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Language, Speech, and Hearing Services... Jan 2023This study examined the effect of phonological overlap on English and Spanish expressive vocabulary accuracy as measured by the bilingual Expressive One-Word Picture...
PURPOSE
This study examined the effect of phonological overlap on English and Spanish expressive vocabulary accuracy as measured by the bilingual Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition (EOWPVT-IV). We hypothesized that if languages interact during an expressive vocabulary task, then higher phonological overlap will predict higher expressive vocabulary accuracy, especially in the nondominant language.
METHOD
Twenty English-dominant bilingual children (English-Spanish) completed the bilingual EOWPVT-IV. We calculated phonological overlap between 117 English and Spanish words included in the bilingual EOWPVT using the Crosslinguistic Overlap Scale for Phonology.
RESULTS
Generalized logistic mixed-effect models revealed that phonological overlap and word frequency predicted vocabulary accuracy in Spanish, in addition to item difficulty. Age and item difficulty were the only predictors of English accuracy.
CONCLUSIONS
Phonological overlap was a significant predictor of Spanish vocabulary accuracy (the least dominant language of the children in our sample), suggesting a transfer between vocabulary in the dominant language into vocabulary in the least dominant language. Future studies should investigate how languages interact in bilingual children to provide us with information about how to create and administer vocabulary tests that represent vocabulary in each language and use vocabulary teaching strategies that promote dual language development.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21554838.
Topics: Child; Humans; Vocabulary; Multilingualism; Language; Linguistics; Language Development; Language Tests
PubMed: 36399793
DOI: 10.1044/2022_LSHSS-22-00021 -
Scientific Reports Mar 2023Communication between sound and music experts is based on the shared understanding of a metaphorical vocabulary derived from other sensory modalities. Yet, the impact of...
Communication between sound and music experts is based on the shared understanding of a metaphorical vocabulary derived from other sensory modalities. Yet, the impact of sound expertise on the mental representation of these sound concepts remains blurry. To address this issue, we investigated the acoustic portraits of four metaphorical sound concepts (brightness, warmth, roundness, and roughness) in three groups of participants (sound engineers, conductors, and non-experts). Participants (N = 24) rated a corpus of orchestral instrument sounds (N = 520) using Best-Worst Scaling. With this data-driven method, we sorted the sound corpus for each concept and population. We compared the population ratings and ran machine learning algorithms to unveil the acoustic portraits of each concept. Overall, the results revealed that sound engineers were the most consistent. We found that roughness is widely shared while brightness is expertise dependent. The frequent use of brightness by expert populations suggests that its meaning got specified through sound expertise. As for roundness and warmth, it seems that the importance of pitch and noise in their acoustic definition is the key to distinguishing them. These results provide crucial information on the mental representations of a metaphorical vocabulary of sound and whether it is shared or refined by sound expertise.
Topics: Humans; Acoustic Stimulation; Sound; Noise; Acoustics; Vocabulary; Music
PubMed: 36997613
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-32214-2 -
International Journal of Environmental... Jul 2021Written vocabulary size plays a key role in children's reading development. We aim to study the relationship between Chinese written vocabulary size and cognitive,...
Written vocabulary size plays a key role in children's reading development. We aim to study the relationship between Chinese written vocabulary size and cognitive, emotional, and behavioral factors in primary school students. Using stratified cluster sampling, 1162 pupils from Grade 2~5 in Guangzhou were investigated. Chinese written vocabulary size, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral factors were assessed by the Chinese written vocabulary size assessment scale, the dyslexia checklist for Chinese children (DCCC) and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), respectively. The scores of visual word recognition deficit ( = -3.32, 95% CI: -5.98, -0.66) and meaning comprehension deficit ( = -6.52, 95% CI: -9.39, -3.64) were negatively associated with Chinese written vocabulary size; the score of visual word recognition deficit (odds ratio (OR) = 1.04, 95% CI: 1.02, 1.07) was the related factor of a delay in written vocabulary size. The score of meaning comprehension deficit was negatively associated with boys' Chinese written vocabulary size, while the score of auditory word recognition deficit was negatively associated with girls' Chinese written vocabulary size. The related factor of a delay in written vocabulary size was spelling deficit in boys and visual word recognition deficit in girls. There is a significant correlation between Chinese written vocabulary size and cognitive factors, but not emotional and behavioral factors in primary school students and these correlations are different when considering gender.
Topics: Child; China; Comprehension; Female; Humans; Male; Reading; Schools; Students; Vocabulary
PubMed: 34360088
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18157797 -
Journal of Speech, Language, and... May 2023The goal of this work was to examine the semantic and syntactic properties of the vocabularies of autistic and non-autistic infants and toddlers to see if children in...
PURPOSE
The goal of this work was to examine the semantic and syntactic properties of the vocabularies of autistic and non-autistic infants and toddlers to see if children in these two groups know different kinds of words. We focused on both receptive and expressive vocabularies. For expressive vocabulary, we looked only at the "active" lexicon: Of those words that are already in children's receptive vocabulary, we asked which ones they also produce.
METHOD
We used an existing data set of 346 parent report vocabulary checklists (MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures) from 41 autistic and 27 non-autistic children at multiple timepoints between the ages of 6 and 43 months. We coded the words on the checklists for various semantic and syntactic properties and evaluated which properties predicted whether children understood and produced those words.
RESULTS
Overall, we replicated a common finding that autistic children have smaller receptive vocabularies than non-autistic children, but we found that of the words they understand, autistic children produce a similar proportion of those words as non-autistic children. While we found that some syntactic properties are more or less likely to be represented in children's early vocabularies (e.g., nouns are more likely to be understood and produced than words that are not nouns), these patterns did not differ across autistic and non-autistic children.
CONCLUSIONS
The semantic and syntactic compositions of autistic and non-autistic children's vocabularies are similar. Thus, while receptive vocabularies are relatively smaller for autistic children, they do not appear to have specific difficulty with words that have particular syntactic or semantic properties, or with adding words to the expressive vocabulary that they already understand.
Topics: Infant; Humans; Child, Preschool; Semantics; Vocabulary; Language; Language Development; Communication
PubMed: 37137280
DOI: 10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00369 -
Occupational Therapy International 2022In real communication, the context is complex and changeable and the color and meaning of some words will wander in the context. The development and changes of words are...
OBJECTIVE
In real communication, the context is complex and changeable and the color and meaning of some words will wander in the context. The development and changes of words are more complex and multidimensional than before. Compared with the rational meaning of words, the color meaning of words can better reflect the psychological mode and way of thinking of the Han nationality but it is difficult for foreign learners to accurately grasp and misunderstandings often occur. In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to summarize and explain the words whose color meanings are easily shifted, so as to help the students accurately grasp the color meanings of the words and better help Chinese learners to realize the communicative function of the language.
METHOD
This paper takes the scope of emotional words as the starting point and proposes that emotional words are words with emotional colors. The four aspects of whether words belong to emotional words define the concept of emotional words and introduce the specific methods of judging and extracting emotional words from the two aspects of dictionary definition and word collocation. This paper takes foreign students whose native language is English as the research object, through questionnaire survey and corpus analysis, to investigate the use of foreign students' emotional colors and to explore the influence of native language factors on emotional color acquisition. Based on the research of modern Chinese ontology and the existing research results in the field of teaching Chinese as a foreign language, this paper takes the theory of interlanguage and transfer theory as the theoretical basis and mainly uses the methods of comparative analysis and error analysis to try to find out the relationship between emotional color teaching and acquisition.
RESULTS
/. The basic pattern and quantity distribution of lexical emotion correction for beginners, intermediate, and advanced learners of Chinese as a second language were analyzed, and the restrictive factors and characteristics were explained. Similarities and differences and the rationale behind them were explored. In the process of international Chinese teaching, teachers mostly pay attention to the rational meaning of words, while ignoring the teaching of the emotional meaning of words. The lack of vocabulary emotion and meaning teaching is prone to errors in students' understanding and use. With the increase of the vocabulary of intermediate and advanced learners, many words with similar colors and meanings appear, which brings a lot of difficulties for students to distinguish between synonyms. If the use of words with emotional meanings is not accurate, it is easy to cause communication barriers.
Topics: Emotions; Humans; Language; Occupational Therapy; Students; Vocabulary
PubMed: 35495175
DOI: 10.1155/2022/5203122 -
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology Sep 2022Science achievement gaps are a persistent social issue and are largely explained by individual differences in science knowledge before formal schooling. We were...
Science achievement gaps are a persistent social issue and are largely explained by individual differences in science knowledge before formal schooling. We were interested in whether children's science vocabulary relates to these differences in science knowledge. This experiment examined whether children's science vocabulary predicted their science knowledge above and beyond general vocabulary size and demographic variables. Children aged 3 to 11 years (N = 91; 59 boys) participated in-person at a laboratory within a large university in a mid-size city in the midwestern United States. The tasks that the children completed assessed general receptive vocabulary, science productive vocabulary, general science knowledge, and conceptions of science as a practice. We found that science vocabulary was the strongest predictor of science knowledge above and beyond other factors, indicating that science vocabulary production may predict individual differences in science knowledge specifically when achievement gaps emerge (β = .28). In addition, children who produced more of certain types of science words, such as size and physical property words, depicted more science equipment and language elements in their drawings of scientists. These findings suggest that learning new words may be related to conceptual development in science and that examining early science vocabulary is a key step toward fully understanding science knowledge gaps.
Topics: Child; Child Language; Humans; Individuality; Language; Language Development; Male; Vocabulary
PubMed: 35523079
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105427 -
Revue Medicale Suisse Sep 2020
Topics: Humans; Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive; Vocabulary
PubMed: 32880120
DOI: No ID Found -
Child Development Jan 2023We examined the relation between socioeconomic status (SES), vocabulary, and reading in middle childhood, during the transition from primary (elementary) to secondary...
We examined the relation between socioeconomic status (SES), vocabulary, and reading in middle childhood, during the transition from primary (elementary) to secondary (high) school. Children (N = 279, 163 girls) completed assessments of everyday and curriculum-related vocabulary, (non)word reading, and reading comprehension at five timepoints from age 10 to 13. Piecewise linear mixed-effects models showed significant growth in everyday vocabulary and word reading between every time point. Curriculum vocabulary and reading comprehension showed significant growth during the school year, but not during the summer holidays. There were significant effects of SES on all measures except word reading; yet, SES differences did not widen over time. Our findings motivate targeted reading and vocabulary support for secondary school students from lower SES backgrounds.
Topics: Female; Humans; Child; Adolescent; Vocabulary; Comprehension; Schools; Social Class; Linear Models
PubMed: 36214376
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13862 -
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research Dec 2023Vocabulary knowledge greatly affects writing performance (Stæhr in Lang Learn J 36:139-152, 2008; Johnson in Tesol J 7:700-715 2016), but little is known about the...
The Role of Receptive/Orthographic Vocabulary, Productive/Orthographic Vocabulary, Productive/Phonological Vocabulary and Depth of Vocabulary in Predicting Reading-to-Write Performance.
Vocabulary knowledge greatly affects writing performance (Stæhr in Lang Learn J 36:139-152, 2008; Johnson in Tesol J 7:700-715 2016), but little is known about the relative contribution of different dimensions of vocabulary knowledge to reading-to-write performance. The current study attempted to investigates the contribution of receptive/orthographic (RecOrth) vocabulary knowledge, productive/orthographic knowledge (ProOrth), productive/phonological (ProPhon) vocabulary knowledge and depth of vocabulary knowledge to reading-to-write scores. For this purpose, 154 Chinese English as foreign language (EFL) learners took a battery of vocabulary knowledge tests and a reading-to-write test. The extent to which vocabulary at different word frequencies predicted reading-to-write was also investigated. The results of regression indicated that ProOrth academic level, vocabulary depth, and RecOrth 2, 000 frequency level explained 40.2% of the reading-to-write score variance. Among the high-performing group, ProOrth academic and vocabulary depth were predictive of the reading-to-write score, while only ProOrth academic vocabulary explained the variance in the reading-to-write score for the low-performing group. The findings reveal the important relationship among dimensions of vocabulary knowledge and reading-to-write and stress the need for systematic vocabulary instruction.
Topics: Humans; Vocabulary; Reading; Phonetics; Language; Writing
PubMed: 37982924
DOI: 10.1007/s10936-023-10027-8 -
Infancy : the Official Journal of the... 2023We compared vocabulary sizes in comprehension and production between bilingual toddlers growing up in the United Kingdom (UK) and age-matched UK English monolinguals...
We compared vocabulary sizes in comprehension and production between bilingual toddlers growing up in the United Kingdom (UK) and age-matched UK English monolinguals (12-36 months old) using parent-report vocabulary questionnaires. We found that bilingual toddlers' vocabulary sizes in English were smaller than the vocabulary sizes of their monolingual peers. Notably, this vocabulary gap was not found when groups were compared on conceptual vocabulary in comprehension. Conceptual scoring also reduced the vocabulary gap in production but group differences were still significant. Bilingual toddlers knew more words than monolinguals when words across their two languages were added together, for both comprehension and production. This large total vocabulary size could be attributed to a high proportion of doublets (cross-linguistic word pairs with the same meaning) in bilinguals' vocabularies. These findings are discussed in relation to language exposure, facilitation from cross-linguistic overlap and maturation constraints on vocabulary size.
Topics: Humans; Child, Preschool; Infant; Vocabulary; Multilingualism; Language; Comprehension; Language Tests
PubMed: 37792587
DOI: 10.1111/infa.12562