Vocabulary simplification for children: a special case of ‘motherese’?

1988 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald P. Hayes ◽  
Margaret G. Ahrens

ABSTRACTA new corpus of spontaneous conversations between adults and children is examined for evidence that adults simplify their vocabulary choices when speaking with young children. If these simplifications are found to be age-dependent, then they would broaden the pattern of simplifications characteristic of ‘motherese’ to include lexical choice as well. For the age-range newborns to 12 years, the results are both consistent with and contrary to the attested set of grammatical simplifications. In this corpus, MLU and TTR are strongly age-dependent, but adults do not choose their words from the 10,000 most common word-types in English in an age-dependent manner. Rather, the additional types for school-aged children come from the same part of the vocabulary and share the same-shaped distributions as in adult speech with preschool children and infants. This absence of an age-dependent accommodation in word choice has implications for models of child lexical acquisition which assume adult language accommodation.

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (9) ◽  
pp. 2213-2222
Author(s):  
Jiaxing Wang ◽  
Ying Li ◽  
Zhenyang Zhao ◽  
Nan Wei ◽  
Xiaoli Qi ◽  
...  

Abstract Purpose To study the epidemiology of myopia in school-aged children in Tianjin and the relationship between visual acuity-based screening and refraction-based screening. Method This school-based prospective cohort study was performed on children from 42 elementary schools and 17 middle schools in Tianjin, China. Totally 14,551 children, ages ranging from 5 to 16 years, were included in this study. Uncorrected visual acuity (UCVA) was determined by logarithmic tumbling E chart. Non-cycloplegic photorefraction was examined by the Spot (v2.1.4) photoscreener. The relationship between the UCVA and refractive error was investigated for different age groups. Results The overall prevalence of myopia at this school based screen is 78.2%, ranged from 10% at age of 5 to 95% at age of 16. The most dramatic increase in prevalence is from age of 6 (14.8%) to age of 7 (38.5%). The overall prevalence of high myopia is 2.5%. UCVA is found corresponding to spherical equivalent refraction (SER) in a manner of normal distribution and is significantly affected by age. When using UCVA to estimate the prevalence of myopia, the overall sensitivity and specificity are 0.824 and 0.820, respectively. Age-dependent optimal cutoff points and 95% confident intervals of such estimation are reported. Conclusions Myopia is heavily affecting school-aged children in Tianjin, China. The refraction screening is preferable for myopia screening, whereas the UCVA screening results need to be interpreted in an age-dependent manner for myopia estimation.


2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 778-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Munson

Recent studies have suggested that both adults and children are sensitive to information about phonological pattern frequency; however, the influence of phonological pattern frequency on speech production has not been studied extensively. The current study examined the effect of phonological pattern frequency on the fluency and flexibility of speech production. Normal- and fastrate nonsense-word repetitions of three groups of participants (preschool children, school-aged children, and adults) were analyzed. Subjective ratings of the wordlikeness of nonsense words, percentage phonemes correctly repeated, mean duration, and durational variability were measured. In the first experiment, ratings of the wordlikeness of nonsense words were found to correlate with the pattern frequency of sequences embedded in them. In the second analysis, it was found that children, but not adults, repeated infrequent sequences of phonemes less accurately than frequent sequences. In the third experiment, infrequent sequences were produced with longer durations than frequent ones, with children demonstrating a larger difference between frequent and infrequent sequences than adults. Phonological pattern frequency also influenced variability in duration: infrequent sequences of sounds were more variable than frequent ones. Thus, there appears to be an influence of phonological pattern frequency on speech, and, for some measures, a larger effect size is noted for children.


2019 ◽  
Vol 299 (5) ◽  
pp. 1253-1260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qi Wu ◽  
Lixia Zhang ◽  
Licong Huang ◽  
Yu Lei ◽  
Lin Chen ◽  
...  

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 1001-1005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kunie Ando ◽  
Karelle Leroy ◽  
Céline Heraud ◽  
Anna Kabova ◽  
Zehra Yilmaz ◽  
...  

We have reported previously a tau transgenic mouse model (Tg30tau) overexpressing human 4R1N double-mutant tau (P301S and G272V) and that develops AD (Alzheimer's disease)-like NFTs (neurofibrillary tangles) in an age-dependent manner. Since murine tau might interfere with the toxic effects of human mutant tau, we set out to analyse the phenotype of our Tg30tau model in the absence of endogenous murine tau with the aim to reproduce more faithfully a model of human tauopathy. By crossing the Tg30tau line with TauKO (tau-knockout) mice, we have obtained a new mouse line called Tg30×TauKO that expresses only exogenous human double-mutant 4R1N tau. Whereas Tg30×TauKO mice express fewer tau proteins compared with Tg30tau, they exhibit augmented sarkosyl-insoluble tau in the brain and an increased number of Gallyas-positive NFTs in the hippocampus. Taken together, exclusion of murine tau causes accelerated tau aggregation during aging of this mutant tau transgenic model.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
James Moore ◽  
Rashid Akbergenov ◽  
Martina Nigri ◽  
Patricia Isnard-Petit ◽  
Amandine Grimm ◽  
...  

AbstractRandom errors in protein synthesis are prevalent and ubiquitous, yet their effect on organismal health has remained enigmatic for over five decades. Here, we studied whether mice carrying the ribosomal ambiguity (ram) mutation Rps2-A226Y, recently shown to increase the inborn error rate of mammalian translation, if at all viable, present any specific, possibly aging-related, phenotype. We introduced Rps2-A226Y using a Cre/loxP strategy. Resulting transgenic mice were mosaic and showed a muscle-related phenotype with reduced grip strength. Analysis of gene expression in skeletal muscle using RNA-Seq revealed transcriptomic changes occurring in an age-dependent manner, involving an interplay of PGC1α, FOXO3, mTOR, and glucocorticoids as key signaling pathways, and finally resulting in activation of a muscle atrophy program. Our results highlight the relevance of translation accuracy, and show how disturbances thereof may contribute to age-related pathologies.


2016 ◽  
Vol 128 ◽  
pp. 27-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karlene T. Barrett ◽  
Richard J.A. Wilson ◽  
Morris H. Scantlebury

1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 394-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Skinner ◽  
Frank Antinoro

Averaged evoked responses (AER) to auditory stimuli presented to young children and adults were compared between awake and induced sleep conditions. Eight adults and twenty preschool children with normal hearing were tested before and during sedation at two suprathreshold levels with tone pips centered at 510, 1020, and 2040 Hz. Responses obtained during sedation assumed a distinctly different wave complex than those obtained under the awake condition. The P2 peak that is most prominent in the AERs obtained from awake subjects was diminished considerably under sedation and P3 became the prominent peak. Moreover, the P3 peaks in the AERs obtained under sedation were of considerably greater amplitude than the P2 peaks obtained in the awake condition. In all cases where responses were obtained from awake subjects, greater amplitude responses were obtained during sedation. The use of sedation with the preschool children proved to be most important in obtaining more detectable responses and permitting evoked potential audiometry with otherwise unmanageable children.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document