A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Communicative Patterns in Bilingual and Monolingual Mother-Child Dyads in the United States and Thailand

Parental speech has some influences on children’s language development. The way parents speak with their children is often reflected in the children’s speech patterns. Prior research suggests that monolingual mother-child communication differs as a function of linguistic and cultural background. The present study examined communicative patterns of bilingual and monolingual mother-child dyads in Thailand and the United States to determine whether there are differences in conversational style and content between bilinguals and monolinguals who are native to different countries and cultures. Participants included four bilingual mother-preschooler dyads from Thailand, four bilingual mother-preschooler dyads from the US, and 21 English monolingual dyads from the US. Each dyad completed three tasks in English: prompted reminiscing, book reading, and toy play. Interactions were video-recorded, transcribed using Codes for the Analysis of Human Language (CHAT), and coded for language measures. Data analysis utilized maternal and child mean frequency of each language measure. Results revealed that English monolingual mothers provided more descriptions, posed more questions, used more emotion words, and discussed their thoughts and feelings more than both groups of bilingual mothers. Similarly, English monolingual children shared their thoughts and feelings more than the two groups of bilingual children in each task, whereas the bilingual groups did not differ in their use of other linguistic measures. We conclude that culture and language status can change how monolinguals and bilinguals communicate, even when speaking the same language

Costs and Benefits of Native Language Similarity for Non-native Word Learning

The present study examined the costs and benefits of native language similarity for non-native vocabulary learning. Because learning a second language (L2) is difficult, many learners start with easy words that look like their native language (L1) to jumpstart their vocabulary. However, this approach may not be the most effective strategy in the long-term, compared to introducing difficult L2 vocabulary early on. We examined how L1 orthographic typicality affects pattern learning of novel vocabulary by teaching English monolinguals either Englishlike or Non-Englishlike pseudowords that contained repeated orthographic patterns. We found that overall, the first words that individuals learned during initial acquisition influenced which words they acquired later. Specifically, learning a new word in one session made it easier to acquire an orthographically similar word in the next session. Similarity among non-native words interacted with native language similarity, so that words that looked more like English were easier to learn at first, but they were less effective at influencing later word learning. This demonstrates that although native language similarity has a beneficial effect early on, it may reduce learners' ability to benefit from non-native word patterns during continued acquisition. This surprising finding demonstrates that making learning easier may not be the most effective long-term strategy. Learning difficult vocabulary teaches the learner what makes non-native words unique, and this general wordform knowledge may be more valuable than the words themselves. We conclude that native language similarity modulates new vocabulary acquisition and that difficulties during learning are not always to be avoided, as additional effort early on can pay later dividends

Rata naşterii prin cezariană şi factorii ce o influenţează

În articol este prezentată analiza dinamicii ratei operaţiilor cezariene pentru condiţiile IMSP ICŞDOSMşiC, a factorilor ce infl uenţează ROC şi corelarea dintre mortalitatea perinatală şi ROC. O atenţie sporită se acordă studiului dinamicii deceselor copiilor în OC, raportului pierderilor perinatale în funcţie de termenul de gestaţie şi frecvenţei indicaţiilor primare în OC

Imported Canine leishmaniasis in Romania: a Case Report

Canine leishmaniasis (CanL) is a zoonotic disease considered endemic in the Mediterranean region. Romania is traditionally regarded as a non-endemic country.Considering the zoonotic character of the disease, this study aims to increase the knowledge on diagnostic aspects of CanL.A 2-year-old, mix breed male dog, recently returned from Italy had a history of progressive weight loss and skin lesions. The clinical examination was followed by hematology and serum biochemistry, fine-needle aspiration of lymph nodes, impression smears, VetExpert® rapid test Leishmania Ab, and PCR. The clinical examination revealed muscle atrophy, non-pruritic crusting dermatitis, ulcers, and lymphadenopathy. Hematology showed severe anemia. The serum biochemistry revealed hyperproteinaemia, hypoalbuminemia, hyperglobulinemia. Cytological exams evidenced the intracellular amastigotes in macrophages, confirmed by rapid test and PCR.In Romania, under the light of the new case reports, leishmaniasis should be reconsidered from both veterinary and public health perspective

The case for measuring and reporting bilingualism in developmental research

Many children around the world grow up bilingual, learning and using two or more languages in everyday life. Currently, however, children’s language backgrounds are not always reported in developmental studies. There is mounting evidence that bilingualism interacts with a wide array of processes including language, cognitive, perceptual, brain, and social development, as well as educational outcomes. As such, bilingualism may be a hidden moderator that obscures developmental patterns, and limits the replicability of developmental research and the efficacy of psychological and educational interventions. Here, we argue that bilingualism and language experience in general should be routinely documented in all studies of infant and child development regardless of the research questions pursued, and provide suggestions for measuring and reporting children’s language exposure, proficiency, and use

Activation of nontarget language phonology during bilingual visual word recognition: Evidence from eye-tracking

Russian-English bilingual and English monolingual participants were tested on the Picture-Word Interference task modified for use with an eye-tracker. Distractor words were 1) non-words in English, but viable phonological words in Russian, 2) control bigram matched non-word stimuli, and 3) English translations of the Russian words. Russian-English bilinguals looked at the phonological Russian words more than monolingual participants, and took longer to name pictures accompanied by these stimuli than did monolingual participants. Proportion of eye-movements and reaction times to the other two types of distractor stimuli did not differ for the two groups. These results suggest that phonology of the non-target language is activated automatically during visual word recognition in the target language, even for written stimuli that do not carry orthographic information for the nontarget language