The influence of the temporal characteristics of events on children's pronoun resolution

The main goal of the thesis was to determine whether the temporal characteristics of events influence 7- to 11-year-olds’ pronoun resolution to identify if this might explain contradictory findings in the literature regarding the age at which children demonstrate a subject bias interpretation of a pronoun. A second goal was to determine whether children demonstrate the same influence of aspectual morphemes in narrative contexts as shown by adults in previous research. A third goal was to examine whether literature written for children might provide a potential causal explanation (environmental exposure) for the pattern of development observed in the experimental work. Chapter 1 reviews the literature that is considered relevant to the experimental work. The experiments in Chapter 2 examined pronoun resolution following SourceGoal transfer of possession events expressed with imperfective or perfective grammatical aspect. Experiment 1a (children) and Experiment 1b (adults) examined ambiguous pronoun resolution, Experiments 2a and 2b examined children’s pronoun resolution following transfer events with different gender protagonists. In all experiments an effect of grammatical aspect was observed with children and adults selecting the Source protagonist more frequently when the event was expressed with imperfective than perfective aspect. Despite demonstrating an influence of grammatical aspect, unlike adults, children did not demonstrate a subject bias interpretation of an ambiguous pronoun following the imperfective expression of a transfer event and children were more likely than adults to demonstrate a Goal interpretation of the pronoun following perfectively expressed transfer events. Transfer of possession events have endpoints (they are telic) and this pattern of results suggests that the presence of an endpoint in the stimulus sentences influenced children’s tendency to resolve a subsequent pronoun towards the previous subject protagonist. This possibility was examined in Chapter 3. The experiments in Chapter 3 examined the effect of grammatical aspect on adults’ (Experiment 3a) and children’s (Experiment 3b) resolution of ambiguous pronouns contained within events from two lexical aspect categories; those with inherent endpoints and those without. Adults and children were more likely to resolve the pronoun to the subject protagonist following events without endpoints than following events with endpoints. These findings support those reported in Chapter 2, showing that the inherent temporal characteristics of events influence adults’ and children’s pronoun resolution. Grammatical aspect had an influence on adults’ pronoun resolution only for events with endpoints. In contrast, grammatical aspect influenced children’s pronoun resolution for events from both lexical aspect categories. This was interpreted as a consequence of the smaller effect of grammatical aspect on children’s pronoun resolution which limited the opportunity to observe an interaction. The experiments in Chapter 4 examined the effect of grammatical aspect on children’s judgement of transfer events ongoingness (Experiment 4a) and on children’s pronoun resolution (Experiment 4b) when the events were embedded within narratives. In contrast to the previous experiments in the thesis where stimulus sentences were presented in isolation, the experiments in this chapter found an increase in children’s sensitivity to imperfective aspect with age. When asked immediately after the aspectual event, children’s judgement that imperfectively expressed events were ongoing increased with age as did their Source resolution of an ambiguous pronoun. When there was intervening text between the aspectual event and the question, children’s judgement that imperfectively expressed events were ongoing decreased with age, and similarly their Source resolution also decreased with age. Experiment 4c examined whether a short delay between the presentation of the aspectual sentence and the pronoun had the same effect as intervening text. This was confirmed: there was an age decrease in Source resolution for imperfectively expressed events but not for perfectively expressed events. These findings provide converging evidence that, like adults in previous research, older children take into account the temporal characteristics with which events are expressed and the inherent duration of events themselves in their construction of situation models during narrative comprehension. Chapter 5 examined the frequency with which verbs typically used to describe telic events (events with endpoints) and atelic events (events without endpoints) were expressed with imperfective and perfective aspect in a corpus of literature read by children within the age range 7- to 11-years. It also examined the coherence relations most likely to follow perfectively expressed transfer events and the grammatical subject of these coherence relations. Verbs were more often expressed with perfective than imperfective aspect. Verbs typically used to describe atelic events were expressed with imperfective aspect more frequently than verbs typically used to describe telic events. This pattern suggests that, within these two lexical aspect categories, a distributional bias in imperfective expression persists beyond young children’s language environment (Shirai & Andersen, 1995). Perfectively expressed transfer events were more often followed by Occasion than other coherence relations (Elaboration, Result, Parallel, Explanation, Other). There was no evidence of a Goal re-mention bias generally following transfer events, there was evidence of a Goal remention bias within Occasion relations. These findings support the proposal that the temporal characteristics of events are a stronger predictor of the type of coherence relation that will follow events than the re-mention of particular protagonists. They further suggest that re-mention biases are contingent on coherence relations. Taken together the findings demonstrate that children’s pronoun resolution is influenced by both the inherent temporal characteristics of events and the grammatical aspect with which events are expressed. How these findings explain previously reported contradictory findings in the literature is discussed. How the findings inform our understanding of the nature of the difficulties some children experience with pronoun resolution is also discussed

The Process and Product of Coherence Monitoring in Young Readers:Effects of Reader and Text Characteristics

We examined sixth graders’ detection of inconsistencies in narrative and expository passages, contrasting participants who were monolingual speakers (N=85) or Spanish-English DLLs (N=94) when recruited in pre-kindergarten (PK). We recorded self-paced reading times and judgements about whether the text made sense, and took an independent measure of word reading. Main findings were that inconsistency detection was better for narratives, for participants who were monolingual speakers in PK, and for those who were better word readers. When the text processing demands were increased by separating the inconsistent sentence and its premise with filler sentences there was a stronger signal for inconsistency detection during reading for better word readers. Reading patterns differed for texts for which children reported an inconsistency compared to those for which they did not, indicating a failure to adequately monitor for coherence while reading. Our performance measures indicate that narrative and expository texts make different demands on readers

Effect of imagery training on children's comprehension of pronouns

Children with good and poor listening comprehension (n = 17 in each group) 9-10 years of age were trained to self-generate mental images for sentences and stories. Their ability to identify the antecedents of personal pronouns in individual sentences and also to select the appropriate pronoun in a story cloze task was assessed pre- and posttraining. In general, posttraining scores were significantly higher than pretraining scores. In both tasks, imagery training benefitted poor comprehenders when the pronoun and antecedent were close and good comprehenders when the pronoun and its antecedent were distant. The authors discuss these findings in relation to the memory demands of the task. This study shows that even 9-10-year-olds may experience difficulties with pronoun comprehension in particular circumstances, but that these difficulties can be reduced with a nonverbal support strategy

The influence of the temporal characteristics of events on adults' and children's pronoun resolution

We examined the influence of the lexical and grammatical aspect of events on pronoun resolution in adults (18 to 23 years, N = 46), adolescents (13 to 14 years, N=66) and children (7 to 11 years, N=192). Participants were presented with 64 two-sentence stimuli: the first sentence described events with two same gender protagonists; the second began with a personal pronoun and described a status that could be attributed to either protagonist. Participants recorded to whom the pronoun referred, in a booklet. For all groups, Subject resolutions were more likely for events (a) without endpoints relative to those with endpoints, and (b) described as ongoing rather than completed, but this latter influence was restricted to events with endpoints for adults and adolescents. The findings provide support for the Event Structure Hypothesis of pronoun resolution (Rohde, Kehler & Elman, 2006) and provide new insights into the development of pronoun resolution

Text integration processes in children with Childhood Epilepsy with Centro-Temporal Spikes

Although Childhood Epilepsy with Centro-Temporal Spikes (CECTS) is considered a ‘benign’ form of epilepsy, word reading, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension difficulties have been reported. We examined two core skills for text comprehension, coherence monitoring and inference generation, in children with CECTS and compared performance with typically developing controls. Children with CECTS (n=23; 9 females; mean age 9y 0m) and the comparison group (n=38; 14 females; mean age 9y 1m) completed two tasks. For coherence monitoring they heard 24 narrative texts, 16 containing two inconsistent sentences, and responded to a yes/no question to assess identification of the inconsistency after each text; for inference making they heard 16 texts designed to elicit a target inference by integrating information in two sentences and responded to a yes/no question to assess generation of the inference. In both tasks there was a near condition, in which critical sentences were adjacent, and a far condition in which these sentences were separated by filler sentences. Accuracy to the question and the processing time for critical sentences in the text were measured. We used listening comprehension tasks to control for variation in word reading ability. Mixed effects analyses for each task revealed that children with CECTS show comparable levels of accuracy to age-matched peers in these tasks tapping two core text integration skills: detection of inconsistencies and generation of inferences. However, they take longer to process texts indicating a likely source of their listening and reading comprehension difficulties

Radiocarbon Variations from Tasmanian Conifers: First Results from Late Pleistocene and Holocene Logs

From the 14th International Radiocarbon Conference held in Tucson, AZ, May 20-24, 1991.Dendrochronological studies have begun on two conifer species in the Stanley River area of western Tasmania. The chronology extends to 273 BC for Huon pine (Lagarostrobos franklinii) and to AD 1450 for celery-top pine (Phyllocladus aspleniifolius). Apart from living or recently felled trees, sections have been taken from 58 logs preserved in floodplain sediments. Two of these logs have late Pleistocene ages, centered around 13.0 and 12.7 k 14C yr BP. Four logs are between 8 and 9 ka BP, and one is centered at 7.3 ka BP. The remaining logs have various ages between 6.2 ka BP and the present. 14C measurements have been performed on decadal samples from the two late Pleistocene logs, providing short (260-yr) records of atmospheric 14C variations when plotted against individual ring numbers. Decadal measurements on the 7300-yr-old log have been wiggle-matched with 14C calibration curves from German oak and bristlecone pine. Measurements for the period, AD 1600-1800, show good agreement with northern hemisphere results, and a nearly zero offset between the hemispheresThis material was digitized as part of a cooperative project between Radiocarbon and the University of Arizona Libraries.The Radiocarbon archives are made available by Radiocarbon and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact [email protected] for further information.Migrated from OJS platform February 202

Radiocarbon Variations from Tasmanian Conifers: Results from Three Early Holocene Logs

Dendrochronological studies are being carried out on two conifer species in the Stanley River area of western Tasmania. The chronology for Huon pine (Lagarostrobos franklinic), with living trees up to 1400 yr old, extends back to 571 BC. Living celery-top pine (Phyllocladus asplenii folios) trees are up to 500 yr old. Apart from living or recently felled trees, sections have been taken from 350 subfossil logs preserved in floodplain sediments. They range in age from >38 ka to modern, with good coverage for the periods 9-3.5 ka and from 2.5 ka to the present. We report here on 14C measurements of decadal samples from three early Holocene logs, between 10 and 9 ka BP, providing short (ca. 300-yr) records of atmospheric 14C variations when plotted against ring numbers. The southern hemisphere data from Tasmania can be compared and wigglematched with published 14C calibration curves from German oak and pine. One set of measurements covers the period, ca. 9280-8990 cal BP, overlapping the link between the Hohenheim "Main 9" and middle Holocene master oak chronologies. The other sets of measurements from Tasmania coincide; they span the period, ca. 9840-9480 cal BP, overlapping the end of the German Preboreal pine and the beginning of the oak chronologies. Our measurements confirm that this part of the calibration curve is a gently sloping 14C-age plateau (ca. 8900-8700 BP, between 10,000 and 9500 cal BP), and suggest interhemispheric 14C differences close to zero.This material was digitized as part of a cooperative project between Radiocarbon and the University of Arizona Libraries.The Radiocarbon archives are made available by Radiocarbon and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact [email protected] for further information.Migrated from OJS platform February 202

Radiocarbon Variations from Tasmanian Conifers: Results from Three Early Holocene Logs

Dendrochronological studies are being carried out on two conifer species in the Stanley River area of western Tasmania. The chronology for Huon pine (Lagarostrobos franklinic), with living trees up to 1400 yr old, extends back to 571 BC. Living celery-top pine (Phyllocladus asplenii folios) trees are up to 500 yr old. Apart from living or recently felled trees, sections have been taken from 350 subfossil logs preserved in floodplain sediments. They range in age from >38 ka to modern, with good coverage for the periods 9-3.5 ka and from 2.5 ka to the present. We report here on 14C measurements of decadal samples from three early Holocene logs, between 10 and 9 ka BP, providing short (ca. 300-yr) records of atmospheric 14C variations when plotted against ring numbers. The southern hemisphere data from Tasmania can be compared and wigglematched with published 14C calibration curves from German oak and pine. One set of measurements covers the period, ca. 9280-8990 cal BP, overlapping the link between the Hohenheim "Main 9" and middle Holocene master oak chronologies. The other sets of measurements from Tasmania coincide; they span the period, ca. 9840-9480 cal BP, overlapping the end of the German Preboreal pine and the beginning of the oak chronologies. Our measurements confirm that this part of the calibration curve is a gently sloping 14C-age plateau (ca. 8900-8700 BP, between 10,000 and 9500 cal BP), and suggest interhemispheric 14C differences close to zero.This material was digitized as part of a cooperative project between Radiocarbon and the University of Arizona Libraries.The Radiocarbon archives are made available by Radiocarbon and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact [email protected] for further information.Migrated from OJS platform February 202

The Process and Product of Coherence Monitoring in Young Readers: Effects of Reader and Text Characteristics

The pre-registration for this paper can be found at: https://osf.io/r69a