scholarly journals Who has more? The influence of linguistic form on quantity judgments

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Scontras ◽  
Kathryn Davidson ◽  
Amy Rose Deal ◽  
Sarah E. Murray

Quantity judgment tasks have been increasingly used within and across languages as a diagnostic for noun semantics. Overwhelmingly, results show that notionally atomic nouns (Who has more cats?) are counted, while notionally non-atomic nouns (Who has more milk?) are measured by volume. There are two primary outliers to the strict atomicity-tracking pattern. First, some nouns, like furniture, show primarily cardinality-based results in some studies, indicating atomicity, but nevertheless show systematic non-cardinality judgments in other studies, with comparison based instead on value/utility. Second, it has been reported that speakers of the Amazonian language Yudja favor cardinality-based quantity comparison for all nouns regardless of notional atomicity. In the current study, we show that both of these patterns arise in naïve English speakers in the absence of clear linguistic cues to atomicity, and suggest that the absence or mis-diagnosis of linguistic cues may be behind the reported outliers to atomicity-tracking. 

2011 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Beran ◽  
Julie S. Johnson-Pynn ◽  
Christopher Ready

Abstract We presented a quantity judgment task that involved comparing two sequentially presented sets of items to preschoolers and chimpanzees using nearly identical procedures that excluded verbal instructions to children. Trial difficulty in this task reflected the ratio difference between sets of discrete items where larger ratios (e.g., 0.80 as from comparing 4 to 5) were more difficult than smaller ones (e.g., 0.50 as from comparing 4 to 8). Children also completed verbal-based tasks probing the relationship between counting proficiency and performance on the quantity judgment task of sequentially presented identical sized items. Both species’ performance was best when ratios between comparison sets were small regardless of set size in all types of tasks. Generally, chimpanzees and older children performed better than younger children except at larger ratios. Children’s counting proficiency was not related to success in choosing the larger of two quantities of identical-sized items. These results indicate that chimpanzees and children share an approximate number sense that is reflected through analog magnitude estimation when comparing quantities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-141
Author(s):  
Cristina Rincon ◽  
Kia Noelle Johnson ◽  
Courtney Byrd

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the frequency and type of speech disfluencies (stuttering-like and nonstuttering-like) in bilingual Spanish–English (SE) children who stutter (CWS) to SE children who do not stutter (CWNS) during narrative samples elicited in Spanish and English to provide further diagnostic information for this population and preliminary data toward an expansion of this study. Method Participants included six bilingual SE children (three CWS, three CWNS) ranging in age from 5 years to 7;5 (years;months) and recruited from the surrounding Houston, Texas area. Participants provided a narrative sample in English and Spanish. The frequency of speech disfluencies was tabulated, and mean length of utterance was measured for each sample. Results Results indicate that both talker groups exceed the diagnostic criteria typically used for developmental stuttering. Regardless of the language being spoken, CWS participants had a frequency of stuttering-like speech disfluencies that met or exceeded the diagnostic criteria for developmental stuttering that is based on monolingual English speakers. The CWNS participants varied in meeting the criteria depending on the language being spoken, with one of the three CWNS exceeding the criteria in both languages and one exceeding the criteria for percentage of stuttering-like speech disfluencies in one language. Conclusion Findings from this study contribute to the development of more appropriate diagnostic criteria for bilingual SE-speaking children to aid in the reduction of misdiagnoses of stuttering in this population.


Author(s):  
Brenda K. Gorman

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) are obligated to judiciously select and administer appropriate assessments without inherent cultural or linguistic bias (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA], 2004). Nevertheless, clinicians continue to struggle with appropriate assessment practices for bilingual children, and diagnostic decisions are too often based on standardized tests that were normed predominately on monolingual English speakers (Caesar & Kohler, 2007). Dynamic assessment is intended to be a valid and unbiased approach for ascertaining what a child knows and can do, yet many speech-language pathologists (SLPs) struggle in knowing what and how to assess within this paradigm. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to present a clinical scenario and summarize extant research on effective dynamic language assessment practices, with a focus on specific language tasks and procedures, in order to foster SLPs' confidence in their use of dynamic assessment with bilingual children.


Author(s):  
Janet Nicol ◽  
Delia Greth

Abstract. In this paper, we report the results of a study of English speakers who have learned Spanish as a second language. All were late learners who have achieved near- advanced proficiency in Spanish. The focus of the research is on the production of subject-verb agreement errors and the factors that influence the incidence of such errors. There is some evidence that English and Spanish subject-verb agreement differ in susceptibility to interference from different types of variables; specifically, it has been reported that Spanish speakers show a greater influence of semantic factors in their implementation of subject-verb agreement ( Vigliocco, Butterworth, & Garrett, 1996 ). In our study, all participants were tested in English (L1) and Spanish (L2). Results indicate nearly identical error patterns: these speakers show no greater influence of semantic variables in the computation of agreement when they are speaking Spanish than when they are speaking English.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 193-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanja Hentschel ◽  
Lisa Kristina Horvath ◽  
Claudia Peus ◽  
Sabine Sczesny

Abstract. Entrepreneurship programs often aim at increasing women’s lower entrepreneurial activities. We investigate how advertisements for entrepreneurship programs can be designed to increase women’s application intentions. Results of an experiment with 156 women showed that women indicate (1) lower self-ascribed fit to and interest in the program after viewing a male-typed image (compared to a gender-neutral or female-typed image) in the advertisement; and (2) lower self-ascribed fit to and interest in the program as well as lower application intentions if the German masculine linguistic form of the term “entrepreneur” (compared to the gender-fair word pair “female and male entrepreneur”) is used in the recruitment advertisement. Women’s reactions are most negative when both a male-typed image and the masculine linguistic form appear in the advertisement. Self-ascribed fit and program interest mediate the relationship of advertisement characteristics on application intentions.


Author(s):  
Marc Ouellet ◽  
Julio Santiago ◽  
Ziv Israeli ◽  
Shai Gabay

Spanish and English speakers tend to conceptualize time as running from left to right along a mental line. Previous research suggests that this representational strategy arises from the participants’ exposure to a left-to-right writing system. However, direct evidence supporting this assertion suffers from several limitations and relies only on the visual modality. This study subjected to a direct test the reading hypothesis using an auditory task. Participants from two groups (Spanish and Hebrew) differing in the directionality of their orthographic system had to discriminate temporal reference (past or future) of verbs and adverbs (referring to either past or future) auditorily presented to either the left or right ear by pressing a left or a right key. Spanish participants were faster responding to past words with the left hand and to future words with the right hand, whereas Hebrew participants showed the opposite pattern. Our results demonstrate that the left-right mapping of time is not restricted to the visual modality and that the direction of reading accounts for the preferred directionality of the mental time line. These results are discussed in the context of a possible mechanism underlying the effects of reading direction on highly abstract conceptual representations.


2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia E. Roman ◽  
Nicholas R. Ray ◽  
Carla Contemori ◽  
Edith Kaan ◽  
Paola E. Dussias
Keyword(s):  

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenling Hsieh ◽  
Cheryl Hiscock-Anisman ◽  
Kevin Colwell ◽  
Samantha Florence ◽  
Andrea Sorcinelli ◽  
...  

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