Search results for "vocabulary development"
showing 10 items of 17 documents
Assessing Vocabulary in Deaf and Hearing Children using Finnish Sign Language.
2020
Abstract This study investigates children’s vocabulary knowledge in Finnish Sign Language (FinSL), specifically their understanding of different form-meaning mappings by using a multilayered assessment format originally developed for British Sign Language (BSL). The web-based BSL vocabulary test by Mann (2009) was adapted for FinSL following the steps outlined by Mann, Roy and Morgan (2016) and piloted with a small group of deaf and hearing native signers (N = 24). Findings showed a hierarchy of difficulty between the tasks, which is concordant with results reported previously for BSL and American Sign Language (ASL). Additionally, the reported psychometric properties of the FinSL vocabular…
Differentiation in language and gesture use during early bilingual development of hearing children of Deaf parents
2014
Hearing children of Deaf parents simultaneously acquire sign language and spoken language, which have many structural differences and represent two different modalities. We video-recorded eight children every six months between the ages of 12 and 24 months during three different play sessions: with their Deaf parent, with the Deaf parent and a hearing adult, and with a hearing adult alone. Additionally, we collected data on their vocabulary development in both sign language and spoken language. Children as young as 12 months old accommodated their language use according to the language(s) of their interlocutor(s). Additionally, the children used a manual modality that included gestures more…
Predicting Word Maturity from Frequency and Semantic Diversity: A Computational Study
2016
Semantic word representation changes over different ages of childhood until it reaches its adult form. One method to formally model this change is the word maturity paradigm. This method uses a text sample for each age, including adult age, and transforms the samples into a semantic space by means of Latent Semantic Analysis. The representation of a word at every age is then compared with its adult representation via computational maturity indices. The present study used this paradigm to explore to the impact of word frequency and semantic diversity on maturation indices. To do this, word maturity indices were extracted from a Spanish incremental corpus and validated, using correlation scor…
Early markers of language delay in children with and without family risk for dyslexia
2015
Accepted manuscript version. Published version at http://doi.org/10.1177/0142723715596122. This study examined the extent to which receptive and productive vocabulary between ages 12 and 18 months predicted language skills at age 24 months in children born with family risk for dyslexia (FR) and a control group born without that risk. The aim was to identify possible markers of early language delay. The authors monitored vocabulary growth in 32 FR children and 21 control children longitudinally by using the Norwegian adaption of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories. The results show different patterns in the two groups: the study found a stronger interdependence of early…
L2 English derivational knowledge : Which affixes are learners more likely to recognise?
2016
Knowledge of derivational morphology is considered an important aspect of vocabulary knowledge both in L1 (mother tongue) and L2 (second or foreign language) English language learning. However, it is still not clear whether different derivational affixes vary in their (learning) difficulty. The present study examines whether Bauer and Nation’s (1993) teaching order of L2 English affixes can account for the difficulty learners have with recognising the affixes. The participants in the study were L1 Estonian and Russian learners of English at upper-secondary schools in Estonia (n = 62). Their performance was measured on a word segmentation task. There were significant differences in the numbe…
Lexical verbs in a medical case-report wordlist
2018
Clinical case reports or clinical cases (CRs) are, perhaps, the most widely read text type in medicine, since they contain a detailed description of the patient’s medical history and symptoms and thus furnish ample teaching material for physicians-in-training. For non-native speakers of English in medicine, autonomous learning is often restricted because of a lack of medical lexicon, poor academic vocabulary, and weak lexical verb use. Here, we present the results of an investigation of lexical verbs: their distribution, classification, and contextual use in the different sections of the genre CRs. We suggest that lexical verbs with contextual use should be included in medical dictionaries …
Lexical and grammatical development in children at family risk of dyslexia from early childhood to school entry: a cross-lagged analysis.
2019
AbstractThe aim of this study was to examine (a) the development of vocabulary and grammar in children with family-risk (FR) of dyslexia and their peers with no such risk (NoFR) between ages 1;6 and 6;0, and (b) whether FR-status exerted an effect on the direction of temporal relationships between these two constructs. Groups were assessed at seven time-points using standardised tests and parental reports. Results indicated that although FR and NoFR children had a similar development in the earlier years, the FR group appeared to perform significantly more poorly on vocabulary at the end of the preschool period. Results showed no significant effect of FR status on the cross-lagged relations…
Vocabulary teaching strategies and conceptual representations of words in L2 in children: evidence with novice learners.
2008
Abstract A controversial issue in bilingual research is whether in the early stages of L2 learning, access to the conceptual system involves mediation of L1 lexical representations [Kroll, J. F., & Stewart, E. (1994). Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 149–174] or a direct route from the L2 word [Altarriba, J., & Mathis, K. M. (1997). Conceptual and lexical development in second language acquisition. Journal of Memory and Language, 36, 550–568; Finkbeiner, M., & Nicol, J. (2003). Semantic category effects in second language word learning. Applied Psycholing…
Parents as Informants of their Child's Vocal and Early Language Development
1996
Continuity in vocalization and language development was examined in the longitudinal study of 94 children. Parents observed their infant's vocal development with the help of a checklist during the first year of life and reported their lexical development by using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (the CDIs) at the ages of 14 and 18 months. The Reynell Developmental Language Scales (the RDLS) were administered to the children in a laboratory setting at 18 months. The vocalization checklist revealed milestones of sound production which parents reported reliably and which were significantly related to the child's later language development. The continuity in vocal and languag…
Early development of children at familial risk for Dyslexia—follow-up from birth to school age
2004
We review the main findings of the Jyväskylä Longitudinal study of Dyslexia (JLD) which follows the development of children at familial risk for dyslexia (N = 107) and their controls (N = 93). We will illustrate the development of these two groups of children at ages from birth to school entry in the skill domains that have been connected to reading and reading disability in the prior literature. At school entry, the highest score on the decoding task among the poorer half (median) of the at risk children--i.e. of those presumably being most likely genetically affected--is 1 SD below the mean of the control group. Thus, the familial risk for dyslexia shows expected consequences. Among the e…