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Descriptors:
Grammar; Classification; Acoustics; Phonology; Learning Processes; Performance; Language Patterns; Language Acquisition; Language Research

Abstract:
Some of recently proposed phonotactic learners are tier-based bigram learners that restrict their hypothesis space to patterns between two segments that are adjacent at the tier level. This assumption is understandable considering that typologically frequent nonadjacent sound patterns are predominantly those that hold between two tier-adjacent segments. However, it is not clear whether the assumption is psychologically justified, i.e., whether speakers are indeed exclusively attentive to patterns between two tier-adjacent segments when it comes to learning nonadjacent sound patterns. In general, many recent studies suggest that learnable sound patterns are not limited to typologically observed sound patterns. Specifically, Koo and Callahan (2012) argue that adult speakers in laboratory settings have no trouble learning artificial patterns that cannot be explained by tier-based bigram learners. In this paper, we replicate their results in a more carefully controlled setting and argue that the assumption of tier-based bigram learning must be relaxed in order to properly explain human performance. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Ethnicity; Language Acquisition; Immersion Programs; Parent Participation; Parent School Relationship; Uncommonly Taught Languages; Second Language Learning; Qualitative Research; Korean; English (Second Language); Interviews; Self Concept; Outcomes of Education; Bilingual Education; Parent Attitudes; Teacher Attitudes; Student Attitudes

Abstract:
This qualitative study examines the experiences of Korean-American students, parents and teachers in a newly instituted 50/50 Korean-English dual language immersion programme, where the majority of the students are of Korean descent. Based on home and school observations, as well as interviews with six Korean-American students and their parents and teachers, the data provided insights into the perceived benefits and challenges of participation in a dual language immersion programme. Although parents and children recognised the potential of the programme to develop bilingualism and biculturalism and foster stronger ethnic identity, they also perceived inequities in the ways in which the programme was organised and instruction was executed. The characteristics of the programme brought forth tensions for the parents and teachers in terms of expectations for language development in English vs. Korean, academic outcomes of bilingual vs. English-only education, parental involvement among Korean vs. non-Korean parents and instructional needs of Korean vs. non-Korean students. Furthermore, the analysis highlighted both shared perspectives as well as perspectives that were unique to children, parents and teachers arising from their different roles in the school. Implications for improved practices and policies for dual language immersion programmes for the less commonly taught languages are provided. (Contains 2 figures and 1 note.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Pregnancy; Language Impairments; Phonological Awareness; Child Development; Grade 1; Leisure Time; Foreign Countries; Preschool Children; Birth; Parent Background; Age Differences; Migration; Intelligence; Smoking; Television Viewing; Risk; Language Acquisition

Abstract:
Early child development is influenced by various genetic and environmental factors. This study aims to identify factors that affect the phonological awareness of preschool and first grade children. Based on a sample of 330 German-speaking children (mean age = 6.2 years) the following domains were evaluated: Parent factors, birth and pregnancy, child factors, and leisure time activities (all based on parent report). Regression analysis provided information on the relative contribution of each predictor on the explained variance. Results indicate that the variables "migration background," "child age," "child intelligence," "smoking during pregnancy," "language difficulties" (impairments of word expression, grammatical deficits, stutter), and "watching TV" have a significant influence on phonological awareness. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Form Classes (Languages); Grammar; Language Acquisition; Classification; Linguistic Input; Cues; Generalization; Vocabulary Development; Computational Linguistics; Task Analysis

Abstract:
A fundamental component of language acquisition involves organizing words into grammatical categories. Previous literature has suggested a number of ways in which this categorization task might be accomplished. Here we ask whether the patterning of the words in a corpus of linguistic input ("distributional information") is sufficient, along with a small set of learning biases, to extract these underlying structural categories. In a series of experiments, we show that learners can acquire linguistic form-classes, generalizing from instances of the distributional contexts of individual words in the exposure set to the full range of contexts for all the words in the set. Crucially, we explore how several specific distributional variables enable learners to form a category of lexical items and generalize to novel words, yet also allow for exceptions that maintain lexical specificity. We suggest that learners are sensitive to the "contexts" of individual words, the "overlaps" among contexts across words, the non-overlap of contexts (or "systematic gaps" in information), and the size of the exposure set. We also ask how learners determine the category membership of a new word for which there is very sparse contextual information. We find that, when there are strong category cues and robust category learning of other words, adults readily generalize the distributional properties of the learned category to a new word that shares just one context with the other category members. However, as the distributional cues regarding the category become sparser and contain more consistent gaps, learners show more conservatism in generalizing distributional properties to the novel word. Taken together, these results show that learners are highly systematic in their use of the distributional properties of the input corpus, using them in a principled way to determine when to generalize and when to preserve lexical specificity. (Contains 3 tables and 5 figures.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Evidence; Associative Learning; Cognitive Mapping; Infants; Eye Movements; Vocabulary Development; Statistical Analysis; Language Acquisition

Abstract:
We report three eyetracking experiments that examine the learning procedure used by adults as they pair novel words and visually presented referents over a sequence of referentially ambiguous trials. Successful learning under such conditions has been argued to be the product of a learning procedure in which participants provisionally pair each novel word with several possible referents and use a statistical-associative learning mechanism to gradually converge on a single mapping across learning instances [e.g., Yu, C., & Smith, L. B. (2007). Rapid word learning under uncertainty via cross-situational statistics. "Psychological Science, 18"(5), 414-420]. We argue here that successful learning in this setting is instead the product of a one-trial procedure in which a single hypothesized word-referent pairing is retained across learning instances, abandoned only if the subsequent instance fails to confirm the pairing--more a "fast mapping" procedure than a gradual statistical one. We provide experimental evidence for this "propose-but-verify" learning procedure via three experiments in which adult participants attempted to learn the meanings of nonce words cross-situationally under varying degrees of referential uncertainty. The findings, using both explicit (referent selection) and implicit (eye movement) measures, show that even in these artificial learning contexts, which are far simpler than those encountered by a language learner in a natural environment, participants do not retain multiple meaning hypotheses across learning instances. As we discuss, these findings challenge "gradualist" accounts of word learning and are consistent with the known rapid course of vocabulary learning in a first language. (Contains 5 tables and 12 figures.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Animals; Language Usage; Language Acquisition; Cues; Young Children; Nouns; Expectation; Phrase Structure; Novelty (Stimulus Dimension); Thinking Skills; Cognitive Ability; Classification; Beliefs

Abstract:
The goal of the present study was to explore domain differences in young children's expectations about the structure of animal and artifact categories. We examined 5-year-olds' and adults' use of category-referring generic noun phrases (e.g., "Birds fly") about novel animals and artifacts. The same stimuli served as both animals and artifacts; thus, stimuli were perceptually identical across domains, and domain was indicated exclusively by language. Results revealed systematic domain differences: children and adults produced more generic utterances when items were described as animals than artifacts. Because the stimuli were novel and lacking perceptual cues to domain, these findings must be attributed to higher-order expectations about animal and artifact categories. Overall, results indicate that by age 5, children are able to make knowledge-based domain distinctions between animals and artifacts that may be rooted in beliefs about the coherence and homogeneity of categories within these domains. (Contains 2 figures.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Cultural Differences; Psycholinguistics; Cross Cultural Studies; Speech; Nonverbal Communication; Oral Language; Psychologists; Language Acquisition; Role; Age Differences; Task Analysis; Pictorial Stimuli; Young Children; Child Development; Foreign Countries

Abstract:
We studied how gesture use changes with culture, age and increased spoken language competence. A picture-naming task was presented to British (N = 80) and Finnish (N = 41) typically developing children aged 2-5 years. British children were found to gesture more than Finnish children and, in both cultures, gesture production decreased after the age of two. Two-year-olds used more deictic than iconic gestures than older children, and gestured more before the onset of speech, rather than simultaneously or after speech. The British 3- and 5-year-olds gestured significantly more when naming praxic (manipulable) items than non-praxic items. Our results support the view that gesture serves a communicative and intrapersonal function, and the relative function may change with age. Speech and language therapists and psychologists observe the development of children's gestures and make predictions on the basis of their frequency and type. To prevent drawing erroneous conclusions about children's linguistic development, it is important to understand developmental and cultural variations in gesture use. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Semantics; Verbs; Nouns; Comparative Analysis; Language Processing; Task Analysis; Syllables; Alphabets; Word Frequency; Age; Language Acquisition; Imagery; Associative Learning; Regression (Statistics); Reaction Time; Psycholinguistics

Abstract:
We analyzed the differential processing of nouns and verbs in a lexical decision task. Moderate and high-frequency nouns and verbs were compared. The characteristics of our material were specified at the formal level (number of letters and syllables, number of homographs, orthographic neighbors, frequency and age of acquisition), and at the semantic level (imagery, number and strength of associations, number of meanings, context dependency). A regression analysis indicated a classical frequency effect and a word-type effect, with latencies for verbs being slower than for nouns. The regression analysis did not permit the conclusion that semantic effects were involved (particularly imageability). Nevertheless, the semantic opposition between nouns as prototypical representations of objects, and verbs as prototypical representation of actions was not tested in this experiment and remains a good candidate explanation of the response time discrepancies between verbs and nouns. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Evidence; Syntax; Generalization; Language Acquisition; Infants; Sentences; Word Order; Psycholinguistics; Hypothesis Testing; Russian; Phonology; Morphology (Languages); Cues; Language Research

Abstract:
This study tests the hypothesis that distributional information can guide infants in the generalization of word order movement rules at the initial stage of language acquisition. Participants were 11- and 14-month-old infants. Stimuli were sentences in Russian, a language that was unknown to our infants. During training the word order of each sentence was transformed following a consistent pattern (e.g., ABC-BAC). During the test phase infants heard novel sentences that respected the trained rule and ones that violated the trained rule (i.e., a different transformation such as ABC-ACB). Stimuli words had highly variable phonological and morphological shapes. The cue available was the positional information of words and their non-adjacent relations across sentences. We found that 14-month-olds, but not 11-month-olds, showed evidence of abstract rule generalization to novel instances. The implications of this finding to early syntactic acquisition are discussed. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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Descriptors:
Faculty; Performance Based Assessment; Evaluation Methods; Teaching Methods; Higher Education; Teacher Education; Scoring; Program Evaluation; Feedback (Response); Scoring Rubrics; Summative Evaluation; Professional Development; Accountability; Language Acquisition

Abstract:
This article uses Dewey's (1938) concept of "end in view" to frame one California State University's purposeful action in implementing the Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT). The authors provide a chronology of events that reveal the ways in which teacher education faculty were engaged in examining PACT outcomes and candidate performance through informal, "mock scoring" events, and the design of formative, embedded signature assessments, and the resulting changes in the program assessment system, curriculum, and instructional practices. The article closes with concerns and suggestions for sustaining the "end in view" during high-stakes and low-budget circumstances. (Contains 1 figure and 6 footnotes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract

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