Cognitive-linguistic Skills Research Articles

Do Reading and Arithmetic Fluency Share the Same Cognitive Base?

We examined the role of different cognitive-linguistic skills in reading and arithmetic fluency, and whether the effects of these skills are mediated by reading and arithmetic accuracy. One hundred twenty-six English-speaking Grade 1 children (67 females, 59 males; Mage = 6.41 years) were followed from the beginning of Grade 1 (Time 1) to the end of Grade 1 (Time 2). At Time 1, they were assessed on measures of non-verbal IQ, speed of processing, working memory, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming (RAN), and number sense. At Time 2, they were assessed on measures of reading and arithmetic accuracy as well as on measures of reading and arithmetic fluency. Results of path analysis showed first that when reading and arithmetic fluency were included in the model as separate outcomes, RAN was predictive of both and that speed of processing and working memory were predictive of only arithmetic fluency. Second, RAN, speed of processing, and working memory had both direct and indirect effects (via reading and arithmetic accuracy) on the covariation of reading and arithmetic fluency. Irrespective of how reading and arithmetic fluency were treated in the analyses, the effects of non-verbal IQ, phonological awareness, and number sense were all indirect. Taken together, these findings suggest that reading and arithmetic fluency draw on a broader network of cognitive-linguistic skills, whose effects can sometimes be indirect through reading and arithmetic accuracy.

The Role of Prosodic Sensitivity on Cognitive-linguistic Skills and Hangul Reading among Kindergarten Children

연구목적: 본 연구는 만 4, 5세 유아를 대상으로 운율민감성이 단어읽기에 미치는 영향력에 대해서 살펴보 았다. 나아가 유아의 운율민감성과 단어읽기 사이에서 음운인식, 형태소인식 및 철자지식을 포함한 인지-언어적 능력들이 매개적 역할을 하는지에 대해 탐색하고자 하였다. 연구방법: 본 연구의 참여자는 만 4세 유아 50명과 5세 유아 66명(N = 116)을 대상으로 실시하였다. 유아의 단어읽기, 비언어성 지능, 운율민감성(합성명사, 억양, 음장 과제) 및 음운인식(음절인식, 종성 음소인식, 초성 음소인식), 철자지식, 형태소인식을 개인검사를 통해 측정하였다. 연구결과: 위계적 회귀분석 결과, 운율민감성은 나이, 비언어성 지능 및 인지-언어적 요인들(음운인식, 철자 인식, 형태소인식)을 통제한 후에도 단어읽기를 유의미하게 설명하는 것으로 나타났다. 특히 운율민감성 중에서 억양 민감성은 단어읽기를 고유하게 설명하였다. 운율민감성과 단어읽기 간의 관계에서 음운인식을 포함한 인지-언어적 변인들이 매개하는지를 알아보기 위해 중다매개분석을 실시한 결과, 운율민감성은 직접적인 경로를 통해 단어읽기에 유의미한 영향을 미치지 않았으나 음절인식과 종성 음소인식의 간접적인 경로를 통해 단어읽기에 유의미한 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 결론: 본 연구는 운율민감성이 음운인식과는 독립적인 인지 구조임을 시사하며, 단어읽기 사이에서 음절인 식과 종성 음소인식의 음운인식을 완전 매개하여 한글 단어 읽기에 영향을 주는 것을 시사한다. 이 결과는 유아의 문해 발달에 운율민감성의 중요성을 나타내준다.

Improvement of cognitive ability of English language learners through writing skills.

This paper explores the interrelation between the cognitive linguistic skills that are necessary for children to write on both words and texts. Three types of cognitive-linguistic abilities, which were considered to be more specifically interested in the text writing research, were transcriptional skills, ideation and syntax. The first two emerged out of a simplistic writing view (Berninger, 2010) while the predicted value of syntactic skills was based on an "extended triangle model" (Bishop & Snowling, 2011). The transcription skills in the present research have been operationalized to generate strokes in line with the proper order of stroke. With respect to the ideation, we tested the capacity of children to create orally sentences on such subjects and the requirements for grading are close to the criteria of text composition. Although good handwriting enhances student reading, improves skills, the process of abandoning handwriting has already started in a number of countries. This study paper reveals that handwriting is not only meant for
 primary school students, but also in high school education with regard to some important studies.

Literacy learning in early Chinese-English bilinguals: the role of pure copying skill

Literacy learning in different writing systems involves both universal and unique features, even in bilinguals. The present study investigated whether the role of pure copying differs in Chinese and English literacy acquisition by following a group of early Chinese-English bilinguals from kindergarten to grade two across three time points. Age, nonverbal IQ, three cognitive-linguistic skills administered in Chinese (i.e., phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and RAN) and pure copying of unfamiliar scripts (Korean and Hebrew) were tested in 188 children (mean age = 5.54 years) when they were in their final year of kindergarten. Both Chinese and English word reading and spelling performance were measured when they were in first and second grades, respectively. Results showed that pure copying skill was a critical predictor of Chinese reading and spelling, whereas it was not a significant longitudinal correlate of English reading and spelling. In addition, Chinese phonological awareness was a unique correlate of subsequent English, but not Chinese, word reading and spelling. This finding highlights the unique features of literacy learning in two different writing systems and suggests the importance of using somewhat different strategies according to the unique features of different writing systems during literacy learning and teaching.

Forward masking and cognitive-language skills in children as a function of literacy stage

ABSTRACT Purpose: to investigate the relation between forward masking and cognitive-language skills in children as a function of literacy stage. Methods: twenty-seven children registered in literacy stage at public schools, aged from 6 to 9 years old, with no learning difficulties or audiological problems reported, participated in this study. Frequency Following Responses were registered in two test conditions: 1) /da/ alone; 2) /da/ presented 4 milliseconds after a speech noise. Two language protocols were applied: a cognitive-linguistic skills protocol and a phonological awareness one. Results: forward masking was evident in Frequency Following Responses of all children regardless of literacy stage. Frequency Following Responses latencies in both testing conditions showed no difference among participants’ age. Cognitive-language skills scores were below those expected for all children, with significant improvement noticed as a function of age. No correlation between language performance and forward masking was found. Conclusion: there was no relation between forward masking and cognitive-language skills in children, as a function of literacy stage.

El discurso científico en la etapa de infantil en el contexto del huerto ecológico escolar

According to the necessity to develop scientific literacy from early ages, the aim of this work is to explore scientific discourse of 5 years-old children at circle time during a didactic sequence related to their ecological school garden. To get those achievements, an emergent-cathegories system has been stablished by the analysis of transcriptions obtained from four circle time registrations, being this system agreed by experts. Results show that 5 years-old children contributed with data and information to the discourse (in a 31,6% of the cases), they supply knowledge schemata (in a 39,8% of the cases), they offer arguments on the shared schemata (in a 24% of the cases) and, in a less measure, they build initial explaning models (in a 4,6% of the cases). In relation to knowledge schemata that are built in this context, they are about the necessary elements in the garden (light, earth, water, soil or depth), and they allow to visualize and to infere the initial explaining models handled by the children at that age. In conclusion, results show evidences respect to the capacity of developing scientific competence from early years as well as the suitability of the use of ecological school garden as a context to promote cognitive-linguistic skills which influence on scientific knowledge construction

CONTENT COMPONENTS OF EDUCATIONAL AND PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION OF FOREIGN STUDENTS-MEDICIANS

The purpose of the article is to describe the main components of Ukrainian-language medical educational and professional discourse as a format of educational and professional communication of foreign medical students of Ukrainian universities, also like a basis for selecting the content of Ukrainian as a foreign language. For realization of the specified purpose such theoretical methods, as the analysis of scientific lingvopsychological, the theory of language communication, lingvodidactic researches were used; systematization, generalization and synthesis of existing descriptions and characteristics of Ukrainian-language medical discourse; also such empirical methods: analysis of textbooks for foreign medical students, in order to obtain an expert assessment of our principles of selection of educational language materials. By engaging in Ukrainian-language medical discourse, foreign medical students gain professional knowledge and the opportunity to become subjects of communicative practices of professional communication with equal professionals and various members of Ukrainian society (patients), to whom the future doctor's professional activity is directed. Linguodidactic interpretation of this type of medical discourse allows to formulate partial principles of selection of language and speech materials for teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language. The linguo-methodical interpretation of the studied phenomenon will help in the selection of language material and the creation of methodological developments and manuals on the Ukrainian language for foreign students; in the choice of teaching methods and techniques necessary for the formation of cognitive-linguistic skills of decoding / coding of a communicative event by instrumentality of a foreign (Ukrainian) language.

The influence of sensory-motor components of handwriting on Chinese character learning in second- and fourth-grade Chinese children.

In the present study, 144 second- and 150 fourth-grade Chinese students were recruited to complete a Chinese character learning task to explore the specific contributions of sensory-motor components (i.e., visual, motor, and haptic systems) of handwriting to Chinese character learning. After matching for age, nonverbal IQ, and a series of cognitive-linguistic skills, each child was assigned to 1 of 4 training conditions (i.e., reading, visual processing, air-writing, or handwriting) to investigate the specific contributions of the sensory-motor components (i.e., visual, motor, and haptic systems) of handwriting to Chinese character learning. In the reading condition, the children were shown images of characters. In the other 3 conditions, they were shown animations of how a given character is written. The participants were asked to view the animations in the visual processing condition, whereas in the air-writing and handwriting conditions they were asked, respectively, to follow the animations and write the Chinese characters with their index fingers in the air or write the Chinese characters with a pen on paper. They were asked to name the learnt characters in the posttest. Both air-writing and handwriting elicited a larger training effect than reading or visual processing, but there was no difference between the air-writing and handwriting groups. Also, no age differences were found in either the air-writing or the handwriting conditions. Unique contributions of visual-motor integration, motor programming, and their corresponding integration with a haptic system of handwriting to reading are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

Subgrouping of Korean Readers Based on Reading Achievement and the Relation of Cognitive-Linguistic Variables to the Subgroups

The purpose of this study was to classify Korean readers into subgroups based on their reading achievement and to examine the relationships between these subgroups and a set of cognitive-linguistic variables. The reading achievement and cognitive-linguistic skills of 394 elementary school students were measured and the data were analyzed by disaggregating into primary grade level (i.e., Grades 1–3) and intermediate grade level (i.e., Grades 4–6). The main results are summarized as follows. First, three subgroups of readers were found based on the reading achievement for the primary grade level: “very poor word readers and poor comprehenders,” “poor readers,” and “average readers.” Second, four subgroups of readers were found based on the reading achievement for the intermediate grade level: “very significantly poor readers,” “very poor readers,” “average word readers but poor comprehenders,” and “average readers.” Third, vocabulary, rapid naming, phonological memory, and phonological awareness were cognitive-linguistic variables that significantly differentiated “very poor readers” and “poor readers” from “average readers” for the primary grade level. Fourth, phonological memory, rapid naming, sentence repetition, and listening comprehension were cognitive-linguistic variables that significantly differentiated “very poor readers” and “poor readers” from “average readers” for the intermediate grade level. This article also discusses the limits of this research and the implications in practice. Finally, this article touches upon the direction of future studies.

The roles of phonological awareness, rapid automatised naming and morphological awareness in isiXhosa

The current paper examines the unique contributions of phonological awareness (PA), rapid automatised naming (RAN) and morphological awareness (MA) to oral reading fluency (ORF) in isiXhosa. No published study has yet explored the individual contributions of these three cognitive-linguistic skills to reading in isiXhosa. Sixty-six grade 3 home language isiXhosa learners were assessed on these cognitive-linguistic skills. Results from a linear regression analysis showed that only RAN and MA, but not PA, were significant concurrent predictors of ORF. These results suggest that the role of PA in reading in grade 3 learners in isiXhosa may have been overestimated because other important predictors of reading have not been controlled. Our data also suggest that grade 3 isiXhosa learners may make use of the morpheme as a grain size in reading. Our study highlights the need for longitudinal research which explores the roles of PA, MA and RAN in reading development in order to inform reading pedagogy in isiXhosa and other Southern Bantu languages.

Cognitive recovery of children and adolescents with moderate to severe TBI during inpatient rehabilitation

Objective Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children and adolescents. This study examines the early cognitive-linguistic recovery of pediatric patients who sustained TBI and required inpatient rehabilitation and investigates the contribution of various demographic, clinical, and preinjury factors to recovery. Methods A retrospective chart review of children and adolescents, ages 3–20 years, admitted to an inpatient rehabilitation unit. Acute outcomes were assessed at admission and discharge using the WeeFIM and CALS. Premorbid measures of behavioral and emotional functioning were also collected. Results One hundred and one children and adolescents (mean age = 12.31, SD = 4.46) diagnosed with TBI requiring inpatient rehabilitation were included. Patients displayed significant improvements on cognitive-linguistic skills and functional independence between admission and discharge, with medium to large effect sizes. Premorbid behavioral-emotional functioning was not found to be associated with early cognitive recovery. Conclusion Results suggest that significant functional improvements can be expected for pediatric patients with TBI during inpatient rehabilitation. Consistent with previous literature, injury severity was significantly related to acute outcomes. In conjunction with the WeeFIM, the CALS appears to be a meaningful complement for assessing and monitoring cognitive-linguistic skills during inpatient rehabilitation. Implications for Rehabiliation Our study provides support for the utility of the CALS to assess cognitive recovery during inpatient rehabilitation following moderate to severe TBI. Injury severity and not pre-injury functioning or demographic variables was related to worse scores on the CALS at discharge. Using a measure sensitive to change over admission, such as the CALS, can inform treatment planning.

Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Verb Fluency Performance in Individuals With Probable Alzheimer's Disease and Healthy Older Adults.

Purpose To date, verb fluency tasks have been mainly analyzed quantitatively for individuals with dementia. Qualitative analysis, however, such as examining the semantic and psycholinguistic content of the responses might further inform researchers and clinicians about patients' cognitive and linguistic status. Therefore, the current study examined psycholinguistic and lexical characteristics of verb fluency responses in individuals with probable Alzheimer's disease (pAD) and healthy older adults to delineate qualitative and quantitative differences between the two groups. Method The verb fluency responses from participants with pAD (amnestic type) were compared to those from age- and education-matched healthy older adults. The responses were analyzed with respect to the number and proportion of correct responses, word frequency, age of acquisition, phoneme and syllable length, and neighborhood density. The verb responses were also categorized into mental state verbs and action verbs. Additionally, a battery of cognitive-linguistic tests was administered, and for each group, relationships between correct verb fluency responses and other cognitive-linguistic skills were investigated using correlation and regression analyses. Results Similar to previous findings regarding noun retrieval in dementia, the results revealed that individuals with pAD not only produced fewer correct verb fluency responses but also generated little to no mental state verbs compared to the control group. The group with pAD also produced verbs with shorter phoneme and syllable lengths, higher word frequency, and earlier age of acquisition ratings relative to the healthy older adults. The number of correct verb fluency responses was mainly predicted by a reading comprehension score in the pAD group and a nonverbal fluency test score in the healthy group. Conclusion The current quantitative and qualitative findings add support to the contention that lexical-semantic impairments underlie word retrieval problems in pAD and such difficulties present in generative naming paradigms and also across grammatical categories.

초등학생의 철자 및 인지 언어 능력과 작문 성취도와의 관련성

초등학생의 철자 및 인지 언어 능력과 작문 성취도와의 관련성

Cognitive-linguistic performance of schoolchildren in the literacy cycle in the public school context: universal screening

ABSTRACT Objective: to characterize the linguistic-cognitive performance of schoolchildren in the literacy cycle, in order to identify children at risk for learning disorders in the public school context. Methods: this study involved 88 children, aged 6 to 8 years, enrolled in the first, second and third year of elementary education I, from two schools in the city of Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. The procedure used was the Cognitive-Linguistic Skills Evaluation Protocol, which has collective and individual versions, both being applied. The analysis of the groups was performed through the statistical non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test with p <0.05. Results: all students were submitted to the individual version for presenting poor performance in the collective version of the protocol. Thus, the application of the collective version was not sufficient to identify children at risk for learning disorders, thus, the indication of the individual assessment. In the individual version, students from the 1st year showed a lower performance in most of the subtests that make up the instrument, whereas those from the 2nd and 3rd years had an average performance, which also deserves attention, according to the instrument of evaluation. These results, below the one expected for the age and school year, may be a consequence of poor learning opportunities within and outside school. There were also significant differences as a function of the schooling advance, revealing that the cognitive-linguistic skills, precursors of the reading and writing learning process, are only having a greater leap of development at the end of the literacy cycle, in the third year, which reveals a significant delay in terms of learning. Conclusion: the low performance observed in cognitive-linguistic abilities in schoolchildren hinders the early identification of children at risk for learning disorders and questions the quality of educational opportunities experienced by the students inside and outside the public school. Other factors, such as regional differences in language and linguistic context, need to be considered in the interpretation of tests that evaluate cognitive-linguistic abilities.

DISCOURSE APPROACH IN THE SYSTEM OF TRANING OF THE UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE OF FOREIGN STUDENTS OF MEDICAL SPECIALTIES

The article describes the main characteristics of the discourse approach in the system of teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language and the main components of the Ukrainian-language medical scientific-academic discourse as a basis for selecting the content of language education of foreign medical students of Ukrainian universities. By participating in the Ukrainian-language medical discourse, foreign medical students gain professional knowledge and the opportunity to become subjects of communicative practices of professional communication with equal professionals and various members of Ukrainian society (patients), to whom the future doctor's professional activity is directed. The author cites the following content components of the system of teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language: communicative roles of the subjects of medical discourse that regulate the communicative needs of foreign students; appropriate communicative intentions and strategies, tactics of realization of these intentions; genre forms of medical discourse; situational and thematic organization; basic communicative units of realization of medical discourse. Linguodidactic interpretation of this kind of medical discourse allowed to formulate partial principles of selection of language and speech materials for teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language. The characteristics of the essence and components of medical scientific-academic discourse are given in the article, the principles of selection of educational materials for teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language are singled out are the communicative-linguistic basis of language education of foreign medical students. The linguo-methodical interpretation of the studied phenomenon will help in the selection of language material and the creation of methodological developments and manuals on the Ukrainian language for foreign students; in the choice of teaching methods and techniques necessary for the formation of cognitive-linguistic skills of decoding / coding of a communicative event by instrumentality of a foreign (Ukrainian) language.

Cognitive-Linguistic Skills Underlying Word Reading and Spelling Difficulties in Chinese Adolescents With Dyslexia

The present study investigated the co-occurrence of word reading and spelling difficulties for Chinese first language (L1) and English second language (L2) and the role of morphological awareness in word reading and spelling ability across two languages. A total of 110 Hong Kong Chinese-speaking students in Grade 7, including 55 adolescents with dyslexia (28 males, mean age = 152.11 months) and 55 typically developing adolescents (27 males, mean age = 151.85 months) participated. They were assessed on the cognitive-linguistic measures of morphological awareness, phonological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, rapid naming, word reading, and word spelling in L1 and L2. Multivariate analysis of variance showed that compared with the typical students, adolescents with dyslexia had poorer performance in all L1 and L2 measures except the phonological awareness in Chinese. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that for both groups of students, morphological awareness contributed uniquely to word reading and spelling in L1 and L2; rapid letter naming contributed uniquely to English word spelling. Findings highlight the importance of co-occurring difficulties in L1 and L2 reading and spelling and that morphological awareness may play a critical role in predicting word reading and spelling across languages for Chinese adolescents with dyslexia and those without difficulty.

What explains reading and dictation in Persian among Iranian second grade students?

This study aimed to determine the contributions of cognitive linguistic variables to Persian word reading and word dictation. We tested 79 second graders in Iran on different cognitive-linguistic skills, including rapid letter naming, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic skills, vocabulary knowledge, nonverbal reasoning, word reading, and word dictation. Information on socio-economic status was collected via questionnaire. Regression analyses showed that rapid letter naming and phonological awareness were uniquely associated with reading in Persian, while rapid letter naming, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness were uniquely associated with dictation. Results highlight the importance of rapid letter sound knowledge, phonological awareness, and morphological awareness for literacy in Persian.

The association between children’s common Chinese stroke errors and spelling ability

The present study adopted an error analysis approach to examine the stroke errors committed by 43 Hong Kong Chinese children of Grades 1 and 3 from a Chinese Character Copying Task. It aimed to determine the common stroke error patterns, developmental changes and the cognitive problems implied. The different types of stroke errors and total number of correct stroke sequence were further linked to Chinese word spelling ability and associated cognitive-linguistic skills. Results revealed that wrong stroke sequence and wrong character configuration were the common stroke errors in both grades and Grade 3 students made significantly fewer errors in these two categories. Both wrong stroke sequence and wrong character configuration were found to be associated with poor visual discrimination skills and visual sequential and spatial memory. Character configuration error was a significant predictor of Chinese word spelling ability whereas correct stroke sequence only contributed significantly to Chinese word spelling performance in Grade 3. These findings suggest the significance of character configuration knowledge in Chinese spelling and its importance in facilitating the orthographic developments of structural knowledge and radical knowledge. The findings have implications for the design of an enriched curriculum to teach Chinese character so as to foster a better foundation for orthographic development as well as Chinese word spelling ability.

Writing motivation and performance in Chinese children

This study examined the relationships between writing motivation and written composition performance in Chinese among 388 Chinese children in Grades 3 to 5 in accordance with the framework of self-determination theory. Multiple regression analysis results showed that writing motivation measures (external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation and intrinsic motivation) contributed a unique variance to written composition performance before and after controlling for the contribution of cognitive-linguistic skills important to written composition (i.e., word dictation, working memory and syntactic knowledge). Identified regulation was the only significant predictor of written composition performance. These results are discussed with reference to the impact of Chinese culture on motivation to write among Chinese children.

The role of socioeconomic status in Chinese word reading and writing among Chinese kindergarten children

The number of Chinese children living in poverty has risen steadily in Hong Kong, China. However, little is known on the longitudinal effects of family socioeconomic status (SES) on cognitive-linguistic skills, word reading and writing in children from low-SES backgrounds. This study examines differences in cognitive-linguistic skills and word reading and writing across kindergarteners from the low- and middle-SES groups. It also investigates the direct link between SES and children’s concurrent Chinese literacy skills and how cognitive-linguistic skills mediate the longitudinal associations between SES and word reading and writing. One hundred and nine children were assessed at Kindergarten K2 (Time 1) and reassessed at Kindergarten K3 (Time 2). Children were administered the measures of vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, executive functioning, Chinese word reading, and Chinese word dictation at both time points. Results revealed that low-SES children performed less well on Chinese word reading and dictation than their middle-SES peers at both time points. Moreover, hierarchical regression and mediation analyses suggested that SES had a direct relation with Chinese word reading at Time 1 after controlling for age and cognitive-linguistic skills, and an indirect link with Chinese word dictation at Time 2 which was fully mediated by phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge at Time 1. The results highlight that SES may exert an impact on children’s early Chinese reading and writing and suggest the benefit of improving phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge of low-SES children.