Age of acquisition effects on the functional organization of language in the adult brain

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we neuroimaged deaf adults as they performed two linguistic tasks with sentences in American Sign Language, grammatical judgment and phonemic-hand judgment. Participants’ age-onset of sign language acquisition ranged from birth to 14 years; length of sign language experience was substantial and did not vary in relation to age of acquisition. For both tasks, a more left lateralized pattern of activation was observed, with activity for grammatical judgment being more anterior than that observed for phonemic-hand judgment, which was more posterior by comparison. Age of acquisition was linearly and negatively related to activation levels in anterior language regions and positively related to activation levels in posterior visual regions for both tasks.     

语文学习困难儿童汉字记忆编码的神经机制研究

采用事件相关电位方法,探讨语文学习困难儿童汉字记忆编码过程的特点.研究发现:语文学习困难组和对照组在编码过程的300-700ms均存在显著的相继记忆效应.语文学习困难组与对照组的Dm效应存在着显著的时间与空间上的差异.在Dm效应出现前,语文学习困难组加工的P2潜伏期显著晚于对照组.同时还发现,不同能力组加工的N2和LPC差异与Dm效应十分相似,对照组比语文学习困难组更正,与Dm效应不同,不同能力组加工的分离明显大于Dm效应的分离,且持续时间更长,一直持续到1000ms之后,远远晚于Dm效应的分离时间,对照组比语文学习困难组有一个更正的晚正成分.语文学习困难组与对照组在加工程度上存在差异,使编码项目的记忆痕迹呈现出不同特点.     

The developing role of prosody in novel word interpretation

This study examined whether children use prosodic correlates to word meaning when interpreting novel words. For example, do children infer that a word spoken in a deep, slow, loud voice refers to something larger than a word spoken in a high, fast, quiet voice? Participants were 4- and 5-year-olds who viewed picture pairs that varied along a single dimension (e.g., big vs. small flower) and heard a recorded voice asking them, for example, “Can you get the blicket one?” spoken with either meaningful or neutral prosody. The 4-year-olds failed to map prosodic cues to their corresponding meaning, whereas the 5-year-olds succeeded (Experiment 1). However, 4-year-olds successfully mapped prosodic cues to word meaning following a training phase that reinforced children’s attention to prosodic information (Experiment 2). These studies constitute the first empirical demonstration that young children are able to use prosody-to-meaning correlates as a cue to novel word interpretation.     

Time in language: event duration in language comprehension

This work investigates how we process and represent event duration in on-line language comprehension. Specifically, it examines how events of different duration are processed and what type of knowledge underlies their representations. Studies 1–4 examined verbs and phrases in different contexts. They showed that durative events took longer to process than non-durative events and that the duration attributed to the stimulus events correlated with on-line processing times. Studies 5 and 6 indicated that durative events occur in semantically more diverse contexts and elicit semantically more diverse associations than non-durative events. Semantic and contextual diversity also correlated with attributed durations and processing times. Results indicate that (a) event-specific durations are computed on-line from multiple unfolding cues, (b) processing cost and duration representations emerge from semantic and contextual diversity reflecting our experience, and (c) key components of duration representations may be situation-specific knowledge of causal and contingency relations between events.     

The structure of semantic meaning: A developmental study

According to the “Semantic Differential” the connotative meaning of words can be quantified in statistically defined dimensions where every word is uniquely located on the dimensions Evaluation (E), Potency (P), and Activity (A). We studied 249 children between 9 and 18 years of age who rated 72 German nouns on 12 bipolar adjective scales. Three age groups were compared: 9–11, 12–14, and 15–18 years. Varimax‐rotated factor analysis yielded the classical EPA dimensions that were independent of age. This indicates that the basic structure and dimensionality of the semantic space is stable. On the other hand, the connotative meaning of individual words changed with age, and it was also affected by gender. In about half of the cases boys differed in their ratings from girls. Our data confirm that the EPA structure is stable, and is not affected by age. Development of connotative meaning or emotion is reflected, however, by systematic changes of the factor scores of individual words over the 10 years span studied.     

双语Stroop效应的性别差异研究

虽然许多研究发现男性和女性在语言能力上存在显著差异,但性别差异是否影响第二语言的水平和学习能力尚存在争议,相关研究较少。Stroop范式是语言研究的经典方法,它利用颜色信息和语义信息的相互干扰推论被试心理词典的表征结构。本研究利用此范式探讨不同性别的第二语言学习者在言语表征上的差异。结果显示被试性别与文字材料、性别与刺激类型均存在显著的交互作用,表明不同性别被试在第二语言表征上存在显著差异。     

第二语言句子加工的ERP研究

研究者对第一语言句子加工的事件相关电位(ERP)进行研究,提出了句子加工三阶段模型及对应的ERP成分。第二语言(L2)句子加工的ERP研究结果很不一致。首先,从句子加工的ERP反应模式上来看,大多数研究发现L2学习者的ERP反应模式和母语者有质的差异,少数研究发现L2学习者加工L2句子的ERP模式类似母语者,但其反应的时间进程、波幅或分布与母语者有显著差异。被试的学习年龄、熟练程度以及学习者的两种语言的相似性程度可能是影响第二语言句子加工ERP反应的主要因素。     

Establishing five derived mands in three adolescent boys with autism

Three 14-year-old boys with diagnoses of autism learned to mand for the delivery or removal of tokens by presenting nonsense syllables (A(1-5), respectively). A match-to-sample procedure was used to establish conditional discriminations between the 5 A stimuli and 5 B stimuli and between the B stimuli and 5 C stimuli. Subsequently, each participant was able to use the C stimuli to mand, illustrating a transfer of function, although 1 participant first required multiple-exemplar training.     

Recent research on emergent verbal behavior: clinical applications and future directions

This paper describes recent studies that have evaluated the functional independence of verbal operants. Procedures that facilitate the emergence of untrained verbal operants and important areas of future research to increase efficiency of language programs for children diagnosed with developmental disabilities are discussed.     

Sociolinguistic awareness and false belief in young Cantonese learners of English

In this study, we examined whether sociolinguistic awareness and false belief were uniquely related in 3- and 4-year-old Cantonese-speaking children learning English as a second language. The English-use background of these children varied so that they possessed sociolinguistic awareness to different degrees. Results indicated that sociolinguistic awareness predicted false belief uniquely after controlling for age, nonverbal intelligence, English vocabulary, and family income for both the second language learners and the more balanced bilinguals. The group difference in false belief was adequately explained by the corresponding difference in sociolinguistic awareness over and above the other variables. Such findings provide evidence for the claim that false belief understanding is critically related to sociolinguistic awareness, which in turn is influenced by how a second language is learned.