Young children's comprehension of English SVO word order revisited: Testing the same children in act-out and intermodal preferential looking tasks

Act-out and intermodal preferential looking (IPL) tasks were administered to 67 English children aged 2–0, 2–9 and 3–5 to assess their comprehension of canonical SVO transitive word order with both familiar and novel verbs. Children at 3–5 and at 2–9 showed evidence of comprehending word order in both verb conditions and both tasks, although children at 2–9 performed better with familiar than with novel verbs in the act-out task. Children at 2–0 showed no evidence of comprehending word order in either task with novel verbs; with familiar verbs they showed competence in the IPL task but not in the act-out task. The difference in performance for familiar and novel verbs from the same children at 2–0, on the IPL task, and at 2–9, on the act-out task, is consistent with the hypothesis that early linguistic/cognitive representations are graded in strength, with early representations still weak and very task dependent. However, these representations also become more abstract with development, as indicated by the familiarity effect even in the more sensitive IPL task.     

The conditional effects of self-control in situational action theory. A preliminary test in a randomized scenario study

This study focuses on the perception-choice process in the Situational Action Theory of Crime Causation (SAT). The effect of self-control ability is studied in conditions of conflict or correspondence between personal morality and circumstantial characteristics. We demonstrate a conditional effect of self-control ability on choosing a violent response in two scenarios. While we demonstrate that self-control ability matters in cases of moral conflict, we demonstrate some findings that seem to be at odds with theoretical tenets of SAT. The impossibility to empirically distinguish processes of perception and choice, together with SAT’s current measure of self-control ability may partially be responsible for this empirical ambiguity.     

Can Infinitival to Omissions and Provisions Be Primed? An Experimental Investigation Into the Role of Constructional Competition in Infinitival to Omission Errors

An experimental study was conducted on children aged 2;6–3;0 and 3;6–4;0 investigating the priming effect of two WANT‐constructions to establish whether constructional competition contributes to English‐speaking children's infinitival to omission errors (e.g., *I want ___ jump now). In two between‐participant groups, children either just heard or heard and repeated WANT‐to, WANT‐X, and control prime sentences after which to‐infinitival constructions were elicited. We found that both age groups were primed, but in different ways. In the 2;6–3;0 year olds, WANT‐to primes facilitated the provision of to in target utterances relative to the control contexts, but no significant effect was found for WANT‐X primes. In the 3;6–4;0 year olds, both WANT‐to and WANT‐X primes showed a priming effect, namely WANT‐to primes facilitated and WANT‐X primes inhibited provision of to. We argue that these effects reflect developmental differences in the level of proficiency in and preference for the two constructions, and they are broadly consistent with “priming as implicit learning” accounts. The current study shows that (a) children as young as 2;6–3;0 years of age can be primed when they have only heard (not repeated) particular constructions, (b) children are acquiring at least two constructions for the matrix verb WANT, and (c) that these two WANT‐constructions compete for production.     

Measuring Graded Membership: The Case of Color

This paper considers Kamp and Partee's account of graded membership within a conceptual spaces framework and puts the account to the test in the domain of colors. Three experiments are reported that are meant to determine, on the one hand, the regions in color space where the typical instances of blue and green are located and, on the other hand, the degrees of blueness/greenness of various shades in the blue–green region as judged by human observers. From the locations of the typical blue and typical green regions in conjunction with Kamp and Partee's account follow degrees of blueness/greenness for the color shades we are interested in. These predicted degrees are compared with the judged degrees, as obtained in the experiments. The results of the comparison support the account of graded membership at issue.     

The predictive value of numerical magnitude comparison for individual differences in mathematics achievement

Although it has been proposed that the ability to compare numerical magnitudes is related to mathematics achievement, it is not clear whether this ability predicts individual differences in later mathematics achievement. The current study addressed this question in typically developing children by means of a longitudinal design that examined the relationship between a number comparison task assessed at the start of formal schooling (mean age = 6 years 4 months) and a general mathematics achievement test administered 1 year later. Our findings provide longitudinal evidence that the size of the individual’s distance effect, calculated on the basis of reaction times, was predictively related to mathematics achievement. Regression analyses showed that this association was independent of age, intellectual ability, and speed of number identification.     

When Unfair Treatment Leads to Anger: The Effects of Other People's Emotions and Ambiguous Unfair Procedures1

The present research examines how emotions of a third party interacting with an authority who has treated him or her unfairly affect one's feelings of anger toward the authority as a function of the ambiguity of the unfair treatment. Across a scenario and a laboratory study, it was found that when participants did not receive voice and it was unclear whether this was the result of an authority's unfair intentions, participants were less angry when the third party expressed shame, rather than anger, toward the same enacting authority. A second laboratory study replicated this effect, but now by showing that one's feelings of anger (in the case of ambiguity) were lower when the other person expressed guilt, relative to anger.     

Young German children's early syntactic competence: a preferential looking study

Using a preferential looking methodology with novel verbs, Gertner, Fisher and Eisengart (2006) found that 21-month-old English children seemed to understand the syntactic marking of transitive word order in an abstract, verb-general way. In the current study we tested whether young German children of this same age have this same understanding. Following Gertner et al. (2006), one group of German children was tested only after they had received a training/practice phase containing transitive sentences with familiar verbs and the exact same nouns as those used at test. A second group was tested after a training/practice phase consisting only of familiar verbs, without the nouns used at test. Only the group of children with the training on full transitive sentences was successful in the test. These findings suggest that for children this young to succeed in this test of syntactic understanding, they must first have some kind of relevant linguistic experience immediately prior to testing--which raises the question of the nature of children's linguistic representations at this early point in development.     

Alzheimer's Disease Patients' Cognitive Status and Course Years Prior to Symptom Recognition

This is a prospective examination of the cognitive performance and cognitive course of persons in an asymptomatic “preclinical” phase who eventually developed Alzheimer's disease (AD). We compared performances on the Mayo Cognitive Factor Scales (MCFS) of 20 persons in a neurologically normal cohort who subsequently developed AD to the performances of 60 persons who remained free of dementia symptoms. For the AD patients, exams occurred prior to the appearance of dementia symptoms (an average of 4.2 and 1.5 years prior to symptom onset). Results reveal strong group differences on learning and retention, with eventual AD patients scoring lower than controls years prior to reporting symptoms of the disease. There was no significant interaction effect (group × testing session) for memory retention, suggesting that memory decline in this preclinical period may be too slow to be a useful indicator of future AD. A significant interaction (but no group effect) was seen for verbal comprehension.     

Atypical Neuropsychological Profile in a Boy with 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome Keywords:

In this article the general and specific cognitive impairments of the boy R.H. with a de novo deletion 22q11.2 are described. His full-scale IQ was 73, and he obtained only slightly better verbal than non-verbal subtest scores. Neuropsychological assessment revealed specific impairments in perceptual categorization of objects presented suboptimal, matching of unfamiliar faces, and verbal learning and memory. In contrast, he performed in accordance with his intelligence level on other visual perceptual tasks, on non-verbal learning and memory tasks, and on attention tasks. Voxel-wise statistical comparison of a high-resolution T1-weighted magnetic resonance image of R.H’s brain with similar images obtained from 14 normal control children revealed as major abnormalities a reduction of the right inferior parietal and superior occipital lobe, and a bilateral reduction of deep white matter behind the inferior frontal gyrus. These cognitive impairments and MRI abnormalities are not commonly described in 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome and may indicate a larger heterogeneity in the neurocognitive phenotype than currently evidenced. At least in this boy the microdeletion seems to have interfered with the development and functioning of particular neural subsystems, while the structure and functioning of other subsystems was left intact.     

Familiar Verbs Are Not Always Easier Than Novel Verbs: How German Pre‐School Children Comprehend Active and Passive Sentences

Many studies show a developmental advantage for transitive sentences with familiar verbs over those with novel verbs. It might be that once familiar verbs become entrenched in particular constructions, they would be more difficult to understand (than would novel verbs) in non‐prototypical constructions. We provide support for this hypothesis investigating German children using a forced‐choice pointing paradigm with reversed agent‐patient roles. We tested active transitive verbs in study 1. The 2‐year olds were better with familiar than novel verbs, while the 2½‐year olds pointed correctly for both. In study 2, we tested passives: 2½‐year olds were significantly below chance for familiar verbs and at chance for novel verbs, supporting the hypothesis that the entrenchment of the familiar verbs in the active transitive voice was interfering with interpreting them in the passive voice construction. The 3½‐year olds were also at chance for novel verbs but above chance with familiar verbs. We interpret this as reflecting a lessening of the verb‐in‐construction entrenchment as the child develops knowledge that particular verbs can occur in a range of constructions. The 4½‐year olds were above chance for both familiar and novel verbs. We discuss our findings in terms of the relative entrenchment of lexical and syntactic information and to interference between them.