Children's judgements of the functional acceptability of referential communications in discourse contexts

1983 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian P. Ackerman
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Discourse Context ◽  
Contextual Influence

ABSTRACTThis study determined whether young children are sensitive to the contextual influence of previous discourse on judgements of the adequacy of referential communications. Four- and six-year-old children were read short stories containing terminal referential communications that were either ambiguous or informative relative to a perceptual display of candidate-referential objects. Contextual information was given in the story prior to the terminal communication that was irrelevant to the ambiguous communications or that made these communications functionally informative. The subjects were required to say whether the listener in the story could identify one unique referent. The results showed that the judgements of both groups of children were sensitive to the discourse context of the communications. The children discriminated between the functionally informative and ambiguous communications.

Prediction differs at sentence and discourse level: An event-related potential study

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 797-815
Author(s):  
Ruohan Chang ◽  
Xiaohong Yang ◽  
Yufang Yang
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Information ◽  
Critical Word ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Sentence Context ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Living Room ◽  
Discourse Context ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Sentence Level ◽  
Related Potentials

AbstractThis study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate how predicting upcoming words differ when contextual information used to generate the prediction is from the immediately preceding sentence context versus an earlier discourse context. Four-sentence discourses were presented to participants, with the critical words in the last sentences, either predictable or unpredictable based on sentence- or discourse-level contextual information. At the sentence level, the crucial contextual information for prediction was provided by the last sentence, where the critical word was embedded (e.g., Xiaoyu came to the living room. She made a cup of lemon tea. Then she sat down in a chair. She opened a box/an album to look at the pictures.), and at the discourse level by the first sentence (e.g., Xiaoyu took out a box/an album. She made a cup of lemon tea. Then she sat down in a chair. She leisurely looked at the pictures.). Results showed reduced N400 for predictable words compared to unpredictable counterparts at sentence and discourse levels and also a post-N400 positivity effect of predictability at sentence level. This suggests that both sentence- and discourse-level semantic information help readers predict upcoming words, but supportive sentence context more than discourse context.

Relative clauses are barriers to wh-movement for young children

1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill De Villiers ◽  
Thomas Roeper
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Sectional Study ◽  
Relative Pronoun ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
One Year

ABSTRACTTwo studies are described which investigate preschool children's sensitivity to relative clauses as barriers to the movement of wh-questions. The children were presented with short stories followed by questions in which the wh-word had two possible sites of interpretation, the ungrammatical option being inside a relative clause. A cross-sectional study with 23 children aged 3;1 to 6;1, and a longitudinal study over the course of one year with 12 children aged 3;1 to 4;1 at the start, found young children refused to extract wh-questions from the ungrammatical site inside a relative clause. This confirms other findings that children's early grammars are sensitive to universal constraints on movement. In addition, the children differentiated between wh-complements and relative clauses in their tendency to mistakenly answer the medial wh-complementizer but not the wh-relative pronoun. Explanations for the latter are framed in terms of children's initial assumptions about the attachment of complements.

Verb argument structure acquisition in young children: defining a role for discourse

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 662-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
LETITIA R. NAIGLES ◽  
ASHLEY MALTEMPO
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Old English ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Sole Source ◽  
Direct Object ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Discourse Context ◽  
Verb Argument Structure ◽  
Source Of Information

ABSTRACTTwo-, three- and four-year-old English learners enacted sentences that were missing a direct object (e.g. *The zebra brings.). Previous work has indicated that preschoolers faced with such ungrammatical sentences consistently alter the usual meaning of the verb to fit the syntactic frame (enacting ‘zebra comes’); older children are more likely to repair the syntax to fit the meaning of the verb (enacting ‘zebra brings something’; Naigles, Gleitman & Gleitman, 1993). We investigated whether young children performed more repairs if an informative context preceded the ungrammatical sentences. Test sentences were preceded by short vignettes that created a relationship between three characters. Children repaired more sentences than had been found previously; however, older preschoolers also repaired significantly more frequently than younger preschoolers. Discourse context thus seems relevant to the acquisition of verb argument structure, but is not the sole source of information.

Coping with syntactic complexity in English–Chinese sight translation by translation and interpreting students.

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-213
Author(s):  
Xingcheng Ma
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Reading Span ◽  
Discourse Context ◽  
Reading Task ◽  
English Reading ◽  
Initial Stage

Abstract This study approaches syntactic complexity from a relative point of view and examines how translation and interpreting students cope with relative clauses and passive constructions, two exemplifications of syntactic complexity in English–Chinese sight translation. A group of students (N = 23) took part in the study. The study consisted of three parts: an English reading span test, a sight translation task, and a baseline reading task. During the sight translation task, the participants sight translated English sentences with different degrees of structural asymmetry into Chinese in the single sentence context and the discourse context. During the baseline reading task, they silently read the English sentences and answered the comprehension questions. The participants' eye movements in the sight translation and baseline reading tasks were recorded as indicators of cognitive load. Three major findings were generated: (1) Syntactic complexity resulted in a significant increase in cognitive load during the sight translation task. The syntactic aspects of the target language were activated during the initial stage of comprehension, which favoured the parallel view of translation. (2) Although sight translation became more time efficient due to wider contexts, a larger amount of contextual information did not make word-based processing less effortful, as indicated by more fixations and the longer regression path duration in the discourse context. (3) No correlations were found between reading span and cognitive load in addressing syntactical complexity.

Introductory Note to “Star Spangled Banner Stuff,” by Estelle Oldham (Faulkner)

Prospects ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 379-417
Author(s):  
Judith L. Sensibar
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Young Children ◽  
The Past ◽  
Introductory Note

On the 17th of november 1924, Estelle Oldham Franklin and her two young children made a sudden and unplanned departure from Shanghai on the T.K.K. Shinyo Maru. She was bound for Oxford, Mississippi. All evidence indicates that she had no intention of returning to her husband, Cornell. In her baggage, she carried longhand versions of a novel and the short stories that she had written during the past three years. Among these manuscripts was “Star Spangled Banner Stuff.” In the trans-Pacific mail to her was the announcement of William Faulkner's first book of poems, The Marble Faun, which he had ordered sent earlier that month.

scholarly journals Making everyday meanings visible: Investigating the use of multimodal map texts to articulate young children’s perspectives

2021 ◽  
pp. 1476718X2110627
Author(s):  
Sophia Jane Gowers
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Community Settings ◽  
Children’S Perspectives ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Creation

The use of multimodal approaches to articulate young children’s perspectives are evident in a wide range of recent research. This paper explores the creation of multimodal map-texts as a strategy to engage with young children and articulate their perspectives. It describes the development of a flexible map-based approach that was used in home, early years and community settings with children aged 4 to 5 years in England. Illustrative examples are included in which children represented and shared their views on the image-based texts they encountered within their everyday lives through the creation of a multimodal map-text. In this approach to research, children are viewed as competent message creators whose engagements encompass a range of modes and media. Consideration was given to young children’s multimodal meaning-making practices throughout the act of mapping, as well as the resulting text. Taking this approach revealed knowledge, perspectives and contextual information which may otherwise have been overlooked. The paper concludes by identifying the contribution that children’s map-texts can make when building a picture of young children’s experiences, and appraises the advantages and limitations of map-making as a strategy for engaging with young children in research.

scholarly journals The role of perceptual availability and discourse context in young children's question answering

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 918-931 ◽  
Author(s):  
DOROTHÉ SALOMO ◽  
EILEEN GRAF ◽  
ELENA LIEVEN ◽  
MICHAEL TOMASELLO
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Question Answering ◽  
Discourse Context ◽  
Preceding Discourse ◽  
Focus Questions

ABSTRACTThree- and four-year-old children were asked predicate-focus questions (‘What's X doing?’) about a scene in which an agent performed an action on a patient. We varied: (i) whether (or not) the preceding discourse context, which established the patient as given information, was available for the questioner; and (ii) whether (or not) the patient was perceptually available to the questioner when she asked the question. The main finding in our study differs from those of previous studies since it suggests that children are sensitive to the perceptual context at an earlier age than they are to previous discourse context if they need to take the questioner's perspective into account. Our finding indicates that, while children are in principle sensitive to both factors, young children rely on perceptual availability when a conflict arises.

scholarly journals Sounds in the classroom: Auditory context-dependent memory in school-aged children

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-118
Author(s):  
Anna L. Ostendorf ◽  
Helge Schlüter ◽  
Ryan P. M. Hackländer
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Classroom Setting ◽  
Auditory Cues ◽  
School Aged Children ◽  
Context Dependent

AbstractContext-dependent memory (CDM) is the effect whereby information is retrieved more accurately in the presence of the contextual information that was present during encoding than in the absence of that contextual information. Most previous CDM experiments have focused on spatial location, but contexts such as sights, smells, and sounds have also been shown to be effective mnemonic cues, although the research is more limited. In relation to auditory contexts, much of the previous research has focused on music and on adults. We were interested in determining whether auditory CDM effects could be found in a classroom setting in school-aged children using background noises. Across two experiments we found that the reinstatement of the auditory context improved memory performance for 2nd, 3rd, and 5th grade students. Sounds, not just musical pieces, are stored in memory and can be effective contextual mnemonic cues. Further, (auditory) CDM effects can be found in young children. Teachers should be aware of the influence of contextual auditory cues in the classroom setting, and how this information is stored along with the focus of the teaching lesson.

The who, when and where of early narratives

1990 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 433-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Early Development ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Very Young Children ◽  
Parental Scaffolding

ABSTRACTTo be well understood, narratives need to be embedded within appropriate contextual information. The early development of key orientation (participants, location and time) was traced with an 18-month longitudinal study of real-experience narratives produced by 10 children aged approximately 2–3; 6. Listener knowledge or inference was required to decode most named participants and many were not specified at all. There was no developmental improvement. Orientation to when was rare at first and involved formula words indiscriminately applied. There was steady developmental improvement in frequency as well as differentiation of time references. where information was more common at all ages, particularly when the narrated events occurred away from home. It also showed developmental improvement, but only for away-from-home locations. Overall, very young children can produce narratives in an unscaffolded context to adults unfamiliar with their experiences. The potential role of parental scaffolding in teaching orientation skills is discussed.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document