A Comprehensive Examination of Prediction-Based Error as a Mechanism for Syntactic Development: Evidence From Syntactic Priming.

Prediction-based accounts of language acquisition have the potential to explain several different effects in child language acquisition and adult language processing. However, evidence regarding the developmental predictions of such accounts is mixed. Here, we consider several predictions of these accounts in two large-scale developmental studies of syntactic priming of the English dative alternation. Study 1 was a cross-sectional study (N = 140) of children aged 3-9 years, in which we found strong evidence of abstract priming and the lexical boost, but little evidence that either effect was moderated by age. We found weak evidence for a prime surprisal effect; however, exploratory analyses revealed a protracted developmental trajectory for verb-structure biases, providing an explanation as for why prime surprisal effects are more elusive in developmental populations. In a longitudinal study (N = 102) of children in tightly controlled age bands at 42, 48, and 54 months, we found priming effects emerged on trials with verb overlap early but did not observe clear evidence of priming on trials without verb overlap until 54 months. There was no evidence of a prime surprisal effect at any time point and none of the effects were moderated by age. The results relating to the emergence of the abstract priming and lexical boost effects are consistent with prediction-based models, while the absence of age-related effects appears to reflect the structure-specific challenges the dative presents to English-acquiring children. Overall, our complex pattern of findings demonstrates the value of developmental data sets in testing psycholinguistic theory.

Learning to generalise but not segment an artificial language at 17 months predicts children's language skills 3 years later.

We investigated whether learning an artificial language at 17 months was predictive of children's natural language vocabulary and grammar skills at 54 months. Children at 17 months listened to an artificial language containing non-adjacent dependencies, and were then tested on their learning to segment and to generalise the structure of the language. At 54 months, children were then tested on a range of standardised natural language tasks that assessed receptive and expressive vocabulary and grammar. A structural equation model demonstrated that learning the artificial language generalisation at 17 months predicted language abilities - a composite of vocabulary and grammar skills - at 54 months, whereas artificial language segmentation at 17 months did not predict language abilities at this age. Artificial language learning tasks - especially those that probe grammar learning - provide a valuable tool for uncovering the mechanisms driving children's early language development.

Study protocol for the St James's Hospital, Tallaght University Hospital, Trinity College Dublin Allied Researchers' (STTAR) Bioresource for COVID-19.

Background: The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic began in Ireland with the first confirmed positive case in March 2020. In the early stages of the pandemic clinicians and researchers in two affiliated Dublin hospitals identified the need for a COVID-19 biobanking initiative to support and enhance research into the disease. Through large scale analysis of clinical, regional, and genetic characteristics of COVID-19 patients, biobanks have helped identify, and so protect, at risk patient groups The STTAR Bioresource has been created to collect and store data and linked biological samples from patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection and healthy and disease controls. Aim: The primary objective of this study is to build a biobank, to understand the clinical characteristics and natural history of COVID-19 infection with the long-term goal of research into improved disease understanding, diagnostic tests and treatments. Methods: This is a prospective dual-site cohort study across two tertiary acute university teaching hospitals. Patients are recruited from inpatient wards or outpatient clinics. Patients with confirmed COVID-19 infection as well as healthy and specific disease control groups are recruited.  Biological samples are collected and a case report form detailing demographic and medical background is entered into the bespoke secure online Dendrite database. Impact: The results of this study will be used to inform national and international strategy on health service provision and disease management related to COVID-19. In common with other biobanks, study end points  evolve over time as new research questions emerge. They currently include patient survival, occurrence of severe complications of the disease or its therapy, occurrence of persistent symptoms following recovery from the acute illness and vaccine responses.

On the Structure and Source of Individual Differences in Toddlers' Comprehension of Transitive Sentences.

How children learn grammar is one of the most fundamental questions in cognitive science. Two theoretical accounts, namely, the Early Abstraction and Usage-Based accounts, propose competing answers to this question. To compare the predictions of these accounts, we tested the comprehension of 92 24-month old children of transitive sentences with novel verbs (e.g., "The boy is gorping the girl!") with the Intermodal Preferential Looking (IMPL) task. We found very little evidence that children looked to the target video at above-chance levels. Using mixed and mixture models, we tested the predictions the two accounts make about: (i) the structure of individual differences in the IMPL task and (ii) the relationship between vocabulary knowledge, lexical processing, and performance in the IMPL task. However, the results did not strongly support either of the two accounts. The implications for theories on language acquisition and for tasks developed for examining individual differences are discussed.

Onset Neighborhood Density Slows Lexical Access in High Vocabulary 30-Month Olds.

There is consensus that the adult lexicon exhibits lexical competition. In particular, substantial evidence demonstrates that words with more phonologically similar neighbors are recognized less efficiently than words with fewer neighbors. How and when these effects emerge in the child's lexicon is less clear. In the current paper, we build on previous research by testing whether phonological onset density slows lexical access in a large sample of 100 English-acquiring 30-month-olds. The children participated in a visual world looking-while-listening task, in which their attention was directed to one of two objects on a computer screen while their eye movements were recorded. We found moderate evidence of inhibitory effects of onset neighborhood density on lexical access and clear evidence for an interaction between onset neighborhood density and vocabulary, with larger effects of onset neighborhood density for children with larger vocabularies. Results suggest the lexicons of 30-month-olds exhibit lexical-level competition, with competition increasing with vocabulary size.

The Longitudinal Relationship Between Conversational Turn-Taking and Vocabulary Growth in Early Language Development.

Children acquire language embedded within the rich social context of interaction. This paper reports on a longitudinal study investigating the developmental relationship between conversational turn-taking and vocabulary growth in English-acquiring children (N = 122) followed between 9 and 24 months. Daylong audio recordings obtained every 3 months provided several indices of the language environment, including the number of adult words children heard in their environment and their number of conversational turns. Vocabulary was measured independently via parental report. Growth curve analyses revealed a bidirectional relationship between conversational turns and vocabulary growth, controlling for the amount of words in children's environments. The results are consistent with theoretical approaches that identify social interaction as a core component of early language acquisition.

Individual differences in lexical processing efficiency and vocabulary in toddlers: A longitudinal investigation.

Research on infants' online lexical processing by Fernald, Perfors, and Marchman (2006) revealed substantial individual differences that are related to vocabulary development, such that infants with better lexical processing efficiency show greater vocabulary growth across time. Although it is clear that individual differences in lexical processing efficiency exist and are meaningful, the theoretical nature of lexical processing efficiency and its relation to vocabulary size is less clear. In the current study, we asked two questions: (a) Is lexical processing efficiency better conceptualized as a central processing capacity or as an emergent capacity reflecting a collection of word-specific capacities? and (b) Is there evidence for a causal role for lexical processing efficiency in early vocabulary development? In the study, 120 infants were tested on a measure of lexical processing at 18, 21, and 24 months, and their vocabulary was measured via parent report. Structural equation modeling of the 18-month time point data revealed that both theoretical constructs represented in the first question above (a) fit the data. A set of regression analyses on the longitudinal data revealed little evidence for a causal effect of lexical processing on vocabulary but revealed a significant effect of vocabulary size on lexical processing efficiency early in development. Overall, the results suggest that lexical processing efficiency is a stable construct in infancy that may reflect the structure of the developing lexicon.

Is there a bilingual advantage on interference-control tasks? A multiverse meta-analysis of global reaction time and interference cost.

A contentious issue in contemporary psycholinguistics is whether bilingualism enhances executive functions. Here, we report a meta-analysis of 80 studies (253 effect sizes) comparing performance of monolinguals and bilinguals on non-verbal interference-control tasks, while examining potential moderators of effects on two dependent variables (DVs): global reaction time (RT) and interference cost. We used a multiverse approach to determine how robust conclusions were to several dataset construction and analysis decisions. In our "preferred" analysis, using a broad definition of bilinguals and standard versions of interference-control tasks, there was a very small but significant bilingual advantage for global RT (g =.13), which became non-significant once corrected for publication bias. For interference cost, there was a very small but significant bilingual advantage (g =.11). Effects were not significantly moderated by task or participant age, but were moderated by an interaction between age of second language acquisition (AoA) and the DV. Unexpectedly, larger effect sizes for interference cost were observed for studies involving bilinguals with late as opposed to early AoA. The multiverse analysis produced results largely consistent with the preferred analysis, confirming our conclusion that evidence for a bilingual advantage on interference-control tasks is weak.

Randomized Controlled Trial to Improve Self-Efficacy in People With Multiple Sclerosis: The Community Reintegration for Socially Isolated Patients (CRISP) Program.

OBJECTIVE: We examined the efficacy of a 12-wk educational socialization program, Community Reintegration for Socially Isolated Patients (CRISP), in improving self-efficacy for people with multiple sclerosis (MS). We also examined whether participants in the experimental group with increased self-efficacy experienced reduced loneliness and depression. METHOD: This randomized controlled group design included 91 participants with MS (experimental group, n = 51; control group, n = 40). Participants were between ages 20 and 68 yr, and the majority experienced a relapsing-remitting MS course (86%) and mild to moderate disability. Participants completed baseline and posttreatment assessments, including questionnaires assessing self-efficacy, loneliness, and depression. RESULTS: Experimental group participants significantly improved in self-efficacy compared with control group participants. Experimental group participants who demonstrated improved self-efficacy reported reduced perceptions of loneliness but not depressive symptoms. CONCLUSION: CRISP is a promising intervention to improve self-efficacy for people with MS. However, results need to be treated with caution given the study's limitations.

Assessing the impact of conversational overlap in content on child language growth.

When engaged in conversation, both parents and children tend to re-use words that their partner has just said. This study explored whether proportions of maternal and/or child utterances that overlapped in content with what their partner had just said contributed to growth in mean length of utterance (MLU), developmental sentence score, and vocabulary diversity over time. We analyzed the New England longitudinal corpus from the CHILDES database, comprising transcripts of mother-child conversations at 14, 20, and 32 months, using the CHIP command to compute proportions of utterances with overlapping content. Rates of maternal overlap, but not child overlap, at earlier time-points predicted child language outcomes at later time-points, after controlling for earlier child MLU. We suggest that maternal overlap plays a formative role in child language development by providing content that is immediately relevant to what the child has in mind.

Individual Differences in Language Acquisition and Processing.

Humans differ in innumerable ways, with considerable variation observable at every level of description, from the molecular to the social. Traditionally, linguistic and psycholinguistic theory has downplayed the possibility of meaningful differences in language across individuals. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that there is significant variation among speakers at any age as well as across the lifespan. Here, we review recent research in psycholinguistics, and argue that a focus on individual differences (IDs) provides a crucial source of evidence that bears strongly upon core issues in theories of the acquisition and processing of language; specifically, the role of experience in language acquisition, processing, and attainment, and the architecture of the language system.

Flashing out or fleshing out? A developmental perspective on a universal model of reading.

The principles for universal reading models proposed by Frost correspond to developmental theories, in which neurocognitive constraints and cultural experiences shape development. We question his contention that Hebrew word identification is fundamentally about roots, excluding verbal and nominal word-pattern morphemes; and we propose that readers use all information available in stimuli, adjusting for volume and usefulness.