Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vvkck Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T12:27:08.754Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Inhibitory control and receptive vocabulary influence aspect comprehension in children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 November 2019

Andrew Blank Open the ORCID record for Andrew Blank [Opens in a new window] ,
Rachael Frush Holt  and
Laura Wagner
Andrew Blank
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Rachael Frush Holt
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Laura Wagner*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
*
*Corresponding author. Email: wagner.602@osu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although many researchers appeal to performance limitations to account for children’s non-adult-like use of language, few studies have explicitly linked specific cognitive abilities to specific dimensions of language. This study investigated a well-studied underextension in children’s language involving linguistic aspect and tested participants in an aspectual comprehension task as well as a series of assessments evaluating neurocognitive and linguistic skills. Adults (N = 32) and 5-year-old children (N = 32) participated. The results for the children replicated the classic pattern of underextension, with children showing an uneven pattern of success even though all items were equally grammatical. In addition, children’s skill with items that involved overriding lexical information in favor of morphological information was predicted by their performance on an inhibitory control task while children’s skill with items that involved integrating contextual world knowledge was predicted by their performance on a receptive vocabulary task. These results demonstrate how specific dimensions of linguistic processing are supported differentially and sensibly by specific dimensions of cognition.

Keywords

aspectinhibitory controllanguage developmentlanguage performancesemantics
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 133 - 151
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andersen, R. W., & Shirai, Y. (1994). Discourse motivations for some cognitive acquisition principles. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 16, 133–156. doi:10.1017/S0272263100012845 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antinucci, F., & Miller, R. (1976). How children talk about what happened. Journal of Child Language, 3, 167–189. doi: 10.1017/S0305000900001434 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. A. (1983). Establishing a schema: Children’s construals of verb-tense marking. Language Sciences, 5, 61–78. doi: 10.1016/S0388-0001(83)80014-X CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, L., Lifter, K., & Hafitz, J. (1980). Semantics of verbs and the development of verb inflection in child language. Language, 56, 386–412. doi: 10.2307/413762 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bohnemeyer, J., & Swift, M. (2004). Event realization and default aspect. Linguistics and Philosophy, 27, 263–296. doi: 10.1023/B:LING.0000023371.15460.43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bronckart, J. P., & Sinclair, H. (1973). Time, tense and aspect. Cognition, 2, 107–130. doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(72)90032-7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comrie, B. (1976). Aspect: An introduction to the study of verbal aspect and related problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Crain, S., & Thornton, R. (2000). Investigations in universal grammar: A guide to experimental acquisition of syntax and semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Currie, N. K., & Cain, K. (2015). Children’s inference generation: The role of vocabulary and working memory. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 137, 57–75. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2015.03.005 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ellis, N. C. (2002). Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit langauge acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24, 143–188. doi: 10.1017/S0272263102002024 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fedder, J. C., & Wagner, L. (2015). Being up front: Narrative context and aspectual choice. Language and Cognition, 7, 239–264. doi: 10.1017/langcog.2014.27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Florit, E., Roch, M., Altoè, G., & Levorato, M. C. (2009). Listening comprehension in preschoolers: The role of memory. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 27, 935–951. doi: 10.1348/026151008X397189 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gershon, R. C., Wagster, M. V., Hendrie, H. C., Fox, N. A., Cook, K. F., & Nowinski, C. J. (2013). NIH Toolbox for assessment of neurological and behavioral function. Neurology, 80(Suppl. 2), S2–S6. doi: 10.1212/WNL.0b013e3182872e5f CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gogtay, N., Giedd, J. N., Lusk, L., Hayashi, K. M., Greenstein, D. K., Vaituzis, A. C., … Thompson, P. M. (2004). Dynamic mapping of human cortical development during childhood through early adulthood. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 101, 8174–8179. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0402680101 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hart, M., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.Google Scholar
Kazanina, N., & Phillips, C. (2007). A developmental perspective on the imperfective paradox. Cognition, 105, 65–102. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2006.09.006 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Khanna, M. M., & Boland, J. E. (2010). Children’s use of language context in lexical ambiguity resolution. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 160–193. doi: 10.1080/17470210902866664 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Klein, W. (1994). Time in language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lee, J. (2011). Size matters: Early vocabulary as a predictor of language and literacy competence. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 69–92. doi: 10.1017/S0142716410000299 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, P., & Shirai, Y. (2000). The acquisition of lexical and grammatical aspect. New York: de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive Psychology, 41, 49–100. doi: 10.1006/cogp.1999.0734 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moriguchi, Y., & Hiraki, K. (2011). Longitudinal development of prefrontal function during early childhood. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 1, 153–162. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2010.12.004 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Musolino, J., & Lidz, J. (2006). Why children aren’t universally successful with quantification. Linguistics, 44, 817–852. doi: 10.1515/LING.2006.026 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nosofsky, R. M. (1988). Similarity, frequency, and category representations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 14, 54–65. doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.14.1.54 Google Scholar
Novick, J. M., Hussey, E., Teubner-Rhodes, S., Harbison, J. I., & Bunting, M. F. (2014). Clearing the garden-path: Improving sentence processing through cognitive control training. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29, 186–217. doi: 10.1080/01690965.2012.758297 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Novick, J. M., Trueswell, J. C., & Thompson-Schill, S. L. (2005). Cognitive control and the role of Broca’s area in sentence processing. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 5, 263–281. doi: 10.3758/CABN.5.3.263 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oakhill, J. V., & Cain, K. (2012). The precursors of reading ability in young readers: Evidence from a four-year longitudinal study. Scientific Studies of Reading, 16, 91–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Papafragou, A., & Musolino, J. (2003). Scalar implicatures: Experiments at the semantics-pragmatics interface. Cognition, 86, 253–282. doi: 10.1016/S0010-0277(02)00179-8 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Radford, A. (1990). Syntactic theory and the acquisition of English syntax: The nature of early child grammars of English. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rosch, E. (1973). Natural categories. Cognitive Psychology, 4, 328–350. doi: 10.1016/0010-0285(73)90017-0 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosch, E., & Mervis, C. B. (1975). Family resemblances: Studies in the internal structure of categories. Cognitive Psychology, 7, 573–605. doi: 10.1016/0010-0285(75)90024-9 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosch, E., Simpson, C., & Miller, R. S. (1976). Structural bases of typicality effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2, 491–502. doi: 10.1037/0096-1523.2.4.491 Google Scholar
Shirai, Y., & Andersen, R. W. (1995). The acquisition of tense-aspect morphology: A prototype account. Language, 71, 743–762. doi: 10.2307/415743 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, C. (1991). The parameter of aspect. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valian, V., & Aubry, S. (2005). When opportunity knocks twice: Two-year-olds’ repetition of sentence subjects. Journal of Child Language, 32, 617–641. doi: 10.1017/S0305000905006987 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Valian, V., Hoeffner, J., & Aubry, S. (1996). Young children’s imitation of sentence subjects: Evidence of processing limitations. Developmental Psychology, 32, 153–164. doi: 10.1037//0012-1649.32.1.153 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vendler, Z. (1967). Linguistics in philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Vuong, L. C., & Martin, R. C. (2014). Domain-specific executive control and the revision of misinterpretations in sentence comprehension. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29, 312–325. doi: 10.1080/01690965.2013.836231 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vuong, L. C., & Martin, R. C. (2015). The role of LIFG-based executive control in sentence comprehension. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 32, 243–265. doi: 10.1080/02643294.2015.1057558 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wagner, L. (2001). Aspectual influences on early tense comprehension. Journal of Child Language, 28, 661–681. doi: 10.1017/S0305000901004792 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wagner, L. (2002). Understanding completion entailments in the absence of agency cues. Journal of Child Language, 29, 109–125. doi: 10.1017/S0305000901004949 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wagner, L. (2009). I’ll never grow up: Continuity in aspect representations. Linguistics, 47, 1051–1074. doi: 10.1515/LING.2009.037 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, L. (2012). Primary language acquisition. In Binnick, R. (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of tense and aspect (pp. 458–480). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Weist, R., Wysocka, H., & Lyytinen, P. (1991). A cross-linguistic perspective on the development of temporal systems. Journal of Child Language, 18, 67–92. doi: 10.1017/S0305000900013301 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weist, R., Wysocka, H., Witkowska-Stadnik, K., Buczowska, E., & Konienczna, E. (1984). The defective tense hypothesis: On the emergence of tense and aspect in child Polish. Journal of Child Language, 11, 347–374. doi: 10.1017/S030500090000581X CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Welsh, M. C., Pennington, B. F., & Groisser, D. B. (1991). A normative-developmental study of executive function: A window on prefrontal function in children. Developmental Neuropsychology, 7, 131–149. doi: 10.1080/87565649109540483 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yap, F. H., Chu, P. C., Yiu, E. S., Wong, S. F., Kwan, S. W., Matthews, S. N., … Shirai, Y. (2009). Aspectual asymmetries in the mental representation of events: Role of lexical and grammatical aspect. Memory and Cognition, 37, 587–595. doi: 10.3758/MC.37.5.587 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zelazo, P. D., & Müller, U. (2002). Executive function in typical and atypical development. In Goswami, U. (Ed.), Handbook of childhood cognitive development (pp. 445–469). Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zelazo, P. D., Müller, U., Frye, D., & Marcovitch, S. (2003). The development of executive function in early childhood. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 68, i–151. doi: 10.1111/j.0037-976X.2003.00261.x CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed