ABSTRACT
Japanese provides a valuable contrast for crosslinguistic studies of noun and verb dominance in early child language, and the effect of input on the early lexicon. In this study, 31 Japanese children between 1;0 and 2;0 and their caregivers were recorded in two contexts: joint bookreading and play with toys. Context had the largest effect, as nouns were much more frequent in the book context. Noun dominance was constant across development in the book context, but in the toy context there was a shift away as children developed from single words through the presyntactic stage to the syntactic stage. Caregiver language was verb dominant in a number of respects across development in the toy context, and thus was not closely related to child lexical balance. We conclude that in early lexical development, all children have a conceptual disposition to learn nouns. With vocabulary growth and the emergence of grammar, the proportion of verbs increases substantially, and at this stage properties of the input language may influence development.
Subject(s)
Caregivers , Child Language , Linguistics , Play and Playthings , Reading , Child, Preschool , Cross-Cultural Comparison , Female , Humans , Infant , Male , Speech Production Measurement , Verbal BehaviorABSTRACT
Eph receptor tyrosine kinases have been implicated in various developmental processes, including axonal guidance, angiogenesis and morphogenesis. In general, Eph receptors and their ligands, ephrins, are reciprocally compartmentalized during embryogenesis. However, they are expressed in an overlapping fashion in some developing neural and non-neural tissues. Results from the overexpression or mutant mice of ephrin ligands in the retino-tectal system suggest that ephrin-As regulate co-expressed EphA receptor activity, but little is known about the molecular mechanisms. Here we show that EphA receptors and co-expressed ephrin-A ligands interact directly in cis via their functional binding domains, and that this interaction does not seem to mediate intracellular signals, but has an inhibitory effect on the trans interaction.
Subject(s)
Ephrins/metabolism , Receptor, EphA1/metabolism , Animals , Antibodies, Monoclonal/pharmacology , Blotting, Western/methods , Cell Adhesion/drug effects , Cell Adhesion/physiology , Cell Line , Chickens , Embryo, Mammalian , Embryo, Nonmammalian , Ephrins/chemistry , Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental , Humans , Immunohistochemistry/methods , Kidney , Ligands , Mice , Mice, Mutant Strains , Models, Biological , Phosphorylation , Protein Binding/drug effects , Protein Binding/physiology , RNA, Messenger/biosynthesis , Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction/methods , Transfection/methodsABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to identify psychosocial factors, including coping style, that are associated with quality of life (QOL) in Japanese patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and to clarify the difference in coping style between patients with hemophilia and patients with sexually transmitted infection. We administered the World Health Organization QOL-26 questionnaire, the Mental Adjustment Toward Cancer scale, and the Social Support scale to 50 patients with HIV infection. Regarding QOL scores, Fighting Spirit was the positive coping style; Helplessness/Hopelessness and Anxious Preoccupation were negative coping styles. Psychological QOL scores in patients with hemophilia were lower than those in patients with sexually transmitted infection. Patients with hemophilia had a significantly weaker Fighting Spirit than patients with sexually transmitted infection.
