Precursors to language development in typically and atypically developing infants and toddlers: the importance of embracing complexity

In order to understand how language abilities emerge in typically and atypically developing infants and toddlers, it is important to embrace complexity in development. In this paper, we describe evidence that early language development is an experience-dependent process, shaped by diverse, interconnected, interdependent developmental mechanisms, processes, and abilities (e.g. statistical learning, sampling, functional specialization, visual attention, social interaction, motor ability). We also present evidence from our studies on neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g. Down syndrome, fragile X syndrome, Williams syndrome) that variations in these factors significantly contribute to language delay. Finally, we discuss how embracing complexity, which involves integrating data from different domains and levels of description across developmental time, may lead to a better understanding of language development and, critically, lead to more effective interventions for cases when language develops atypically

Investigating Relationships Among Measures of English and Chinese Handwriting Fluency in Early-Elementary Chinese Dual Language Immersion Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between English and Chinese handwriting fluency measures in early-elementary Chinese Dual Language Immersion students. This was done by conducting five handwriting fluency tasks among Chinese Dual Language Immersion students and comparing the findings. First, the findings showed that there was a moderate correlation between the participants\u27 English and Chinese handwriting fluencies and that English fluencies predicted Chinese fluencies. However, the students could write English numbers and letters much faster than Chinese characters. Second, as expected, Chinese DLI participants showed that handwriting fluency improved as grade level increased. Third, third-grade students were not much faster than second-grade students on both English number and English Chinese number tasks. The study informs Chinese DLI programs as it shows that supplemental handwriting instruction is likely necessary to narrow the differences between English and Chinese handwriting fluencies. Instructional amount and quality could be improved to increase Chinese fluency, and English and Chinese partner teachers should collaborate more closely and complement each other\u27s handwriting instructional efforts. In summary, this study identifies significant differences in English and Chinese handwriting fluencies, and further studies may be necessary to consider ways to address these differences

A Sound Approach to Language Matters: In Honor of Ocke-Schwen Bohn

The contributions in this Festschrift were written by Ocke’s current and former PhD-students, colleagues and research collaborators. The Festschrift is divided into six sections, moving from the smallest building blocks of language, through gradually expanding objects of linguistic inquiry to the highest levels of description - all of which have formed a part of Ocke’s career, in connection with his teaching and/or his academic productions: “Segments”, “Perception of Accent”, “Between Sounds and Graphemes”, “Prosody”, “Morphology and Syntax” and “Second Language Acquisition”. Each one of these illustrates a sound approach to language matters

The effect of high variability and individual differences on phonetic training of Mandarin tones

High variability phonetic training (HVPT) has been found to be more effective than low variability phonetic training (LVPT) in learning various non-native phonetic contrasts. However, little research has considered whether this applies to the learning of tone contrasts. Two relevant studies suggested that the effect of high variability training depends on the perceptual aptitude of participants (Perrachione, Lee, Ha, & Wong, 2011; Sadakata & McQueen, 2014). It is also unclear how different types of individual difference measures interact with the learning of tonal language. What work there is, suggests that musical ability is related to discriminating tonal information and in general attention and working memory are linked to language learning. The present study extends these findings by examining the interaction between individual aptitude and input variability and between learning outcomes and individual measures using natural, meaningful L2 input (both previous studies used pseudowords). In Study 1, forty English speakers took part in an eight-session phonetic training paradigm. They were assigned to high/low variability training groups. High variability used four speakers during the training sessions while low variability used one. All participants learned real Mandarin tones and words. Individual aptitude was measured using an identification and a categorisation task. Learning was measured using a categorical discrimination task, an identification task and two production tasks. Overall, all groups improved in both production and perception of tones which transferred to novel voices and items, demonstrating the effectiveness of training despite the increased complexity of the training material compared with previous research. Although the low variability group exhibited better learning during training than the high variability group, there was no evidence that the different variability training conditions led to different performances in any of the tests of generalisation. Moreover, although performance on one of the aptitude tasks significantly predicted overall performance in categorical discrimination, identification and training tasks, it did not predict improvement from pre- to post- test. Critically, there was also no interaction between individual aptitude and variability-condition, contradicting with previous findings. One possibility was that the high variability condition was too difficult as speakers were randomly presented during training, resulting in low trial-by-trial consistency. This greater difficulty might block any advantage of variability for generalisation. In order to examine this, Study 2 recruited additional 20 native English speakers and tested them in a further condition, identical to the previous high variability condition except that each speaker was presented in their own block during the training. Although participants performed better in training compared with the high variability group from study 1, there was again no difference in generalisation compared with the previous conditions, and again no interaction between individual aptitude and variability-condition was found. Bayes Factors were also used to assess the null results. There was evidence for the null for the benefits of high variability for generalisation but only ambiguous evidence regarding whether there was interaction between variability and individual aptitude. The HPVT used in Study 1 and Study 2 did not replicate the interaction between variability-condition and aptitude found in previous studies. Moreover, although one of the measures of aptitude did correlate with the baseline measures of performance, there was no evidence that it predicted learning due to training. Additionally, the two individual aptitude measures used in Study 1 and 2 – taken from Perrachione, et al. (2011) and Sadakata and McQueen (2013) – are not comprehensive. They are natural language-related tasks which directly measure tone perception itself, rather than the underlying cognitive factors which could underpin this ability. Another interesting question is whether these different cognitive factors might contribute to learners at different stages differently, particularly since language training studies vary as to whether they use current learners of the language or naïve participants, a factor may contribute towards differing findings in the literature. To explore these issues, Study 3 investigated the relationship between a battery of cognitive individual difference measures and Mandarin tone learning. Sixty native English speakers (forty of whom were currently studying Mandarin at undergraduate level, twenty of whom were naïve learners) took part in a six-session training paradigm. With high-variability training stimuli similar to that used in Study 2 (four speakers blocked), their learning outcomes were assessed by identification, categorical discrimination and production tasks similar to Study 1. Their working memory, attention and musical ability were also measured. Overall, both groups showed improvements during training and in the generalisation tasks. Although Mandarin learner participants performed better than naïve participants overall, the improvements were not generally greater than naïve participants. Each of the individual difference measures was used to predict participant’s performance at pre-test and their improvement due to training. Bayes Factors were used as the key method of inference. For Mandarin learner participants, both performances at pre-test and pre- to- post improvement were strongly predicted by attention measures while for naïve speakers, musical ability was the dominant predictor for pre- to- post improvement. This series of studies demonstrates that Mandarin lexical tones can be trained using natural stimuli embedded in a word learning task and learning generalises to untrained voices and items as well as to production. Although there is no evidence in the current data that the type of training materials affected learning outcomes, tone learning is indeed affected by individual cognitive factors, such as attention and musical ability, with these playing a different role for learners at different stages

A comparison of the first fifty words of typically developing children to the first fifty words of typically developing children exposed to manual communication

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of manual communication in the acquisition of the first 50 spoken words in typically-developing children. It was hypothesized that typically-developing children exposed to manual communication would have a different composition of their first 50 words compared to typically-developing children not exposed to manual communication. More specifically a greater portion of dual-functioning words and action words were predicted as a result of the visual and motor aspects of gestures and manual communication. Twelve participants who were enrolled in a six-week baby-sign playgroup were involved in the study. Parents recorded their child\u27s first 50 words in a diary. The diary was collected and spontaneous first words were analyzed. The first words of the current sample were then compared to Nelson\u27s (1973) landmark study on the basis of six grammatical categories. These grammatical categories included general nominals, specific nominals, action words, modifiers, personal social words, and function words. Statistical analysis revealed a lack of significant differences between each of the sample means in the current study and each of Nelson\u27s means. A qualitative analysis suggested different trends in the first 50 spoken word lexicons for these two groups. Sixty-six percent of the participants were expressive in their functional use of language, learning a more self-oriented and social interactive language with less than 50% general nominals in their vocabularies, compared to 44% of Nelson\u27s (1973) participants. Greater percentages of action words and personal social words were also noted for the study sample

The building blocks of sound symbolism

Languages contain thousands of words each and are made up by a seemingly endless collection of sound combinations. Yet a subsection of these show clear signs of corresponding word shapes for the same meanings which is generally known as vocal iconicity and sound symbolism. This dissertation explores the boundaries of sound symbolism in the lexicon from typological, functional and evolutionary perspectives in an attempt to provide a deeper understanding of the role sound symbolism plays in human language. In order to achieve this, the subject in question was triangulated by investigating different methodologies which included lexical data from a large number of language families, experiment participants and robust statistical tests.Study I investigates basic vocabulary items in a large number of language families in order to establish the extent of sound symbolic items in the core of the lexicon, as well as how the sound-meaning associations are mapped and interconnected. This study shows that by expanding the lexical dataset compared to previous studies and completely controlling for genetic bias, a larger number of sound-meaning associations can be established. In addition, by placing focus on the phonetic and semantic features of sounds and meanings, two new types of sounds symbolism could be established, along with 20 semantically and phonetically superordinate concepts which could be linked to the semantic development of the lexicon.Study II explores how sound symbolic associations emerge in arbitrary words through sequential transmission over language users. This study demonstrates that transmission of signals is sufficient for iconic effects to emerge and does not require interactional communication. Furthermore, it also shows that more semantically marked meanings produce stronger effects and that iconicity in the size and shape domains seems to be dictated by similarities between the internal semantic relationships of each oppositional word pair and its respective associated sounds.Studies III and IV use color words to investigate differences and similarities between low-level cross-modal associations and sound symbolism in lexemes. Study III explores the driving factors of cross-modal associations between colors and sounds by experimentally testing implicit preferences between several different acoustic and visual parameters. The most crucial finding was that neither specific hues nor specific vowels produced any notable effects and it is therefore possible that previously reported associations between vowels and colors are actually dependent on underlying visual and acoustic parameters.Study IV investigates sound symbolic associations in words for colors in a large number of language families by correlating acoustically described segments with luminance and saturation values obtained from cross-linguistic color-naming data. In accordance with Study III, this study showed that luminance produced the strongest results and was primarily associated with vowels, while saturation was primarily associated with consonants. This could then be linked to cross-linguistic lexicalization order of color words.To summarize, this dissertation shows the importance of studying the underlying parameters of sound symbolism semantically and phonetically in both language users and cross-linguistic language data. In addition, it also shows the applicability of non-arbitrary sound-meaning associations for gaining a deeper understanding of how linguistic categories have developed evolutionarily and historically