Semantic Memory In Children Research Articles

The Role of Pedagogical Documentation in Early Childhood Education in Indonesia

Considering the significance of pedagogical documentation in the early childhood education/care system, the current study examines the influence of pedagogical documentation on children's semantic memory, observed activities and evaluated skills and qualities per their teachers and caretakers. This study also examines the interactive effect of the learning environment with pedagogical documentation to enhance children's semantic memory, observed activities, and evaluated skills and qualities. A mixed-method approach has been utilized to examine the proposed associations. Learning events were organized for children aged 36 to 72 months in the kindergartens and preschools in Mataram, Indonesia. After four weeks of observations, the teachers and caretakers of the children recorded their responses regarding children's semantic memory, observed activities, skills, and qualities. The data were analyzed using SmartPLS 3.0 software. The results showed a significant increase in children's semantic memory, evaluated skills and qualities, and a positive change in their routine activities. Simultaneously, results also presented the significant role of the learning environment in enhancing positive outcomes of the pedagogical documentation in the early childhood education/care system.

When dogs meow: An electrophysiological study of lexical-semantic processing in toddlers.

The goal of this study was to investigate lexical-semantic processing at an early phase of language development. Adults often communicate with children using infant-directed speech that typically involves lexical and syntactic modifications such as onomatopoeias (Soderstrom, 2007). Here, we asked how and when children start to show an advantage for processing conventional linguistic forms, such as common nouns, and consequently decreasing sensitivity to onomatopoeias. We recorded event-related brain potentials in children of two age groups (16-21months and 24-31months) and in an adult control group during the presentation of four conditions in which either common nouns or onomatopoeias were presented auditorily followed by a picture of an either congruent or incongruent object. We focused on the N400 effect, a more negative ERP response to incongruent compared with congruent semantic relations. The younger children showed an N400 effect only for onomatopoeic words, while the older children showed an N400 effect only for common nouns. The adults showed N400 effects for onomatopoeia and nouns. These different N400 effects suggest that onomatopoeia and common nouns are differently organized in children's semantic memory and that the acquisition of linguistic abilities affects and modifies semantic processing of different lexical information.

Memory at Play: Examining Relations Between Episodic and Semantic Memory in a Children's Museum.

The relation between episodic and semantic memory was examined by testing how semantic knowledge influences children's episodic memory for events and their locations. Five-, six-, and seven-year-olds (N=87) engaged in events in a children's museum designed as a town. Events were semantically congruent or incongruent with the spatial location (e.g., sorting mail at post office vs. grocery store). In addition to this experimental paradigm, a semantic interview assessed children's semantic knowledge about real-world locations. Accuracy in the experimental paradigm showed that children's semantic memory influenced memory for locations. Interviews revealed age-related improvements in children's semantic knowledge. Regression analyses examined factors that best supported episodic memory. These results provide novel insights and highlight the utility of research in naturalistic settings.

One declarative memory system or two? The relationship between episodic and semantic memory in children with temporal lobe epilepsy.

This study explored verbal semantic and episodic memory in children with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy to determine whether they had impairments in both or only 1 aspect of memory, and to examine relations between performance in the 2 domains. Sixty-six children and adolescents (37 with seizures of left temporal lobe onset, 29 with right-sided onset) were given 4 tasks assessing different aspects of semantic memory (picture naming, fluency, knowledge of facts, knowledge of word meanings) and 2 episodic memory tasks (story recall, word list recall). High rates of impairments were observed across tasks, and no differences were found related to the laterality of the seizures. Individual patient analyses showed that there was a double dissociation between the 2 aspects of memory in that some children were impaired on episodic but not semantic memory, whereas others showed intact episodic but impaired semantic memory. This double dissociation suggests that these 2 memory systems may develop independently in the context of temporal lobe pathology, perhaps related to differential effects of dysfunction in the lateral and mesial temporal lobe structures.

Episodic and semantic memory in children with mesial temporal sclerosis

The aim of this study was to analyze semantic and episodic memory deficits in children with mesial temporal sclerosis (MTS) and their correlation with clinical epilepsy variables. For this purpose, 19 consecutive children and adolescents with MTS (8 to 16 years old) were evaluated and their performance on five episodic memory tests (short- and long-term memory and learning) and four semantic memory tests was compared with that of 28 healthy volunteers. Patients performed worse on tests of immediate and delayed verbal episodic memory, visual episodic memory, verbal and visual learning, mental scanning for semantic clues, object naming, word definition, and repetition of sentences. Clinical variables such as early age at seizure onset, severity of epilepsy, and polytherapy impaired distinct types of memory. These data confirm that children with MTS have episodic memory deficits and add new information on semantic memory. The data also demonstrate that clinical variables contribute differently to episodic and semantic memory performance.

Effects of Childhood Hearing Loss on Organization of Semantic Memory: Typicality and Relatedness

The purpose of this research was to study how early childhood hearing loss affects development of concepts and categories, aspects of semantic knowledge that allow us to group and make inferences about objects with common properties, such as dogs versus cats. We assessed category typicality and out-of-category relatedness effects. The typicality effect refers to performance advantage (faster reaction times, fewer errors) for objects with a higher number of a category's characteristic properties; the out-of-category relatedness effect refers to performance disadvantage (slower reaction times and more errors) for out-of-category objects that share some properties with category members. We applied a new children's speeded category-verification task (vote "yes" if the pictured object is clothing). Stimuli were pictures of typical and atypical category objects (e.g., pants, glove) and related and unrelated out-of-category objects (e.g., necklace, soup). Participants were 30 children with hearing impairment (HI) who were considered successful hearing aid users and who attended regular classes (mainstreamed) with some support services. Ages ranged from 5 to 15 yr (mean = 10 yr 8 mo). Results were related to normative data from . Typical objects consistently showed preferential processing (faster reaction times, fewer errors), and related out-of-category objects consistently showed the converse. Overall, results between HI and normative groups exhibited striking similarity. Variation in speed of classification was influenced primarily by age and age-related competencies, such as vocabulary skill. Audiological status, however, independently influenced performance to a lesser extent, with positive responses becoming faster as degree of hearing loss decreased and negative responses becoming faster as age of identification/amplification/education decreased. There were few errors overall. The presence of a typicality effect indicates that 1) the structure of conceptual representations for at least one category in the HI group was based on characteristic properties with an uneven distribution among members, and 2) typical objects with a higher number of characteristic properties were more easily accessed and/or retrieved. The presence of a relatedness effect indicates that the structure of representational knowledge in the HI group allowed them to appreciate semantic properties and understand that properties may be shared between categories. Speculations linked the association 1) between positive responses and degree of hearing loss to an increase in the quality, accessibility, and retrievability of conceptual representations with better hearing; and 2) between negative responses and age of identification/amplification/education to an improvement in effortful, postretrieval decision-making proficiencies with more schooling and amplified auditory experience. This research establishes the value of our new approach to assessing the organization of semantic memory in children with HI.

Category similarity effects in children's semantic memory retrieval

Fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade students were required to indicate whether or not a stimulus word belonged in either of two semantic categories that were held in memory. Each category pair was either semantically similar or semantically dissimilar. The results indicated that even for the youngest children, similar categories required less search time than dissimilar categories. It was suggested that while dissimilar categories had to be accessed successively prior to search, subjects were able to consolidate similar categories into a superordinate group which eliminated the time to shift from one category to another during search. The results were contrasted with clustering studies which have demonstrated a minimal amount of memory facilitation in children for conceptually related items over unrelated items.

The growth of children's semantic memory: Semantic elements

The present studies support the position that children learn superordinate elements later than subordinate ones. Semantic oddity problems revealed that first-graders understand very little about the superordinate elements, animate and inanimate, that fifth-graders understand them somewhat better, and that ninth-graders apparently understand them perfectly (but only use them when pressed); in contrast, first-graders understand the subordinate elements, plant, animal, vehicle, and utensil, fairly well and fifth and ninth-graders apparently understand them perfectly. The studies also argued that responses to sematic oddity problems reflect knowledge of semantic elements (competence) rather than use (performance) and that semantic oddity problems based on words give approximately the same results as those based on pictures.