Word order and information status in child language

In expressing rich, multi-dimensional thought in language, speakers are influenced by a range of factors that influence the ordering of utterance constituents. A fundamental principle that guides constituent ordering in adults has to do with information status, the accessibility of referents in discourse. Typically, adults order previously mentioned referents ("old" or accessible information) first, before they introduce referents that have not yet been mentioned in the discourse ("new" or inaccessible information) at both sentential and phrasal levels. Here we ask whether a similar principle influences ordering patterns at the phrasal level in children who are in the early stages of combining words productively. Prior research shows that when conveying semantic relations, children reproduce language-specific ordering patterns in the input, suggesting that they do not have a bias for any particular order to describe "who did what to whom". But our findings show that when they label "old" versus "new" referents, 3- to 5-year-old children prefer an ordering pattern opposite to that of adults (Study 1). Children's ordering preference is not derived from input patterns, as "old-before-new" is also the preferred order in caregivers' speech directed to young children (Study 2). Our findings demonstrate that a key principle governing ordering preferences in adults does not originate in early childhood, but develops: from new-to-old to old-to-new.     

Prototypicality in sentence production

Three cued-recall experiments examined the effect of category typicality on the ordering of words in sentence production. Past research has found that typical items tend to be mentioned before atypical items in a phrase—a pattern usually associated with lexical variables (like word frequency), and yet typicality is a conceptual variable. Experiment 1 revealed that an appropriate conceptual framework was necessary to yield the typicality effect. Experiment 2 tested ad hoc categories that do not have prior representations in long-term memory and yielded no typicality effect. Experiment 3 used carefully matched sentences in which two category members appeared in the same or in different phrases. Typicality affected word order only when the two words appeared in the same phrase. These results are consistent with an account in which typicality has its origin in conceptual structure, which leads to differences in lexical accessibility in appropriate contexts.     

Is there an Effect of Print Exposure on the Word Frequency Effect and the Neighborhood Size Effect?

Orthographic and phonological processing skills have been shown to vary as a function of reader skill (Stanovich & West, Reading Research Quarterly, 24, 402-433, 1989; Unsworth & Pexman, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56A, 63-81, 2003). One variable known to contribute to differences between readers of higher and lower skill is amount of print exposure: higher skilled readers read more often than lower skilled readers, and their increased print exposure is associated with faster responding to words and nonwords in lexical decision tasks. The present experiments examined the effect of print exposure on the word frequency effect and neighborhood size effect. We conclude that the different outcomes reported in previous studies (Chateau & Jared, Memory and Cognition, 28, 143-153, 2000; Lewellen, Goldinger, Pisoni, & Greene, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 122, 316-330, 1993) were due to the type of nonwords used in the lexical decision task (regular nonwords versus pseudohomophones). Our results are explained in terms of differences in the reliance on orthographic and phonological information between readers of higher and lower print exposure.     

Transfert de la conscience morphologique de l’arabe langue première au français langue seconde au cours des trois premières années d’apprentissage

There is a great deal of evidence to support the role of morphological awareness in reading development. However, towards second language acquisition, transfer of morphological awareness from first to second language (L1 to L2) is still discussed. The underlying question concerns the extent to which morphological awareness is a specific or universal process, and its dependence of linguistic features. The aim of this study is to examine cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness from Arabic L1 to French L2 (morphological awareness and word reading) at different level of learning French L2 (F_L2). 106 Tunisian children, whose first language is Arabic, in 1st (n = 29; mean age; 8; 10 years), 2nd (n = 33; mean age; 9; 9 years) or 3rd year (n = 44; mean age; 10; 10 years) of learning F_L2 participated to this study. Their morphological awareness (inflectional or derivational oddity detection tasks) and their performance in word reading (one minute test) were assessed in standard Arabic and French, as well as their vocabulary knowledge in French. A series of fixed-order hierarchical regression analysis was performed on derivational awareness performances, inflectional awareness performances and word reading performances in F_L2, controlling for effects of other important variables (e.g. French vocabulary, French morphological awareness with word reading scores as outcome variable and French inflectional or derivational awareness with French inflectional or derivational awareness scores as outcome variable respectively, Arabic word reading, etc.). Results show significant contributions of L1 morpho-derivational awareness on F_L2 morpho-derivational awareness in 2nd year (12%), and of L1 morphological awareness on reading words F_L2 in 3^rd year (5%). These results confirm the cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness, particularly derivational, from L1 to L2 among alphabetic — but orthographically and morphologically distances — languages. They also suggest that such a transfer could be relatively limited. It could appear during learning process after achieving a threshold in F_L2 and before specific L2 skills take place. Thus, beyond the morphological opacity of Arabic (nonlinear morphology) and linguistic distance between Arabic and French, the morphological transfer could appear on rich and important morphological dimension in L1 and suggest dealing with the nature of cross-linguistic abilities in depth.     

Comparing the Effects of Unknown-Known Ratios on Word Reading Learning Versus Learning Rates

An extension of G. L. Cates et al. (2003) investigation was conducted to determine if students’ cumulative learning rates would be superior for words read under a traditional drill and practice condition (as they were for spelling in the previous study) than under interspersal conditions of varying ratios of unknown to known words. Participants consisted of three intermediate grade students who were delayed readers. They received a less challenging ratio of unknown to known word (High-P sequencing) interspersal procedure, a more challenging ratio of unknown to known word interspersal training procedure, and a traditional drill and practice procedure in an alternating fashion across several tutoring sessions. Cumulative words read with mastery and cumulative rates of words read with mastery were measured across sessions for each participant under each instructional condition. Findings were consistent with the Cates et al., study revealing that children learn more words per minute of instructional time under the traditional drill and practice condition. These results further support examining instructional efficiency as well as effectiveness when making decisions about selecting and implementing interventions.     

Representation of grammatical properties of Italian verbs in the mental lexicon

The present study focuses on the representation of verbs in the Italian mental lexicon and investigates some grammatical properties: inflectional class, mood, tense, and person. Two experiments based on free recall of single inflected forms are reported. The patterns of recall and error are taken as evidence for the grammatical and morphological information exploited in the access to the verb forms. The pattern of results provides support for the hypothesis that in the mental lexicon the information about conjugation and mood is an organizational criterion for the representation of verbal forms. An interaction between mood and conjugation, likely to arise from the difference in productivity between conjugations, is also observed.     

Genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in printed word recognition

The genetic and environmental etiologies of individual differences in printed word recognition and related skills were explored in 440 identical and fraternal twin pairs between 8 and 18 years of age. A theoretically driven measurement model identified five latent variables: IQ, phoneme awareness, word recognition, phonological decoding, and orthographic coding. Cholesky decomposition models on these five latent constructs revealed the existence of both common and independent genetic effects, as well as non-shared environmental influences. There was evidence for moderate genetic influences common between IQ, phoneme awareness, and word-reading skills, and for stronger IQ-independent genetic influences that were common between phoneme awareness and word-reading skills, particularly phonological decoding. Phonological and orthographic coding skills in word recognition had both significant common and significant independent genetic influences, with implications for "dual-route" and "connectionist" reading models, subtypes of reading disabilities, and the remediation of reading disabilities.     

Age-of-acquisition effects in visual word recognition: evidence from expert vocabularies

Three experiments assessed the contributions of age-of-acquisition (AoA) and frequency to visual word recognition. Three databases were created from electronic journals in chemistry, psychology and geology in order to identify technical words that are extremely frequent in each discipline but acquired late in life. In Experiment 1, psychologists and chemists showed an advantage in lexical decision for late-acquired/high-frequency words (e.g. a psychologist responding to cognition) over late-acquired/low-frequency words (e.g. a chemist responding to cognition), revealing a frequency effect when words are perfectly matched. However, contrary to theories that exclude AoA as a factor, performance was similar for the late-acquired/high-frequency and early-acquired/low-frequency words (e.g. dragon) even though their cumulative frequencies differed by more than an order of magnitude. This last finding was replicated with geologists using geology words matched with early-acquired words in terms of concreteness (Experiment 2). Most interestingly, Experiment 3 yielded the same pattern of results in naming while controlling for imageability, a finding that is particularly problematic for parallel distributed processing models of reading.     

Orthographic learning at a glance: on the time course and developmental onset of self-teaching

Experiment 1 examined the time course of orthographic learning among Grade 3 children. A single encounter with a novel orthographic string was sufficient to produce reliable recall of orthographic detail. Moreover, newly acquired orthographic information was retained 1 month later. These data support the logistic learning functions featured in contemporary connectionist models of reading rather than a "threshold" model of orthographic learning. Experiments 2 and 3 examined self-teaching among novice readers. In contrast to the findings from less regular orthographies such as English and Dutch, beginning readers of a highly regular orthography (Hebrew) appear to be relatively insensitive to word-specific orthographic detail, reading in a nonlexical "surface" fashion. These results suggest fundamental differences between shallow and deep orthographies in the development of orthographic sensitivity.