Bilingualism and conversational understanding in young children

The purpose of the two experiments reported here was to investigate whether bilingualism confers an advantage on children’s conversational understanding. A total of 163 children aged 3 to 6 years were given a Conversational Violations Test to determine their ability to identify responses to questions as violations of Gricean maxims of conversation (to be informative and avoid redundancy, speak the truth, and be relevant and polite). Though comparatively delayed in their L2 vocabulary, children who were bilingual in Italian and Slovenian (with Slovenian as the dominant language) generally outperformed those who were either monolingual in Italian or Slovenian. We suggest that bilingualism can be accompanied by an enhanced ability to appreciate effective communicative responses

Bilingualism Accentuates Children's Conversational Understanding

BACKGROUND: Although bilingualism is prevalent throughout the world, little is known about the extent to which it influences children's conversational understanding. Our investigation involved children aged 3-6 years exposed to one or more of four major languages: English, German, Italian, and Japanese. In two experiments, we examined the children's ability to identify responses to questions as violations of conversational maxims (to be informative and avoid redundancy, to speak the truth, be relevant, and be polite). PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In Experiment 1, with increasing age, children showed greater sensitivity to maxim violations. Children in Italy who were bilingual in German and Italian (with German as the dominant language L1) significantly outperformed Italian monolinguals. In Experiment 2, children in England who were bilingual in English and Japanese (with English as L1) significantly outperformed Japanese monolinguals in Japan with vocabulary age partialled out. CONCLUSIONS: As the monolingual and bilingual groups had a similar family SES background (Experiment 1) and similar family cultural identity (Experiment 2), these results point to a specific role for early bilingualism in accentuating children's developing ability to appreciate effective communicative responses

MOSAICO_STUDIUM 2030_LA CITTÀ DEGLI STUDENTI_PROARCH / CALL FOR PROJECTS

Il progetto Mosaico risponde alla Call for projects Pro Arch Studium 2030_LA CITTÀ DEGLI STUDENTI e si caratterizza per il ridisegno dell’intera piazza della Conca a Perugia secondo un pattern che riprende liberamente le geometrie e i colori del prospetto della Chiesa di San Francesco al Prato. L’intero parterre si sviluppa armonizzando le quote in uno shared space nel cui disegno si alternano la pietra bianca e rosa di San Terenziano. Nell’area dell’ex mensa si ricolloca idealmente il tappeto musivo del Mosaico di Santa Elisabetta sul quale i volumi interpretano il bestiario di Orfeo

STUDIUM 2030_La città degli studenti_Mostra dei progetti

Il progetto Mosaico risponde alla Call for projects Pro Arch Studium 2030_LA CITTÀ DEGLI STUDENTI e si caratterizza per il ridisegno dell’intera piazza della Conca a Perugia secondo un pattern che riprende liberamente le geometrie e i colori del prospetto della Chiesa di San Francesco al Prato. L’intero parterre si sviluppa armonizzando le quote in uno shared space nel cui disegno si alternano la pietra bianca e rosa di San Terenziano. Nell’area dell’ex mensa si ricolloca idealmente il tappeto musivo del Mosaico di Santa Elisabetta sul quale i volumi interpretano il bestiario di Orfeo

PAPER Belief attribution in deaf and hearing infants

Abstract Based on anticipatory looking and reactions to violations of expected events, infants have been credited with 'theory of mind' (ToM) knowledge that a person's search behaviour for an object will be guided by true or false beliefs about the object's location. However, little is known about the preconditions for looking patterns consistent with belief attribution in infants. In this study, we compared the performance of 17-to 26-month-olds on anticipatory looking in ToM tasks. The infants were either hearing or were deaf from hearing families and thus delayed in communicative experience gained from access to language and conversational input. Hearing infants significantly outperformed their deaf counterparts in anticipating the search actions of a cartoon character that held a false belief about a target-object location. By contrast, the performance of the two groups in a true belief condition did not differ significantly. These findings suggest for the first time that access to language and conversational input contributes to early ToM reasoning

A new chiral, poly-imidazole N8-ligand and the related di- and tri-copper(ii) complexes: synthesis, theoretical modelling, spectroscopic properties, and biomimetic stereoselective oxidations

The new poly-imidazole N8 ligand (S)-2-piperazinemethanamine-1,4-bis[2-((N-(1-acetoxy-3-(1- methyl-1H-imidazol-4-yl))-2-(S)-propyl)-(N-(1-methyl-1H-imidazol-2-ylmethyl)))ethyl]-N- (phenylmethyl)-N-(acetoxy), also named (S)-Pz-(C2-(HisIm))2 (L), containing three chiral (S) centers, was obtained by a multi-step synthesis and used to prepare dinuclear [Cu2(L)]4+ and trinuclear [Cu3(L)]6+ copper(II) complexes. Low-temperature EPR experiments performed on [Cu2(L)]4+ demonstrated that the two S = 1 2 centers behaved as independent paramagnetic units, while the EPR spectra used to study the trinuclear copper complex, [Cu3(L)]6+, were consistent with a weakly coupled three-spin 1 2 system. Theoretical models for the two complexes were obtained by DFT/RI-BP86/TZVP geometry optimization, where the structural and electronic characteristics nicely supported the EPR experimental findings. In addition, the theoretical analysis unveiled that the conformational flexibility encoded in both [Cu2(L)]4+ and [Cu3(L)]6+ arises not only from the presence of several s-bonds and the bulky residues attached to the (S)-Pz-(C2-(HisIm))2 ligand scaffold, but also from the poor coordination ability of the tertiary amino groups located in the ligand side-chains containing the imidazole units towards the copper(II) ions. Both the dinuclear and trinuclear complexes are efficient catalysts in the stereoselective oxidation of several catechols and flavonoid compounds, yielding the corresponding quinones. The structural features of the substrate–catalyst adduct intermediates were assessed by searching the conformational space of the molecule through MMFF94/Monte Carlo (MMFF94/MC) methods. The conformational flexibility of the bound ligand in the complexes proves to be beneficial for substrate binding and recognition. For the dinuclear complex, chiral recognition of the optically active substrates derives from weak electrostatic interactions between bound substrates and folded regions of the ligand scaffold. For the trinuclear complex, in the case of L/D-Dopa, the chiral recognition has a remarkable stereoselectivity index of 75%, the highest so far reported for this type of reaction. Here the dominant contribution to stereoselectivity arises from the direct interaction between a donor group (the Dopa carboxylate) far from the substrate reaction site (the catechol ring) with the additional (third) copper center not involved in the oxidative catalysis. On the other hand, in the case of bulky substrates, such as L/D-catechin, the observed poor substrate recognition is associated with much weaker interactions between the chiral regions of the complex and the chiral part of the substrate

Mean CVT maxim scores (out of 5) in Experiment 2 for the monolinguals in Japanese (JM) and for the English-Japanese bilinguals in English (EJB-E) and Japanese (EJB-J) adjusted for verbal mental age.

<p>Mean CVT maxim scores (out of 5) in Experiment 2 for the monolinguals in Japanese (JM) and for the English-Japanese bilinguals in English (EJB-E) and Japanese (EJB-J) adjusted for verbal mental age.</p