Lexical and cognitive development of children learning regional languages: Studies from the Netherlands

Regional language speakers are subject to negative social judgments. In this contribution, I provide an overview of research in the Netherlands with children who are regional language learners against the backdrop of this deficit perspective. Findings on the lexical and cognitive development of children from Fryslân, a northern Dutch province, and Limburg, a southern Dutch province, demonstrate that regional language acquisition is neither associated with language delays nor with any cognitive difficulties. Linguistic overlap between Frisian and Limburgish, on the one hand, and Dutch, on the other hand, results in ample opportunities to share linguistic resources, experiences, and knowledge. Especially unbalanced children benefit from this cross-linguistic overlap because they can make use of their stronger language to perform in the weaker language. Cross-linguistic regularities between the regional and national language are helpful and support performance in the regional language. Results on cognitive effects suggest that regional language learners have some selective attention advantages. Although significant, the effects are small, the advantages do not last long, and they require sufficient exposure to and proficiency in the regional language

Lexical and cognitive development of children learning regional languages: Studies from the Netherlands

Regional language speakers are subject to negative social judgments. In this contribution, I provide an overview of research in the Netherlands with children who are regional language learners against the backdrop of this deficit perspective. Findings on the lexical and cognitive development of children from Fryslân, a northern Dutch province, and Limburg, a southern Dutch province, demonstrate that regional language acquisition is neither associated with language delays nor with any cognitive difficulties. Linguistic overlap between Frisian and Limburgish, on the one hand, and Dutch, on the other hand, results in ample opportunities to share linguistic resources, experiences, and knowledge. Especially unbalanced children benefit from this cross-linguistic overlap because they can make use of their stronger language to perform in the weaker language. Cross-linguistic regularities between the regional and national language are helpful and support performance in the regional language. Results on cognitive effects suggest that regional language learners have some selective attention advantages. Although significant, the effects are small, the advantages do not last long, and they require sufficient exposure to and proficiency in the regional language

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

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

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

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