Історія створення музею археології Волинського державного університету імені Лесі Українки

Purpose: This study investigated the comprehension of counterfactual conditionals in monolingual Turkish children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing (TD) children. Comprehending counterfactuals requires a well-developed cognitive system (Beck, Riggs, & Gorniak, 2009). Children with SLI have impaired cognitive functioning (Im Bolter, Johnston, & Pascaul-Leone, 2006) and this impacts on their ability to comprehend counterfactuals. Method: The sample consisted of 13 children with SLI who were matched on age and nonverbal IQ with 13 TD children (mean age 6;9 [years; months] for both groups). Each group completed a sentence comprehension and repetition task with three sentence conditions: nonconditional, factual and counterfactual. Nonconditionals do not have if embedding whereas factual and counterfactual conditionals are morphosyntactically equivalent if-clauses, but only the latter is cognitively complex. Results: Conditionals were more difficult to comprehend than nonconditionals for both groups. Counterfactuals were more difficult to comprehend than the morphosyntactically equivalent factual counterparts for the SLI group. There was no discrepancy between the groups for repetition of counterfactuals and factuals. Conclusions: Children with SLI have difficulty processing counterfactuals due to morphosyntactic complexity (if-embedding) and the cognitive processes involved in comprehending counterfactuals. This indicates that cognitive complexity adds to sentence comprehension deficits in SLI

Production and on-line comprehension of definite articles and clitic pronouns by Greek sequential bilingual children and monolingual children with specific language impairment

The present study compared production and on-line comprehension of definite articles and third person direct object clitic pronouns in Greek-speaking typically developing, sequential bilingual (L2-TD) children and monolingual children with specific language impairment (L1-SLI). Twenty Turkish Greek L2-TD children, 16 Greek L1-SLI children, and 31 L1-TD Greek children participated in a production task examining definite articles and clitic pronouns and, in an on-line comprehension task, involving grammatical sentences with definite articles and clitics and sentences with grammatical violations induced by omitted articles and clitics. The results showed that the L2-TD children were sensitive to the grammatical violations despite low production. In contrast, the children with SLI were not sensitive to clitic omission in the on-line task, despite high production. These results support a dissociation between production and on-line comprehension in L2 children and for impaired grammatical representations and lack of automaticity in children with SLI. They also suggest that on-line comprehension tasks may complement production tasks by differentiating between the language profiles of L2-TD children and children with SLI

Understanding variation in prospective poor decoders : A person-centred approach from Kindergarten to Grade 2

In the present study, we aimed to clarify variation in prospective poor decoders by studying the development of their word decoding skills during the first 1½ years of formal reading education and their unique pre-reading profiles before the onset of formal reading education. Using structural equation modelling and a factorial mixed model analysis of variance (ANOVA), we found autoregression and growth in the word decoding efficiency of prospective poor decoders (n = 90) and matched prospective adequate decoders (n = 90) in first and second grade. However, the gap between the two groups widened over time. Next, we zoomed in on the group of poor decoders by retrospectively studying their individual variation regarding cognitive and linguistic pre-reading skills. Using latent profile analysis, we found three distinct pre-reading profiles: (1) Poor PA, Letter Knowledge, RAN, and Verbal STM; (2) Poor PA and Letter Knowledge; and (3) Poor RAN. Together, these findings suggest that reading difficulties emerge at the intersection of multiple risk factors which can be detected in kindergarten, and that these reading problems persist throughout early reading education

Cognitive flexibility in children with Developmental Language Disorder: Drawing of nonexistent objects

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to adapt thoughts and behaviors to new environments. Previous studies investigating cognitive flexibility in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) present contradictory findings. In the current study, cognitive flexibility was assessed in 5- and 6-year-old preschoolers with DLD (n = 23) and peers with typical development (TD; n = 50) using a nonexistent object drawing (NEOD) task. The children were asked to draw a nonexistent man and a nonexistent house. The children with DLD did not differ from their peers with TD on simple category changes, which were comprised of changes in the size or shape of parts of the object, change of the whole shape of the object, and deletion of parts of the object. Nevertheless, children with DLD made fewer more complex, high-level category changes, which included samecategory insertions, position exchange of object’s parts, and cross-category insertions. The difference between DLD and TD on high-level category changes was related to differences between the two groups in verbal short-term memory and inhibition. Furthermore, children with DLD made no changes to their original drawings of an existing man and house more often than their peers with TD. It is concluded that children with DLD aged 5–6 years show less flexibility on the NEOD task than age-matched children with TD. This difference in cognitive flexibility may be related to lower levels of verbal short-term memory and inhibition ability of children with DLD, or to different use of these cognitive skills on the NEOD task

Grammatical development in both languages of bilingual Turkish-Dutch children with and without Developmental Language Disorder

Introduction: To guarantee a reliable diagnosis of Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) in bilingual children, evaluating both languages is recommended. However, little is known about how DLD impacts the heritage language, and it is largely unknown whether bilingual children with DLD develop the heritage language at the same pace as their peers with typical development (TD). Methods: For this longitudinal study that focused on children's grammatical development, we analyzed semi-spontaneous speech samples of 10 Turkish-Dutch children with DLD (bi-DLD) and 10 Turkish-Dutch children with typical development (bi-TD). Children were 5 or 6 years old at the first wave of data collection, and there were three waves of longitudinal data collection with 1-year intervals. In addition, data from 20 monolingual Dutch controls were analyzed (10 mono-DLD, 10 mono-TD). Results and discussion: Results indicate that heritage language assessment can inform clinical diagnosis. In the case of Turkish spoken in the Netherlands, short sentences, the absence of the genitive suffix in simple constructions and avoidance of complex constructions that require possessive marking could potentially be clinical markers of DLD. Accusative case errors are also relatively frequent in bilingual Turkish-Dutch children with DLD, but these are less promising as a clinical marker because previous research suggests that omission and substitution of accusative case can be part of the input to Turkish heritage language learners. In Dutch, frequent omission of grammatical morphemes in the verbal domain coupled with a limited amount of overregularization errors could indicate that a child is at risk for DLD, both in bilingual and monolingual contexts. Cross-linguistic comparisons of error types in Turkish and Dutch confirm that, regardless of typological differences, children with DLD use short sentences, avoid complex structures, and omit grammatical morphemes. Longitudinal analyses revealed that children with DLD can develop the heritage language at the same pace as TD children, even if this language is not supported at school. Strong intergenerational transmission and heritage language maintenance among Turkish migrants in the Netherlands may be key

Discontinuation of specialist educational provision for children with DLD in the Netherlands: performance and predictors

Background. Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is characterized by large heterogeneity, but little is known about the variation in specialist educational support that children with DLD receive. This longitudinal study compared the language and reading performance of children with DLD for whom provision had been discontinued at age 7 or 8 years and children with DLD for whom it was continued, relative to typically developing (TD) controls. Additionally, we investigated linguistic, cognitive and environmental predictors of the discontinuation of provision. Methods. Monolinguals and bilinguals with (n=120) and without (n=113) DLD participated. Standardized measures were used to examine the proportion of children per group with poor language and reading ability at age 7 or 8. Binary logistic regression was conducted to predict the discontinuation of specialist educational provision, including language and cognitive skills at age 5 or 6, language growth, parental education and bilingualism. Results. Specialist educational provision was discontinued for 25% of the children with DLD. More bilinguals than monolinguals received continuing support, although this difference fell just short of significance. Children with DLD, both with and without specialist provision, performed more poorly on the standardized instruments than TD children, and the children with DLD with provision more often scored poorly than those without provision. Parental education, aswell as children’s baseline scores on and growth in inflectional morphology, predicted the discontinuation of specialist educational support. Conclusions and implications. Within a relatively short time period, specialist educational provision was discontinued for many children with DLD. Although these children perform better than peers with DLD with continuing specialist support, their language and reading skills are often poor. This group thus remains vulnerable and requires attention. Future research into decisions about specialist educational provision is needed to understand the role and relevance of inflectional morphology and parental education in the (dis)continuation of provision

Path and rate of development in child heritage speakers: Evidence from Greek subject/object form and placement

Aims: We investigated: (1) whether differences in accuracy between heritage speakers (HS) and monolingual speakers (MS) signal differences in the path or merely in the rate of language development, and (2) whether, independently of these differences, HS become more accurate as they grow older. Methods: Using an elicitation task, we collected data from three groups of speakers of Greek: HS in the United States and Canada (78–226 months), MS of the same age (77–177 months), and younger MS (42–69 months). In terms of structures, we focused on two phenomena that are encoded differently in Greek and English: subject/object form in reference maintenance contexts and subject placement in embedded wh-dependencies. Data and Analysis: Data were analyzed with mixed-effects logistic regression models. Findings: We found that the heritage group had a lower accuracy and produced different error patterns than both monolingual groups. Specifically, only the heritage group produced non-felicitous lexical subjects/objects in reference maintenance contexts and ungrammatical preverbal subjects in embedded wh-structures. Accuracy, though, increased with age. Furthermore, current amount of heritage language (HL) input and generation, which were included as covariates, emerged as significant predictors in some or all of the conditions. Originality: The inclusion of a younger monolingual group helped us determine whether the different patterns observed in the language of HS are also attested in the language of MS at earlier developmental stages. The inclusion of a wide age range helped us determine whether, independently of differences in the path/rate of development, HS become more accurate as they grow older and accumulate the necessary amount of HL input. Implications: HS may go through developmental stages not attested in L1 acquisition. However, differences in developmental stages do not necessarily entail differences in the outcome of language acquisition. HS’ accuracy may continue to increase, provided that they continue using their HL