scholarly journals Sleep-dependent consolidation in children with comprehension and vocabulary weaknesses: It’ll be alright on the night?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma James ◽  
M. Gareth Gaskell ◽  
Lisa Henderson

Background: Vocabulary is crucial for an array of life outcomes and is frequently impaired in developmental disorders. Notably, ‘poor comprehenders’ (children with comprehension deficits but intact word-reading) often have vocabulary deficits, but underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Prior research suggests intact encoding but difficulties consolidating new word knowledge. We test the hypothesis that poor comprehenders’ sleep-associated vocabulary consolidation is compromised by their impoverished lexical-semantic knowledge.Methods: Memory for new words was tracked across wake and sleep to isolate processes of encoding and consolidation in 8-to-12-year-old good and poor comprehenders. Each child participated in two sets of sessions in which they were taught 12 new words either at the start (AM-encoding) or end (PM-encoding) of the day, alongside training on a nonverbal declarative task. Memory was assessed immediately, 12-, and 24- hours later via stem-completion, picture-naming, and definition tasks to probe different aspects of new word knowledge. Long-term retention was assessed 1-2 months later. Results: Recall of word-forms improved over sleep and post-sleep wake, as measured in both stem-completion and picture-naming tasks. Counter to hypotheses, deficits for poor comprehenders were not observed in consolidation but instead were seen across measures and throughout testing, suggesting an encoding deficit. Variability in vocabulary knowledge across the whole sample predicted sleep-associated consolidation, but only when words were learned early in the day and not when sleep followed soon after learning.Conclusions: Poor comprehenders showed weaker encoding of new word knowledge than good comprehenders, but sleep-associated consolidation benefits were comparable between groups. Sleeping soon after learning had long-lasting benefits for memory, and may be especially beneficial for children with weaker vocabulary. These results provide new insights into the breadth of poor comprehenders’ vocabulary weaknesses, and ways in which learning might be better timed to remediate vocabulary difficulties.

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-89
Author(s):  
Marta Łockiewicz ◽  
Martyna Jaskulska

The aim of our study was to examine the relationship between access to the mental lexicon, working memory and knowledge of English (L2) vocabulary. Analyses were undertaken amongst monolingual speakers of Polish (26 with dyslexia, 24 without) who studied English as a second language as part of their compulsory educational programme at school.We assumed that students with dyslexia would manifest deficits in access to the mental lexicon and verbal working memory, and would have a limited L2 vocabulary. We also assumed that better access to the mental lexicon facilitates knowledge of English (L2) vocabulary, and that this relationship is present in both the criterion and the control group. All of the students participated in both parts of the assessment, the group part (i.e., questionnaire, IQ test, two vocabulary tasks) and the individual part (i.e., psychological measures: verbal working memory, RAN, verbal fluency, and single word reading in L1 task). We found that students with dyslexia exhibited deficits in the speed of access to data from the mental lexicon. The predictive function of memory for vocabulary was more conspicuous in the control group; in the criterion group, the result might constitute a risk factor for L2 vocabulary acquisition in dyslexia, which may manifest with increased proficiency in word knowledge. Poor vocabulary knowledge renders the L2 learning experience difficult, as it impairs students’ reading comprehension, writing and conversational skills.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Preeti G. Samudra ◽  
Kevin M. Wong ◽  
Susan B. Neuman

Children from diverse backgrounds are able to learn new words from educational media. However, learning is often partial and fragile, leaving much room for uncovering strategies that can increase the efficacy of educational media in supporting children's vocabulary knowledge. The present study investigated one such strategy—repeated viewing of educational media—in a sample of low-income preschoolers. One hundred thirty one preschoolers were randomly assigned to view an educational media clip teaching three vocabulary words in one of three conditions: (a) once, (b) three times in immediate succession (massed repetition), or (c) three times with views spaced 1 hour apart (spaced repetition). Children completed a target vocabulary assessment both immediately after the final view and 1 week later. Results indicate that certain types of word knowledge were supported by repetition, particularly spaced repetition. Children also effectively retained the vocabulary knowledge they acquired from educational media over a 1-week period in all conditions. This suggests that educational media is a strong platform for teaching low-income preschoolers new words, and that spaced repetition might further support low-income preschoolers' vocabulary learning.


2007 ◽  
Vol 77 ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
Carla Driessen

To gain more insight into intentional vocabulary learning by students at secondary education three research questions wTere addressed: 1) According to students in the lower grades of secondary education, w7hat are good strategies for intentional vocabulary learning? 2) What vocabulary learning strategies do these students actually use? 3) How effective are the vocabulary learning strategies used? The research sfunved that the students value and demonstrate a variety of cognitive and meta-cognitive vocabulary learning strategies pertaining to 'non-elaboration of words', 'elaboration of words', 'planning', 'evaluation and self-regulation', and 'help seeking'. Differences were found between the students, but on the whole the quality of word knowledge is not optimal. Based on the research findings, several recommendations were formulated such as the exchange of learning strategies between students, the use of an on-line vocabulary learning programme with special attention to word forms, and the organisation of learning experiences in which students draw pictures of new words and invent ludicrous, bizarre or emotionally significant sentences for the words in order to promote vocabulary acquisition.


Author(s):  
Lucilene Bender de Sousa ◽  
Lilian Cristine Hübner ◽  
Roselaine Berenice Ferreira da Silva

In this paper, we investigate the level of vocabulary knowledge and the lexical-integration ability of good and poor comprehenders at the 8th grade of Elementary School. The participants were assessed in the following tasks: reading comprehension, listening comprehension, decoding, vocabulary, lexical-semantic integration and incongruence detection. The performance comparison revealed that good comprehenders performed significantly better than poor comprehenders in the measures of vocabulary and integration. The difference in the accuracy of the integration tasks remained significant after controlling for word knowledge. The results suggest that good and poor comprehenders differentiate not only in lexical semantic knowledge but also in lexical-semantic processing.


2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
PASCALE COLÉ ◽  
SOPHIE BOUTON ◽  
CHRISTEL LEUWERS ◽  
SEVERINE CASALIS ◽  
LILIANE SPRENGER-CHAROLLES

ABSTRACTMorphological processing by French children was investigated in two experiments. The first showed that second and third graders read pseudowords such as chat-ure (cat-ish) composed of an illegally combined real stem and real derivational suffix faster and more accurately than they read matched pseudowords composed of a pseudostem and a real derivational suffix (e.g., chot-ure) or a pseudostem and a pseudosuffix (e.g., chot-ore). More, the chot-ure items were read faster and more accurately than the chot-ore items. These results suggest that beginning French readers are able to use morphological units (both stems and derivational suffixes) to decode new words. The second experiment compared the impact of display format on reading time. Suffixed words were presented in four segmentation formats: syllabic (ma lade), morphological (mal ade), morphological + 1 grapheme (mala de), or unsegmented (malade). For both groups of readers, the morphological + 1 condition generated the longest reading times but there was no difference between the other three conditions. It was concluded that syllables, morphemes, and whole word forms contribute to a similar extent to word reading for low-frequency words. Morphological processing may therefore be used early by French children to identify both new words and low-frequency words.


Author(s):  
Pui Fong Kan

Abstract The purpose of this article is to look at the word learning skills in sequential bilingual children—children who learn two languages (L1 and L2) at different times in their childhood. Learning a new word is a process of learning a word form and relating this form to a concept. For bilingual children, each concept might need to map onto two word forms (in L1 and in L2). In case studies, I present 3 typically developing Hmong-English bilingual preschoolers' word learning skills in Hmong (L1) and in English (L2) during an 8-week period (4 weeks for each language). The results showed gains in novel-word knowledge in L1 and in L2 when the amount of input is equal for both languages. The individual differences in novel word learning are discussed.


ReCALL ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Yan Li ◽  
Christoph A. Hafner

Abstract Considerable research has been conducted on the advancement of mobile technologies to facilitate vocabulary learning and acquisition in a second language (L2). However, whether mobile platforms lead to a comprehensive mastery of both receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge has seldom been addressed in previous literature. This study investigated English vocabulary learning from engagement with mobile-based word cards and paper word cards in the context of the Chinese university classroom. A total of 85 undergraduate students were recruited to take part in the study. The students were divided into two groups, a mobile learning group and a paper-based learning group, and tested on two word knowledge components: receptive knowledge of the form–meaning connection and productive knowledge of collocations. Both the digital and non-digital word cards enhanced L2 vocabulary learning, and the results showed that the mobile application (app) promoted greater gains than physical word cards.


Author(s):  
Ahmed Masrai ◽  
James Milton ◽  
Dina Abdel Salam El-Dakhs ◽  
Heba Elmenshawy

AbstractThis study investigates the idea that knowledge of specialist subject vocabulary can make a significant and measurable impact on academic performance, separate from and additional to the impact of general and academic vocabulary knowledge. It tests the suggestion of Hyland and Tse (TESOL Quarterly, 41:235–253, 2007) that specialist vocabulary should be given more attention in teaching. Three types of vocabulary knowledge, general, academic and a specialist business vocabulary factors, are tested against GPA and a business module scores among students of business at a college in Egypt. The results show that while general vocabulary size has the greatest explanation of variance in the academic success factors, the other two factors - academic and a specialist business vocabulary - make separate and additional further contributions. The contribution to the explanation of variance made by specialist vocabulary knowledge is double that of academic vocabulary knowledge.


Author(s):  
Sharry Shakory ◽  
Xi Chen ◽  
S. Hélène Deacon

Purpose The value of shared reading as an opportunity for learning word meanings, or semantics, is well established; it is less clear whether children learn about the orthography, or word spellings, in this context. We tested whether children can learn the spellings and meanings of new words at the same time during a tightly controlled shared reading session. We also examined whether individual differences in either or both of orthographic and semantic learning during shared reading in English were related to word reading in English and French concurrently and 6 months longitudinally in emergent English–French bilinguals. Method Sixty-two Grade 1 children (35 girls; M age = 75.89 months) listened to 12 short stories, each containing four instances of a novel word, while the examiner pointed to the text. Choice measures of the spellings and meanings of the novel words were completed immediately after reading each set of three stories and again 1 week later. Standardized measures of word reading as well as controls for nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary, and phonological awareness were also administered. Results Children scored above chance on both immediate and delayed measures of orthographic and semantic learning. Orthographic learning was related to both English and French word reading at the same time point and 6 months later. In contrast, the relations between semantic learning and word reading were nonsignificant for both languages after including controls. Conclusion Shared reading is a valuable context for learning both word meanings and spellings, and the learning of orthographic representations in particular is related to word reading abilities. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13877999


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