The processing of lexical tones by young Chinese children

ABSTRACTThe current study examined five- and seven-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's processing of lexical tones in relation to speech segments by varying onset and rime in an oddity task (onset±rime±). Results showed that children experienced more difficulty in lexical tone oddity judgment when rimes differed across monosyllables (e.g. onset+rime−) than when onsets differed (e.g. onset−rime+). This finding suggests that vowels interfere more than consonants in lexical tone processing. Seven-year-olds consistently outperformed five-year-olds, suggesting that the growth of metalinguistic awareness and literacy exposure may play a joint role in the development of lexical tone processing skills.

Phonological neighbourhood density: effects in a rhyme awareness task in five-year-old children

Phonological awareness skills are critical for reading acquisition, yet relatively little is known about the origins of phonological awareness. This study investigates one plausible source of the emergence of phonological awareness, phonological neighbourhood density. As vocabulary grows, the number of similar-sounding words in the child's mental lexicon increases. This could create developmental pressure to develop awareness of sub-units within words such as syllables, rhymes and phonemes. If this is the case, then neighbourhood density effects should be discernible in phonological awareness tasks. Children should be more successful in these tasks with words from dense phonological neighbourhoods, as they should show greater awareness of sub-units within these words. We investigated this hypothesis in a group of 48 five-year-old children, most of whom were pre-readers. The five-year-olds with a high vocabulary age showed neighbourhood density effects in a rhyme oddity task, but five-year-olds with lower vocabulary ages did not. This suggests that vocabulary acquisition and consequent neighbourhood density effects are indeed one source of the emergence of phonological awareness skills in pre-readers.

Effect of Identity versus Oddity Training on Novel Matching-to-Sample Responding after Naming

Identity and oddity matching-to-sample tasks were arranged for different groups of five-year-old children. The children were then taught to name stimuli A1, B1, A2, and B2, which had not occurred in the identity or oddity task. Two names were taught; one was used for two stimuli and the other name for the other two stimuli. Finally, matching-to-sample tests with A1, B1, A2, and B2 were carried out. These offered a choice between a comparison with the same name as the sample and a comparison with a name other than that of the sample. The children who had received identity training tended to choose the comparison with the same name as the sample. The children who had received oddity training tended to choose the comparison with the other name. The results obtained with the oddity group suggest that giving the same name to two stimuli is not sufficient for equivalence of these stimuli. The results obtained with both groups can be explained on the basis of pre-experimental abstraction processes.