge This study found interactions between word type and modality of expression in relation to vocabulary size as well as a few temporary vocabulary size regressions similar to those found in much younger typically developing children. An initial spoken word preference for social and closed class words, and sign preference for nouns and predicates, was followed by a general trend towards spoken words for all word types as vocabulary (with some fluctuations) increased over time. Children demonstrated considerable individual variation in size of vocabulary and age at which they pivoted from a signed to a spoken word preference. Moreover, while most children used both modalities at school entry, a few retained a sign-only vocabulary and others had moved fully onto spoken word-only expression. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? An understanding of both the general trends and individual variation in vocabulary structure and modality of expression development will better position clinicians and educational specialists to provide individually tailored support to children with Down syndrome.

Associations between early lexical composition and pre-reading skills at 5 years - A longitudinal study

BACKGROUND

At the end of the second year, children's lexical compositions (LexC) differ significantly in terms of variety of lexical categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, closed-class words). The aim of this study was to investigate whether this variation is associated with acquisition of pre-reading skills (PreRS) at 5;0.

AIMS

To study the associations between LexC at 2;0 and PreRS at 5;0 and to examine the possible explaining value of LexC and lexicon size for PreRS.

PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS

Participants were 66 healthy, monolingual Finnish speaking children. LexC was measured at 2;0 using the standardized Finnish long form version of the MacArthur Communicative Developmental Inventory (FinCDI). Raw scores and percentages of words were used in the analysis. At 5;0, PreRS variables of letter knowledge, rapid automatized naming (RAN), lexical ability and phonological processing were collected.

RESULTS

The number of social terms, nouns, verbs, adjectives and closed class words associated significantly with all PreRS except RAN. The percentages of predicates and closed class words were positively associated with PreRS. All LexC variables and lexicon size at 2;0 had significant predictive values for the composite pre-reading score, explaining 19-32 % of the variation. The best model to explain PreRS included the number of nouns as the linguistic variable. A high percentage of social terms at 2;0 proposed weak PreRS at 5;0.

CONCLUSIONS

LexC at 2;0 is a significant predictor of PreRS at 5;0. Closer examination of lexical composition is important, when assessing lexical skills at the end of the second year.

Variation in morpho-lexical development within and between diagnoses in children with neurodevelopmental disorders

While primary diagnosis is only one aspect of the presentation of a child with neurodevelopmental delay/disorder, the degree to which early expressive language reflects diagnostic divisions must be understood in order to reduce the risk of obscuring clinically important differences and similarities across diagnoses. We present original data from the New Zealand MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (NZCDI) from 88 English-speaking children aged 2;6 to 5;6 years receiving multidisciplinary intervention within a single family-centered program. The children had one of six pediatrician-assigned genetic or behaviorally determined diagnoses: Down syndrome (DS); motor disorders (cerebral palsy and developmental coordination disorder); global development delay; disorders of relating and communicating (R&C); other genetically defined diagnoses; or language delay due to premature (PREM) birth. Morphological and lexical development were compared within and across diagnostic groups, using both data visualization and mixed-effects modeling. Groups varied in the amount of variation within and between them, but only prematurity reached significance, in interaction with age, as a predictor of morpho-lexical scores. Further analysis of longitudinal data available from a subset of the sample (n = 62) suggested that individual trajectories of vocabulary growth could not be reliably predicted by diagnosis. Moreover, the distribution of word types (nouns, predicates, etc.) only distinguished PREM children with language delay from those with DS and those in the R&C group. There were strong similarities in early morpho-lexical development across these clinical populations, with some differences. These findings align with research and clinical approaches which accommodate individual variation within diagnosis, and broad similarities across diagnostic groups.

Abstractness emerges progressively over the second year of life

words, terms not referring to here and now, are acquired slowly in infancy. They are difficult to acquire as they are more detached from sensory modalities than concrete words. Recent theories propose that, because of their complexity, other people are pivotal for abstract concepts' acquisition and use. Eight children (4 girls) and their mothers were observed longitudinally and extensively from 12 to 24 months of age. Video recordings of mother-infant free play with toys were done every two weeks in a laboratory setting with families in the USA. Children progressively use a range of words referring to abstract concepts, with a major shift from 12 to 15 months and again from 22 to 24 months, but the qualitative data testify an incremental growth of abstract concepts. We identified a progression in the acquisition of words denoting abstract concepts in relation to the overall productive vocabulary, suggesting that having more abstract terms in one's vocabulary promotes faster language acquisition.

The acquisition of emotion-laden words from childhood to adolescence

Studies investigating how children acquire emotional vocabularies have mainly focused on words that describe feelings or affective states (emotion-label words, e.g., joy) trough subjective assessments of the children’s lexicon reported by their parents or teachers. In the current cross-sectional study, we objectively examined the age of acquisition of words that relate to emotions without explicitly referring to affective states (emotion-laden words, e.g., cake, tomb, rainbow) using a picture naming task. Three hundred and sixty participants belonging to 18 age groups from preschool to adolescence overtly named line drawings corresponding to positive, negative, and neutral concrete nouns. The results of regression and mixed model analyses indicated that positive emotion-laden words are learnt earlier in life. This effect was independent of the contribution of other lexical and semantic factors (familiarity, word frequency, concreteness, word length). It is proposed that the prioritized acquisition of positive emotion-laden words might be the consequence of the communicative style and contextual factors associated with the interaction between children and caregivers. We also discuss the implications of our findings for proposals that highlight the role of language in emotion perception and understanding.

No evidence for language benefits in infant relational learning

Recent studies have found that infants show relational learning in the first year. Like older children, they can abstract relations such as same or different across a series of exemplars. For older children, language has a major impact on relational learning: labeling a shared relation facilitates learning, while labeling component objects can disrupt learning. Here we ask: Does language influence relational learning at 12 months? Experiment 1 (n = 64) examined the influence of a relational label on learning. Prior to the study, the infants saw three pairs of objects, all labeled "These are same" or "These are different". Experiment 2 (n = 48) examined the influence of object labels prior to the study, with three objects labeled (e.g., "This is a cup, this is a tower."). We compared the present results with those of Ferry et al. (2015), where infants abstracted same and different relations after undergoing a similar paradigm without prior labels. If the effects of language mirror those in older children, we would expect that infants given relational labels (Experiment 1) will be helped in abstracting same and different compared to infants not given labels and that infants given object labels (Experiment 2) will be hindered relative to those not given labels. We found no evidence for either prediction. In Experiment 1, infants who had heard relational labels did not benefit compared to infants who had received no labels (Ferry et al., 2015). In Experiment 2, infants who had heard object labels showed the same patterns as those in Ferry et al. (2015), suggesting that object labels had no effect. This finding is important because it highlights a key difference between the relational learning abilities of infants and those seen in older children, pointing to a protracted process by which language and relational learning become entwined.

Testing the validity of the Cross-Linguistic Lexical Task as a measure of language proficiency in bilingual children

The Cross-linguistic Lexical Task (CLT; Haman, Łuniewska & Pomiechowska, 2015) is a vocabulary task designed to enable cross-linguistic comparisons both across and within (bilingual) children. In this paper we assessed the validity of the CLT as a measure of language proficiency in bilingual children, by determining the extent to which (i) age-matched, monolingual Spanish-speaking and Dutch-speaking children obtained similar scores, (ii) the CLT correlated with other measures of language proficiency in monolingual and bilingual children, and (iii) whether the factors underlying the CLT's construction, i.e., target words' estimated Age of Acquisition and Complexity Index, were predictive of children's scores. Our results showed that, while the CLT correlated with other measures and is therefore a valid means of tapping into language proficiency, caution is required when using it to compare children's language proficiency cross-linguistically, as scores for Dutch-speaking and Spanish-speaking monolinguals sometimes differed.

Contrasting lexical biases in bilingual English-Mandarin speech: Verb-biased mothers, but noun-biased toddlers

Is noun dominance in early lexical acquisition a widespread or a language-specific phenomenon? Thirty Singaporean bilingual English-Mandarin learning toddlers and their mothers were observed in a mother-child play interaction. For both English and Mandarin, toddlers' speech and reported vocabulary contained more nouns than verbs across book reading and toy playing. In contrast, their mothers' speech contained more verbs than nouns in both English and Mandarin but differed depending on the context of the interaction. Although toddlers demonstrated a noun bias for both languages, the noun bias was more pronounced in English than in Mandarin. Together, these findings support early noun dominance as a widespread phenomenon in the lexical acquisition debate but also provide evidence that language specificity also plays a minor role in children's early lexical development.

The impact of entrepreneurship education on innovative start-up intention: the mediating role of entrepreneurial mind-sets

Purpose

Entrepreneurship education at universities aims to create entrepreneurial thinking and spread the culture of entrepreneurial awareness, skills and attitudes to students to stimulate their entrepreneurship intentions as graduates. This study investigates the impact of entrepreneurship education on innovative start-up intention as well as the mediating role of entrepreneurial mind-sets of university students.

Design/methodology/approach

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used for analysis with (n = 204) valid questionnaires collected from university students.

Findings

The main findings show that entrepreneurial mind-sets mediate the relationship between entrepreneurship education and innovative start-up intention.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by its application in a higher educational institution and enriches the literature with new evidence that entrepreneurship education could enhance innovative start-up intention.

An early Spanish vocabulary for children who use AAC: developmental and linguistic considerations

For children with complex communication needs in the early stages of language development, access to appropriate vocabulary provides a means for social interaction and participation, and the foundation for the acquisition of grammar and other language related skills. While numerous resources are available to support decision making for speakers of English, there is a pressing need to rapidly expand such resources for other languages. Spanish is the official language in 20 countries, and in other countries (e.g., United States) Spanish-speaking communities represent a substantial proportion of the population. The aim of this study was to produce a developmentally-relevant word list for use by Spanish-speaking children in the early stages of language development. The list was developed from an analysis of overlap between published and validated lists of words produced by young Spanish speaking children with typical development. The list includes a wide range of word classes and semantic categories and is proposed as a tool to assist professionals, families and software developers in the process of selecting an initial lexicon for children who require AAC and are learning Spanish. Implications of our findings for vocabulary selection and future research directions are discussed.

The ASL-CDI 2.0: An updated, normed adaptation of the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory for American Sign Language

Vocabulary is a critical early marker of language development. The MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory has been adapted to dozens of languages, and provides a bird's-eye view of children's early vocabularies which can be informative for both research and clinical purposes. We present an update to the American Sign Language Communicative Development Inventory (the ASL-CDI 2.0,  https://www.aslcdi.org ), a normed assessment of early ASL vocabulary that can be widely administered online by individuals with no formal training in sign language linguistics. The ASL-CDI 2.0 includes receptive and expressive vocabulary, and a Gestures and Phrases section; it also introduces an online interface that presents ASL signs as videos. We validated the ASL-CDI 2.0 with expressive and receptive in-person tasks administered to a subset of participants. The norming sample presented here consists of 120 deaf children (ages 9 to 73 months) with deaf parents. We present an analysis of the measurement properties of the ASL-CDI 2.0. Vocabulary increases with age, as expected. We see an early noun bias that shifts with age, and a lag between receptive and expressive vocabulary. We present these findings with indications for how the ASL-CDI 2.0 may be used in a range of clinical and research settings.

Non-verbal Enrichment in Vocabulary Learning With a Virtual Pedagogical Agent

Non-verbal enrichment in the form of pictures or gesture can support word learning in first and foreign languages. The present study seeks to compare the effects of viewing pictures vs. imitating iconic gestures on learning second language (L2) vocabulary. In our study participants learned L2 words (nouns, verbs, and adjectives) together with a virtual, pedagogical agent. The to-be-learned items were either (i) enriched with pictures, or (ii) with gestures that had to be imitated, or (iii) without any non-verbal enrichment as control. Results showed that gesture imitation was particularly supportive for learning nouns, whereas pictures showed to be most beneficial for memorizing verbs. These findings, suggesting that the type of vocabulary learning strategy has to match with the type of linguistic material to be learned, have important educational implications for L2 classrooms and technology-enhanced tutoring systems.

Early lexical acquisition in the Wichi language

This research brings new evidence on early lexical acquisition in Wichi, an under-studied indigenous language in which verbs occupy a privileged position in the input and in conjunction with nouns are characterized by a complex and rich morphology. Focusing on infants ranging from one- to three-year-olds, we analyzed the parental report of infants' vocabulary (Study 1) and naturalistic speech samples of children and their caregivers (Study 2). Results reveal that: (1) although verbs predominate in the linguistic input, children's lexicons favor nouns over verbs; (2) children's early noun-advantage decreases, coming into closer alignment with the patterns in the linguistic input at a MLU of 1.5; and (3) this early transition is temporally related to children's increasing productive command over the grammatical categories that characterize the morphology of both nouns and verbs. These findings emphasize the early effects of language-specific properties of the input, broadening the vantage point from which to view the lexical acquisition process.

The Structure of Word Learning in Young School-Age Children

Purpose We investigated four theoretically based latent variable models of word learning in young school-age children. Method One hundred sixty-seven English-speaking second graders with typical development from three U.S. states participated. They completed five different tasks designed to assess children's creation, storage, retrieval, and production of the phonological and semantic representations of novel words and their ability to link those representations. The tasks encompassed the triggering and configuration stages of word learning. Results Results showed that a latent variable model with separate phonological and semantic factors and linking indicators constrained to load on the phonological factor best fit the data. Discussion The structure of word learning during triggering and configuration reflects separate but related phonological and semantic factors. We did not find evidence for a unidimensional latent variable model of word learning or for separate receptive and expressive word learning factors. In future studies, it will be interesting to determine whether the structure of word learning differs during the engagement stage of word learning when phonological and semantic representations, as well as the links between them, are sufficiently strong to affect other words in the lexicon.

Early Vocabulary Profiles of Young Deaf Children Who Use Cochlear Implants

Purpose This study examined vocabulary profiles in young cochlear implant (CI) recipients and in children with normal hearing (NH) matched on receptive vocabulary size to improve our understanding of young CI recipients' acquisition of word categories (e.g., common nouns or closed-class words). Method We compared receptive and expressive vocabulary profiles between young CI recipients (n = 48; mean age at activation = 15.61 months, SD = 4.20) and children with NH (n = 48). The two groups were matched on receptive vocabulary size as measured by the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (Fenson et al., 2006): Words and Gestures form. The CI group had, on average, 8.98 months of hearing experience. The mean chronological age at completing the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories was 23.99 months (SD = 5.14) for the CI group and 13.72 months (SD = 1.50) for the NH group. Results The CI group had a larger expressive vocabulary size than the receptive vocabulary size-matched NH group. The larger expressive vocabulary size was associated with the group difference in social words but not with common nouns. The analyses for predicate words and closed-class words included only children who produced the target categories. The CI group had a larger proportion of predicate words than the NH group, but no difference was found in closed-class words in expressive vocabulary. Conclusions Differences found in expressive vocabulary profiles may be affected by spoken vocabulary size and their age. A further examination is warranted using language samples to understand the effect of language input on children's vocabulary profiles.

The effect of hearing loss on the use of lexical categories by Hebrew-speaking mothers of deaf children with cochlear implants

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

The frequency of use of nouns versus verbs in child-directed speech (CDS) of mothers to their normal hearing (NH) children has been investigated in various languages. Recent studies have shown that CDS to deaf children is affected by hearing loss. Thus, the main aim of the present study was to examine the effect of hearing loss on the use of content words by NH Hebrew-speaking mothers to their deaf children using CIs. The second aim was to compare the use of content words by mothers speaking to CI children to that of NH children of the same chronological age and NH children with the same hearing experience.

METHOD

Three groups of mother-child dyads participated: Ten mothers of deaf children with bilateral CIs (CIs) (age range 20-48 months), ten mothers of NH children matched to the deaf children by their chronological age (NCA), and ten mothers of NH children matched to the deaf children by their hearing experience (NHE). Data were collected from mother-child dyads performing natural activities. Two hundred utterances were transcribed and analyzed both quantitatively (tokens) and qualitatively (types) according to the use of lexical categories (noun, verb, adjective, and adverb).

RESULTS

The frequency of verbs and nouns, both types and tokens, was significantly higher than the frequency of adverbs and adjectives in the CDS of mothers to their children both with CIs and NH. No significant differences were found between the use of verb and noun tokens by mothers of children with NH in both groups. However, in the speech of mothers to the CI group, the use of verb tokens was significantly higher than the use of noun tokens, and the verb to noun ratio of tokens was significantly higher than that of the NHE group, and demonstrated a trend with the NCA group.

CONCLUSION

The fact that mothers of CI children use more verb than noun tokens strengthens the claim that they adopt a more directive style and controlling behaviors while interacting with their CI children. Also, it seems that mothers speaking to CI children are more sensitive to the children's linguistic needs according to the hearing experience and linguistic stage rather than the chronological age. The clinical implications are discussed.

Optimal Contexts for Verb Learning

Purpose

Verb learning is a critical but challenging part of language acquisition. Children with or at increased risk for developmental language disorder (DLD) may particularly struggle with verb learning, and poor verb representations in turn may negatively impact children's language outcomes. Our goal is to examine literature on children's acquisition of verbs, identifying manipulable factors that may determine the ease or difficulty of acquiring a new verb meaning.

Method

In this narrative, non-systematic review, we discuss findings about how verbs are learned and represented.

Results

Several aspects of the learning environment affect children's efforts to acquire verbs, including the linguistic context in which the verb is introduced, the timing of the linguistic label relative to the event it describes, visual and linguistic variability, and dose frequency.

Conclusions

We conclude that some learning situations are likely to be more helpful for children in the process of verb learning than others. We highlight some of the factors that contribute to good learning situations, and we discuss how these may differ depending on properties of the child and of the verb itself. Finally, we propose hypotheses for future translational and clinical research.

Initial noun meanings do not differentiate into object categories: An experimental approach to Werner and Kaplan's hypothesis

During the initial stage of language development, nouns corresponding to "object categories" are known to be acquired earlier than other parts of speech, including verbs. However, it is unclear whether the semantic content of words is the same for toddlers who have just begun to learn them and adult speakers. This preliminary study experimentally investigated the theoretical hypothesis of Werner and Kaplan, which posited that the initial meanings of noun-like words do not differentiate into specific categories of objects themselves but rather refer to holistic event categories. Toddlers aged 19-35 months (N = 36) were prompted to select one of two juxtaposed video stimuli (e.g., "putting shoes on" vs. "rubbing two baskets" in the match condition, "putting baskets on" vs. "rubbing shoes" in the mismatch condition) using questions about noun-like words (e.g., "Which is shoes?"). Statistical modeling demonstrated that the meanings of noun-like words for toddlers under 21 months of age or with a vocabulary size of less than 140 words were deeply influenced by conventional actions related to the objects (e.g., "putting shoes on"), whereas they subsequently differentiated into specific object categories (e.g., "shoes" alone), becoming "true nouns." These findings support Werner and Kaplan's hypothesis and provide the first experimental evidence for the theoretical and observational assumptions that early words are not easily classified into parts of speech only by their vocables (e.g., nouns, verbs). We discuss the flexibility of vocable-meaning connections during early language development by proposing the "semantic pluripotency hypothesis."

Neurodevelopment of HIV-exposed uninfected children in South Africa: outcomes from an observational birth cohort study

BACKGROUND

HIV infection is known to cause developmental delay, but the effects of HIV exposure without infection during pregnancy on child development are unclear. We compared the neurodevelopmental outcomes of HIV-exposed uninfected and HIV-unexposed children during their first 2 years of life.

METHODS

Pregnant women (>18 years of age) at 20-28 weeks' gestation were enrolled into the Drakenstein Child Health cohort study while attending routine antenatal appointments at one of two peri-urban community-based clinics in Paarl, South Africa. Livebirths born to enrolled women during follow-up were included in the birth cohort. Mothers and infants received antenatal and postnatal HIV testing and antiretroviral therapy per local guidelines. Developmental assessments on the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, third edition (BSID-III), were done in a subgroup of infants at 6 months of age, and in the full cohort at 24 months of age, with assessors masked to HIV exposure status. Mean raw scores and the proportions of children categorised as having a delay (scores <-2 SDs from the reference mean) on BSID-III were compared between HIV-exposed uninfected and HIV-unexposed children.

FINDINGS

1225 women were enrolled between March 5, 2012, and March 31, 2015. Of 1143 livebirths, 1065 (93%) children were in follow-up at 6 months and 1000 (87%) at 24 months. Two children were diagnosed with HIV infection between birth and 24-month follow-up and were excluded from the analysis. BSID-III assessments were done in 260 (24%) randomly selected children (61 HIV-exposed uninfected, 199 HIV-unexposed) at 6 months and in 732 (73%) children (168 HIV-exposed uninfected, 564 HIV-unexposed) at 24 months. All HIV-exposed uninfected children were exposed to antiretrovirals (88% to maternal triple antiretroviral therapy). BSID-III outcomes did not significantly differ between HIV-exposed uninfected and HIV-unexposed children at 6 months. At 24 months, HIV-exposed uninfected children scored lower than HIV-unexposed for receptive language (adjusted mean difference -1·03 [95% CI -1·69 to -0·37]) and expressive language (-1·17 [-2·09 to -0·24]), whereas adjusted differences in cognitive (-0·45 [-1·32 to 0·43]), fine motor (0·09 [-0·49 to 0·66]), and gross motor (-0·41 [-1·09 to 0·27]) domain scores between groups were not significant. Correspondingly, the proportions of HIV-exposed uninfected children with developmental delay were higher than those of HIV-unexposed children for receptive language (adjusted odds ratio 1·96 [95% CI 1·09 to 3·52]) and expressive language (2·14 [1·11 to 4·15]).

INTERPRETATION

Uninfected children exposed to maternal HIV infection and antiretroviral therapy have increased odds of receptive and expressive language delays at 2 years of age. Further long-term work is needed to understand developmental outcomes of HIV-exposed uninfected children, especially in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa that have a high prevalence of HIV exposure among children.

FUNDING

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, SA Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust.

Ratunku! or Just Tunku! Evidence for the Reliability and Concurrent Validity of the Language Use Inventory-Polish

Purpose To date, there is no tool for assessing early pragmatic development of Polish-speaking children. This study aimed to adapt to Polish a standardized parent report measure, the Language Use Inventory (LUI; O'Neill, 2009, in order to enable cross-cultural comparisons and to use the LUI-Polish to screen for pragmatic development in children 18-47 months of age. We concentrated on the sociocultural and functional adaptation of LUI and aimed to demonstrate its reliability, developmental sensitivity, and concurrent validity. Method Parents completed an online version of LUI-Polish, longitudinally at 3 time points (when the child was 20, 32, and 44 months old). In addition, parents completed the Polish adaptations of the Questionnaire for Communication and Early Language at 22 months and the Language Development Survey at 24 months. Children's spontaneous speech was assessed at 24 months, and their expressive and receptive vocabulary was assessed at 36 months. Results All 3 parts of the LUI-Polish (Gestures, Words, and Sentences) showed very good levels of internal consistency at each time point. Significant correlations were observed between all parts of the LUI-Polish at all 3 measurement time points. The expected developmental trajectory was observed for boys and girls providing evidence of its developmental sensitivity for children between the ages of 2 and 4 years: an increase with age in the total score (due to an increase in Words and Sentences) and a decrease in Gestures. Supporting concurrent validity, significant correlations were found between children's performance on (a) the LUI-Polish at 20 months and the Questionnaire for Communication and Early Language at 22 months as well as the Language Development Survey and spontaneous speech measures at 24 months and (b) the LUI-Polish at 32 months and the 2 measures of vocabulary comprehension and production at 36 months. Conclusion The Polish adaptation of the LUI demonstrated good psychometric properties that provide a sound basis for cross-cultural comparisons and further research toward norming of the LUI-Polish. Moreover, the expected developmental trajectory in the pragmatic development of Polish children was observed.

Psychometric Evaluation of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment Sentence Repetition Task for Clinical Decision Making

Purpose The purpose of this study was (a) to examine the underlying components or factor structure of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment (BESA; Peña, Gutiérrez-Clellen, Iglesias, Goldstein, & Bedore, 2014 ) sentence repetition task and (b) to examine the relationship between Spanish-English speaking children's sentence repetition and vocabulary performance. Method Participants were 291 Spanish-English speaking children in kindergarten and 1st grade. Item analyses were used to evaluate the underlying factor structure for each language version of the sentence repetition tasks of the BESA. The tasks were then examined in relation to a measure of English receptive vocabulary. Results Bifactor models, which include a single underlying general factor and multiple specific factors, provided the best overall model fit for both the Spanish and English versions of the task. There was no relation between children's overall Spanish sentence repetition performance and their English vocabulary. However, children's pronoun, noun phrase, and verb phrase item scores in Spanish significantly predicted their English vocabulary scores. For English sentence repetition, both children's overall performance and their specific performance on the noun phrase items were predictors of their English vocabulary scores. Follow-up analyses revealed that, for the purposes of clinical assessment, the BESA sentence repetition tasks can be considered essentially unidimensional, lending support to the current scoring structure of the test. Conclusions Study findings suggest that sentence repetition tasks can provide insight into Spanish-English speaking children's vocabulary skills in addition to their morphosyntactic skills when used on a broad research scale. From a clinical assessment perspective, results indicate that the sentence repetition task has strong internal validity and support to the use of this measure in clinical practice.

Imageability and Neighborhood Density Facilitate the Age of Word Acquisition in Czech

Purpose The study examined the effects of imageability and phonological neighborhood density on the acquisition of word production in Czech, controlling for part-of-speech class, word length, and word frequency. Phonological neighborhood density is of interest because previous research has not examined highly inflected languages such as Czech. The effects of imageability on word acquisition are widely assumed, but only a few empirical studies examined such effects using child data directly. Method Data from the Czech norming study of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories ( Smolík, Turková, Marušincová, & Malechová, 2017 ) adaptation were used, and all nouns and action words in the data set were examined (total 359). Based on the norming sample of 493 children, the expected age of acquisition was calculated. Results A small but significant effect of neighborhood density (explaining 1.5% of unique variance) was found, as well as a robust effect of imageability (9% of unique variance). Imageability also accounted for the difference between nouns and verbs in the age of acquisition. Conclusion Imageability is a robust predictor of word age of acquisition that should be taken into account in future studies. The identifiability of the referent and the memory mechanisms are likely responsible for the strong imageability effect. Words with large phonological neighborhoods are acquired earlier, even in a language with complex inflectional morphology.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder May Learn from Caregiver Verb Input Better in Certain Engagement States

The relation between caregiver follow-in utterances with verbs presented in different states of dyadic engagement and later child expressive verb vocabulary in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was examined in 29 toddlers with ASD and their caregivers. Caregiver verb input in follow-in utterances presented during higher order supported joint engagement (HSJE) accounted for a significant, large amount of variance in later child verb vocabulary; R²= .26. This relation remained significant when controlling for early verb vocabulary or verb input in lower support engagement states. Other types of talk in follow-in utterances in HSJE did not correlate with later verb vocabulary. These findings are an important step towards identifying interactional contexts that facilitate verb learning in children with ASD.

The syntactic and semantic features of two-year-olds' verb vocabularies: a comparison of typically developing children and late talkers

Children with language disorders have particular difficulty with verbs, but when this difficulty emerges is unknown. We examined syntactic (transitive, intransitive, ditransitive) and semantic (manner, result) features of two-year-olds' verb vocabularies, contrasting late talkers and typically developing children to look for early differences in verb vocabulary. We conducted a retrospective analysis of parent-reported expressive vocabulary from the Language Development Survey (N = 564, N(LT) = 62) (Rescorla, 1989). Verbs were coded for the presence or absence of each syntactic and semantic feature. Binomial mixed-effects regressions revealed the effect of feature on children's knowledge and whether feature interacted with group classification. Our results revealed mostly similarities between late talkers and typically developing children. All children's vocabularies showed a bias against verbs that occur in ditransitive frames. One feature showed a difference between groups: late talkers showed a bias against manner verbs that typically developing children did not.

The acquisition of different classes of words in Spanish children with Down syndrome

PURPOSE

The primary aim of this study was to analyze the acquisition of different classes of words in Spanish-speaking children with Down syndrome (DS), with special emphasis on nouns and verbs. A second objective was to compare the results obtained with those reported by Checa et al. (2016), who used a different measure to study vocabulary composition.

METHOD

We studied 108 children with DS and 108 children with typical development (TD), with mental ages between 9 and 29 months (DS M = 21;26 months;days, TD M = 20;23) and chronological ages between 8;24 and 68;19 months;days (mean = 41;11 and 20;19 for DS and TD, respectively). Children were matched individually for size of productive vocabulary and gender. Data were gathered using the MacArthur-Bates CDIs, adapted to the profile of children with DS (the CDI-Down). Relative proportions were used as the measure of vocabulary.

RESULTS

The results differed from those obtained by Checa et al. (2016) when using absolute proportions to examine vocabulary composition. The most significant difference was the trend among children with DS to produce fewer verbs and closed-class words (articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, and auxiliaries). There were no differences in the production of nouns and social words.

CONCLUSIONS

The tendency of children with DS to produce fewer verbs and closed-class words could be due to difficulties with morphology and syntax. This underlines the importance of morphosyntactic skills for learning these classes of words. The methodological and clinical implications of the results are discussed.

A cross-language study of decontextualized vocabulary comprehension in toddlerhood and kindergarten readiness

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 54(7) of Developmental Psychology (see record 2018-30226-001). In the article, the reference for Legacy, Zesiger, Friend, & Poulin-Dubois (2016) should be Legacy, Zesiger, Friend, & Poulin-Dubois (2018). The correct reference for the article is listed below: Legacy, J., Zesiger, P., Friend, M., & Poulin-Dubois, D. (2018). Vocabulary size and speed of word recognition in very young French-English bilinguals: A longitudinal study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 21, 137-149. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728916000833. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Recent studies demonstrate that emerging literacy depends on earlier language achievement. Importantly, most extant work focuses on parent-reported production prior to 30 months of age. Of interest is whether and how directly assessed vocabulary comprehension in the 2nd year of life supports vocabulary and kindergarten readiness in the 4th year. We first contrasted orthogonal indices of parent-reported production and directly assessed vocabulary comprehension and found that comprehension was a stronger predictor of child outcomes. We then assessed prediction from vocabulary comprehension controlling for maternal education, preschool attendance, and child sex. In 3 studies early, decontextualized vocabulary comprehension emerged as a significant predictor of 4th year language and kindergarten readiness accounting for unique variance above demographic control variables. Further we found that the effect of early vocabulary on 4th year kindergarten readiness was not mediated by 4th year vocabulary. This pattern of results emerged in English monolingual children (N = 48) and replicated in French monolingual (N = 58) and French-English bilingual children (N = 34). Our findings suggest that early, decontextualized vocabulary may provide a platform for the establishment of a conceptual system that supports both later vocabulary and kindergarten readiness, including the acquisition of a wide range of concepts including print and number. Differences between parent-reported and directly assessed vocabulary and the mechanisms by which decontextualized vocabulary may contribute to conceptual development are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Planning to speak in L1 and L2

The leading theories of sentence planning - Hierarchical Incrementality and Linear Incrementality - differ in their assumptions about the coordination of processes that map preverbal information onto language. Previous studies showed that, in native (L1) speakers, this coordination can vary with the ease of executing the message-level and sentence-level processes necessary to plan and produce an utterance. We report the first series of experiments to systematically examine how linguistic experience influences sentence planning in native (L1) speakers (i.e., speakers with life-long experience using the target language) and non-native (L2) speakers (i.e., speakers with less experience using the target language). In all experiments, speakers spontaneously generated one-sentence descriptions of simple events in Dutch (L1) and English (L2). Analyses of eye-movements across early and late time windows (pre- and post-400 ms) compared the extent of early message-level encoding and the onset of linguistic encoding. In Experiment 1, speakers were more likely to engage in extensive message-level encoding and to delay sentence-level encoding when using their L2. Experiments 2-4 selectively facilitated encoding of the preverbal message, encoding of the agent character (i.e., the first content word in active sentences), and encoding of the sentence verb (i.e., the second content word in active sentences) respectively. Experiment 2 showed that there is no delay in the onset of L2 linguistic encoding when speakers are familiar with the events. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that the delay in the onset of L2 linguistic encoding is not due to speakers delaying encoding of the agent, but due to a preference to encode information needed to select a suitable verb early in the formulation process. Overall, speakers prefer to temporally separate message-level from sentence-level encoding and to prioritize encoding of relational information when planning L2 sentences, consistent with Hierarchical Incrementality.

Acquisition of nouns and verbs in Italian pre-school children

Noun and verb acquisition was investigated in three- and five-year-old Italian children by means of picture naming of objects and actions, selected from Druks and Masterson (2000). The aim was to examine the previously reported advantage of nouns compared to verbs. Older children were faster than younger children, and naming latencies were faster for object pictures than for action pictures. For errors, the advantage of objects over actions was greater for younger children. A qualitative analysis of errors was carried out according to a classification derived by Masterson, Druks, and Gallienne (2008). Overall, 25% of the errors reflected a complete lack of knowledge of the names or of the meanings of the pictures. Most errors, however, were likely to be due to a not yet fully developed knowledge of the meaning of words labelling the pictures, or to an incomplete conceptual representation, and this pattern was more marked for action concepts.

Production Is Only Half the Story - First Words in Two East African Languages

Theories of early learning of nouns in children's vocabularies divide into those that emphasize input (language and non-linguistic aspects) and those that emphasize child conceptualisation. Most data though come from production alone, assuming that learning a word equals speaking it. Methodological issues can mean production and comprehension data within or across input languages are not comparable. Early vocabulary production and comprehension were examined in children hearing two Eastern Bantu languages whose grammatical features may encourage early verb knowledge. Parents of 208 infants aged 8-20 months were interviewed using Communicative Development Inventories that assess infants' first spoken and comprehended words. Raw totals, and proportions of chances to know a word, were compared to data from other languages. First spoken words were mainly nouns (75-95% were nouns versus less than 10% verbs) but first comprehended words included more verbs (15% were verbs) than spoken words did. The proportion of children's spoken words that were verbs increased with vocabulary size, but not the proportion of comprehended words. Significant differences were found between children's comprehension and production but not between languages. This may be for pragmatic reasons, rather than due to concepts with which children approach language learning, or directly due to the input language.

Neurodevelopmental outcome of Italian preterm children at 1year of corrected age by Bayley-III scales: An assessment using local norms

BACKGROUND

Premature birth is often associated with neurodevelopmental difficulties throughout childhood. In the first three years of life, the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development-Third Edition (Bayley-III) constitute one of the most used tools for assessing child development. Since Bayley-III original norms are based on United States (US) population, it remains uncertain whether their use in other countries (e.g., European) is appropriate.

AIMS

This research aimed to examine neurodevelopment of preterm infants and full-term infants, using Bayley-III US norms in comparison to Italian (IT) norms. Patterns of developmental outcomes for both infant groups were also explored.

METHODS

104 preterm and 58 full-term infants were included in the study. Bayley-III was used for neurodevelopmental assessment at 1year of corrected age, considering both IT and US norms for scores computation.

RESULTS

Comparing scores obtained with IT vs US norms, differences in means were all significant across five subscales (p<0.05 at least) for preterm infants, whereas for full-term peers significant differences were found only for Receptive Language and Fine Motor subscales (p<0.001). Effect size (η²) ranged from 0.22 to 0.94. Within each group, significant discrepancies across subscales were found. Moreover, Italian preterm infants had significantly lower performances than full-term peers, excepting for Expressive Language and Gross Motor subscales.

CONCLUSIONS

As regards to Italian 1-year children, our study seems to provide evidence for the tendency of Bayley-III US norms to overestimate development compared to IT norms. These findings emphasize the need to early detect children at risk for developmental delay and to plan early intervention.

Noun and verb knowledge in monolingual preschool children across 17 languages: Data from Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT)

This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly developed lexical assessment tool Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT). LITMUS-CLT is a part the Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery (Armon-Lotem, de Jong & Meir, 2015). Here we analyse results on receptive and expressive word knowledge tasks for nouns and verbs across 17 languages from eight different language families: Baltic (Lithuanian), Bantu (isiXhosa), Finnic (Finnish), Germanic (Afrikaans, British English, South African English, German, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Swedish), Romance (Catalan, Italian), Semitic (Hebrew), Slavic (Polish, Serbian, Slovak) and Turkic (Turkish). The participants were 639 monolingual children aged 3;0-6;11 living in 15 different countries. Differences in vocabulary size were small between 16 of the languages; but isiXhosa-speaking children knew significantly fewer words than speakers of the other languages. There was a robust effect of word class: accuracy was higher for nouns than verbs. Furthermore, comprehension was more advanced than production. Results are discussed in the context of cross-linguistic comparisons of lexical development in monolingual and bilingual populations.

The vocabulary profile of Slovak children with primary language impairment compared to typically developing Slovak children measured by LITMUS-CLT

This study compared a sample of children with primary language impairment (PLI) and typically developing age-matched children using the crosslinguistic lexical tasks (CLT-SK). We also compared the PLI children with typically developing language-matched younger children who were matched on the basis of receptive vocabulary. Overall, statistical testing showed that the vocabulary of the PLI children was significantly different from the vocabulary of the age-matched children, but not statistically different from the younger children who were matched on the basis of their receptive vocabulary size. Qualitative analysis of the correct answers revealed that the PLI children showed higher rigidity compared to the younger language-matched children who are able to use more synonyms or derivations across word class in naming tasks. Similarly, an examination of the children's naming errors indicated that the language-matched children exhibited more semantic errors, whereas PLI children showed more associative errors.

Polish Vocabulary Development in 2-Year-Olds: Comparisons With English Using the Language Development Survey

PURPOSE

The objective of this study was to compare vocabulary size and composition in 2-year-olds learning Polish or English as measured by the Language Development Survey (LDS; Rescorla, 1989).

METHOD

Participants were 199 Polish toddlers (M = 24.14 months, SD = 0.35) and 422 U.S. toddlers (M = 24.69 months, SD = 0.78).

RESULTS

Test-retest reliability was .92, internal consistency was .99, and concurrent validity was .55. Girls had higher vocabulary scores than boys. Mean LDS score was significantly lower in Polish than in English, and fewer Polish children had LDS scores >200 words. Also, more words were reported for <25% of the children, and fewer words were reported for ≥75% of the children, in Polish than in English. The cross-linguistic correlation for word frequencies was .44. Noun dominance was comparable in the two languages, and 55 cross-linguistic word matches were found among the top 100 words. Although more Polish than U.S. children had <50 words (18.1% vs. 8.3%), children with <50 words and those with ≥50 words were generally acquiring the same words.

CONCLUSIONS

Vocabulary acquisition appeared to be slower in Polish than in English, probably because of the complexity of the language. However, the languages were very similar with respect to vocabulary composition findings.

Do early noun and verb production predict later verb and noun production? Theoretical implications

Many studies have addressed the question of the relative dominance of nouns over verbs in the productive vocabularies of children in the second year of life. Surprisingly, cross-class (noun-to-verb and verb-to-noun) relations between these two lexical categories have seldom been investigated. The present longitudinal study employed observational and parent-report data obtained from thirty mother-child dyads at 1;4, 1;8, and 2;0 to examine this issue. Both the Natural Partitions/Relational Relativity (NP/RR) hypothesis and the Emergentist Coalition Model (ECM) predict that having an initial repertoire of common nouns should facilitate the acquisition of novel verbs, whereas only the ECM suggests that children exploit the syntactic and semantic constraints of known verbs to infer the meaning of novel nouns. In line with the ECM, hierarchical regression analyses indicated that the percentages of nouns produced by children at 1;4 predicted later verbs at 1;8, whereas the percentages of verbs produced at 1;8 predicted later nouns at 2;0.

Expectancy violations promote learning in young children

Children, including infants, have expectations about the world around them, and produce reliable responses when these expectations are violated. However, little is known about how such expectancy violations affect subsequent cognition. Here we tested the hypothesis that violations of expectation enhance children's learning. In four experiments we compared 3- to 6-year-old children's ability to learn novel words in situations that defied versus accorded with their core knowledge of object behavior. In Experiments 1 and 2 we taught children novel words following one of two types of events. One event violated expectations about the spatiotemporal or featural properties of objects (e.g., an object appeared to magically change locations). The other event was almost identical, but did not violate expectations (e.g., an object was visibly moved from one location to another). In both experiments we found that children robustly learned when taught after the surprising event, but not following the expected event. In Experiment 3 we ruled out two alternative explanations for our results. Finally, in Experiment 4, we asked whether surprise affects children's learning in a targeted or a diffuse way. We found that surprise only enhanced children's learning about the entity that had behaved surprisingly, and not about unrelated objects. Together, these experiments show that core knowledge - and violations of expectations generated by core knowledge - shapes new learning.