German-speaking Children Research Articles

The detection of subject–verb agreement violations by German-speaking children: An eye-tracking study

This study examines the processing of sentences with and without subject–verb agreement violations in German-speaking children at three and five years of age. An eye-tracking experiment was conducted to measure whether children's looking behavior was influenced by the grammaticality of the test sentences. The older group of children turned their gaze faster towards a target picture and looked longer at it when the object noun referring to the target was presented in a grammatical sentence with subject–verb agreement compared to when the object noun was presented in a sentence in which an agreement violation occurred. The younger group of children displayed less conclusive results, with a tendency to look longer but not faster towards the target picture in the grammatical compared to the ungrammatical condition. This is the first experimental evidence that German-speaking five-year old children are sensitive to subject–verb agreement and violations thereof. Our results additionally substantiate that the eye-tracking paradigm is suitable to examine children's sensitivity to subtle grammatical violations.

Morphological priming in child German

Regular and irregular inflection in children's production has been examined in many previous studies. Yet, little is known about the processes involved in children's recognition of inflected words. To gain insight into how children process inflected words, the current study examines regular -t and irregular -n participles of German using the cross-modal priming technique testing 108 monolingual German-speaking children in two age groups (group I, mean age: 8;4, group II, mean age: 9;9) and a control group of 72 adults. Although both age groups of children had the same full priming effect as adults for -t forms, only children of age group II showed an adult-like (partial) priming effect for -n participles. We argue that children (within the age range tested) employ the same mechanisms for regular inflection as adults but that the lexical retrieval processes required for irregular forms become more efficient when children get older.

Eine internationale neuropsychologische Testbatterie für Kinder, Jugendliche und Erwachsene mit Anorexia nervosa – die deutsche Adaptation des Ravello Profils

Adults with anorexia nervosa (AN) show weaknesses in several cognitive functions before and after weight restoration. There is a great demand for standardized examinations of executive functioning in the field of child and adolescent AN. Previous studies exhibited methodological inconsistencies regarding test selection and operationalization of cognitive functions, making the interpretation of their findings difficult. In order to overcome these inconsistencies, a neuropsychological assessment tool, the "Ravello Profile," was developed, though previously not available in German. This paper presents a German adaptation of the Ravello Profile and illustrates its applicability in children and adolescents via three case descriptions. The Ravello Profile was adapted for the German-speaking area. The applicability of the Ravello Profile was evaluated in three children and adolescents with AN. The cases presented confirm the feasible implementation of this adaptation of the Ravello Profile, both in children and adolescents. Hence, it enables a methodologically consistent examination of executive functioning in German-speaking children, adolescents, and adults with AN. Using the Ravello Profile, the role of cognitive functions in the development of AN can be systematically examined over a broad age range.

Does sensitivity to orthographic regularities influence reading and spelling acquisition? A 1-year prospective study

Recent studies focused on the influence of orthographic processing on reading and spelling performance. It was found that orthographic processing is an independent predictor of reading and spelling performance in different languages and children of different ages. This study investigated sensitivity to orthographic regularities in German-speaking children (N = 31) prior and during formal reading and spelling instruction. In addition, the relationship between sensitivity to orthographic regularities and reading and spelling performance was explored. Two aspects of children’s sensitivity to orthographic regularities (sensitivity to frequent double consonants and sensitivity to legal positions of double consonants) were measured with a nonword forced choice task. The results show that sensitivity to orthographic regularities improved significantly from kindergarten to first grade. Moreover, children’s sensitivity to orthographic regularities at the end of first grade accounted for a significant amount of unique variance in their reading and spelling performance. These results suggest that orthographic sensitivity on a sublexical level is important for the development of reading and spelling skills.

Prosodic constraints on inflected words: An area of difficulty for German-speaking children with specific language impairment?

Recent studies suggest that morphosyntactic difficulties may result from prosodic problems. We therefore address the interface between inflectional morphology and prosody in typically developing children (TD) and children with SLI by testing whether these groups are sensitive to prosodic constraints that guide plural formation in German. A plural elicitation task was designed consisting of 60 words and 20 pseudowords. The performance of 14 German-speaking children with SLI (mean age 7.5) was compared to age-matched controls and to younger children matched for productive vocabulary. TD children performed significantly better than children with SLI. Error analyses revealed that children with SLI produced more forms that did not meet the optimal shape of a noun plural. Beyond the fact that children with SLI have deficits in plural marking, the findings suggest that they also show reduced sensitivity to prosodic requirements. In other words, the prosodic structure of inflected words seems to be vulnerable in children with SLI.

Linguistic Ideology and State Power: German and English Education in Ontario, 1880–1912

Abstract: This article analyzes the relationship between German and English in Ontario's educational system between 1880 and 1912. It examines textbooks, curriculum, and the linguistic ideology of the Education Department. It charts the transition of German from one of three languages of instruction alongside English and French to an elective subject. By connecting German to other language debates in the period, this study expands our view of English–French relations in Ontario. The analysis of several languages also contributes new perspectives on bilingual education in North America. In addition, the focus on linguistic and cultural policies reassesses the layers of state power and the rising authority of the provincial education bureaucracy. Finally, by situating the educational experience of German-speaking children and the goals of German-speaking parents within the broader context of projects of standardization in the late nineteenth century, the author challenges the assumption about the singular importance of the First World War on German language and culture in Ontario and more broadly in Canada and the United States.

Adaptation and Initial Validation of the German Version of the Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (German SLSS)

The present research describes the adaptation and initial validation of a brief measure of global life satisfaction, the Students’ Life Satisfactions Scale (SLSS), for German-speaking children and adolescents aged 10–17 years. Study 1 investigated the responses of 286 Swiss students (aged 12–17 years) administering paper-pencil questionnaires (e.g., Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire) during class on two occasions (interval 4 months). Study 2 investigated the responses of a heterogeneous sample composed of 3,407 Austrian, German, and Swiss students (aged 10–17 years), administering questionnaires online (e.g., Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale). The German SLSS showed unidimensionality, explaining approximately 60% of variance, an internal consistency coefficient of α = .88, and a stability coefficient of .55 over a 4-month interval. Study 1 found a moderate association between life satisfaction and social desirability (.20), and theoretically meaningful correlations with temperamental variables (–.16 with Psychoticism, .29 with Extraversion, –.48 with Neuroticism). Study 2 found no gender differences, but small age effects. Differences among Austrian, German, and Swiss students were also identified. Study 2 found correlations between German SLSS and domain-specific satisfaction (e.g., satisfaction with the self). The two studies support the usefulness of the German SLSS and provide preliminary norms for comparison purposes for subsequent research.

Phonological awareness: factors of influence

Early child development is influenced by various genetic and environmental factors. This study aims to identify factors that affect the phonological awareness of preschool and first grade children. Based on a sample of 330 German-speaking children (mean age = 6.2 years) the following domains were evaluated: Parent factors, birth and pregnancy, child factors, and leisure time activities (all based on parent report). Regression analysis provided information on the relative contribution of each predictor on the explained variance. Results indicate that the variables ‘migration background,’ ‘child age,’ ‘child intelligence,’ ‘smoking during pregnancy,’ ‘language difficulties’ (impairments of word expression, grammatical deficits, stutter), and ‘watching TV’ have a significant influence on phonological awareness.

Language influences on numerical development—Inversion effects on multi-digit number processing

In early numerical development, children have to become familiar with the Arabic number system and its place-value structure. The present review summarizes and discusses evidence for language influences on the acquisition of the highly transparent structuring principles of digital-Arabic digits by means of its moderation through the transparency of the respective language's number word system. In particular, the so-called inversion property (i.e., 24 named as “four and twenty” instead of “twenty four”) was found to influence number processing in children not only in verbal but also in non-verbal numerical tasks. Additionally, there is first evidence suggesting that inversion-related difficulties may influence numerical processing longitudinally. Generally, language-specific influences in children's numerical development are most pronounced for multi-digit numbers. Yet, there is currently only one study on three-digit number processing for German-speaking children. A direct comparison of additional new data from Italian-speaking children further corroborates the assumption that language impacts on cognitive (number) processing as inversion-related interference was found most pronounced for German-speaking children. In sum, we conclude that numerical development may not be language-specific but seems to be moderated by language.

Preschool children’s interpretation of object‐initial sentences: Neural correlates of their behavioral performance

The acquisition of the function of case-marking is a key step in the development of sentence processing for German-speaking children since case-marking reveals the relations between sentential arguments. In this study, we investigated the development of the processing of case-marking and argument structures in children at 3, 4;6 and 6 years of age, as well as its processing in adults. Using EEG, we measured event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to object-initial compared to subject-initial German sentences including transitive verbs and case-marked noun phrases referring to animate arguments. We also tested children's behavioral competence in a sentence-picture matching task. Word order and case-marking were manipulated in German main clauses. Adults' behavioral performance was close to perfect and their ERPs revealed a negativity for the processing of the topicalized accusative marked noun phrase (NP1) and no effect for the second NP (NP2) in the object-initial structure. Children's behavioral data showed a significant above-chance outcome in the subject-initial condition for all age groups, but not for the object-initial condition. In contrast to adults, the ERPs of 3-year-olds showed a positivity at NP1, indicating difficulties in processing the non-canonical object-initial structures. Children at the age of 4;6 did not differ in the processing patterns of object-initial vs. subject-initial sentences at NP1 but showed a slight positivity at NP2. This positivity at NP2, which implies syntactic integration difficulties, is more pronounced in 6-year-olds but is absent in adults. At NP1, however, 6-year-olds show the same negativity as adults. In sum, the behavioral and electrophysiological findings demonstrate that children in each age group use different strategies, which are indicative of their developmental stage. While 3-year-olds merely detect differences in the two sentence structures without being able to use this information for sentence comprehension, 4;6-year-olds proceed to use mainly a word-order strategy, processing NP1 in both conditions in the same manner, which leads to processing difficulties upon detecting case-marking cues at NP2. At the age of 6, children are able to use case-marking cues for comprehension but still show enhanced effort for correct thematic-role assignment.

Morphological Information and Memory Resources in Children's Processing of Relative Clauses in German

We investigated the processing of agreement marking and case marking in the comprehension of German relative clauses in 48 seven-year-old monolingual German-speaking children in a picture selection task. We examined the relation between the effectiveness of these different morphological cues and individual memory resources as measured by a digit-span test. Relative clauses were disambiguated either by agreement marking on the embedded verb or by case marking on the embedded determiner phrase. The results show that subject-extracted relative clauses (subject RCs) are more easily comprehended than object-extracted relative clauses (object RCs) and that case disambiguation is more effective than agreement disambiguation. Moreover, we found a relation between individual phonological short-term memory and the effectiveness of the different disambiguating cues in the comprehension of object RCs but not in the comprehension of subject RCs. We found that: (i) children with a low-digit span score have difficulties in the comprehension of case and agreement disambiguated object RCs, (ii) children with a medium-digit span score have difficulties in the comprehension of agreement disambiguated object RCs but not difficulties with case disambiguated object RCs, and (iii) children with a larger digit span score have no difficulties in the comprehension of agreement and case disambiguated object RCs. We explain our results under the Diagnosis and Repair Model (Fodor & Inoue, 2000) by arguing that children by age 7 have adult-like competence and processing strategies for these structures and that observable differences depend on individual memory resources as measured by a digit span task.

Reliability, Validity, and Measurement Invariance of the German Version of the Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale

The purpose of this work is to examine reliability, factorial- and criterion-related validity, and measurement invariance across age and gender of the Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale for children and adolescents in the German-speaking population. Confirmatory factor analysis was applied to questionnaire responses obtained from a cross-sectional sample (Study 1) of 250 girls and 254 boys and a longitudinal sample (Study 2) of 109 boys and 87 girls aged 9 to 17 years. Results indicated sufficient test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.76), internal consistency (α = 0.89), and criterion-related validity (r = 0.42 with a physical activity diary; r = 0.16 with accelerometry data). Confirmatory factor analyses partially supported the factorial validity and invariance. The German version of the Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale is sufficiently reliable and valid to be used for German-speaking children and adolescents. Further research examining the invariance over a longer period is warranted.

A story about a word: does narrative presentation promote learning of a spatial preposition in German two-year-olds?

We trained forty German-speaking children aged 1;8-2;0 in their comprehension of UNTER [UNDER]. The target word was presented within semantically organized input in the form of a 'narrative' to the experimental group and within 'unconnected speech' to the control group. We tested children's learning by asking them to perform an UNDER-relation before, immediately after, and again one day after the training using familiarized and unfamiliarized materials. Compared to controls, the experimental group learned better and retained more. Children with advanced expressive lexicons in particular were aided in generalizing to unfamiliarized materials by the narrative presentation. This study extends our understanding of how narrations scaffold young children's enrichment of nascent word knowledge.

Grammatical Gender and Inferences About Biological Properties in German‐Speaking Children

In German, nouns are assigned to one of the three gender classes. For most animal names, however, the assignment is independent of the referent's biological sex. We examined whether German-speaking children understand this independence of grammar from semantics or whether they assume that grammatical gender is mapped onto biological sex when drawing inferences about sex-specific biological properties of animals. Two cross-linguistic studies comparing German-speaking and Japanese-speaking preschoolers were conducted. The results suggest that German-speaking children utilize grammatical gender as a cue for inferences about sex-specific properties of animals. Further, we found that Japanese- and German-speaking children recruit different resources when drawing inferences about sex-specific properties: Whereas Japanese children paralleled their pattern of inference about properties common to all animals, German children relied on the grammatical gender class of the animal. Implications of these findings for studying the relation between language and thought are discussed.

Subject–verb agreement in Specific Language Impairment: A study of monolingual and bilingual German-speaking children

This study investigates phenomena that have been claimed to be indicative of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in German, focusing on subject–verb agreement marking. Longitudinal data from fourteen German-speaking children with SLI, seven monolingual and seven Turkish–German successive bilingual children, were examined. We found similar patterns of impairment in the two participant groups. Both the monolingual and the bilingual children with SLI had correct (present vs. preterit) tense marking and produced syntactically complex sentences such as embedded clauses and wh-questions, but were limited in reliably producing correct agreement-marked verb forms. These contrasts indicate that agreement marking is impaired in German-speaking children with SLI, without any necessary concurrent deficits in either the CP-domain or in tense marking. Our results also show that it is possible to identify SLI from an early successive bilingual child's performance in one of her two languages.

Language typology and the acquisition of bare noun/DP contrasts

Language typology and the acquisition of bare noun/DP contrasts Ana T. Pérez-Leroux, Anna Gavarró Algueró, and Thomas Roeper 1. Introduction If compositionality (the assumption that the meaning of an utterance is determined by the meaning of its parts and the way they combine) is an inherent property of the human language, we expect children to attribute meaning to even small differences in sentence form. The input contains minimal contrasts as in (1), whose interpretation may not be easy to disambiguate in a given discourse context. Our goal is examine how children acquire these minimal distinctions. 1. a. Someone is wearing gloves. b. Someone is wearing the gloves. Formally, these cases differ in the presence of a determiner in contrast with a bare form. Referentially, (1a) includes (1b), so for every context where (1b) is true (1a) is also true. The definite DP has a distinct signature in the input, as it is more frequent at second mention of a referent (Sneed 2008). The bare noun is less specified, and thus less falsifiable. We propose to explore the acquisition of nominal mapping in terms of the semantic competition between bare nouns and DPs. We present a comparative study of two languages: Catalan, where these nominal contrasts occur in restricted positions, and English, where the contrast is instantiated in both subject and object position. To this purpose, we replicated in English Gavarró et al.'s (2006) study on the acquisition of bare/DP objects in Catalan. 2. DP/Bare Noun Contrasts The now-familiar typology in Chierchia (1998) states that languages vary according to how nominal categories are mapped into semantic types. In his Nominal Mapping Parameter (NMP), nouns are associated with two independent features that determine their denotation. The feature [+arg(ument)] indicates N is kind-denoting and has a mass syntax; the feature [+pred(icate)] determines that a N is predicate-denoting and has a countable syntax. In Chinese, and other classifier languages, Ns are mapped as [+arg, -pred] and thus can be arguments in their own right. In Romance languages, Ns are mapped as [-arg, +pred] and need a determiner to function as arguments. In Germanic languages, Ns are mapped as [+arg, +pred]: when Ns are [+pred] they [End Page 413] require a D, as in Romance count nouns; when [+arg] they act like mass nouns. In Romanian, Catalan, Spanish and Italian, bare objects appear in the immediate domain of a P or V head. This is productive for mass and plural count nouns, and lexically restricted for bare singular count nouns (Bosque 1996, Dobrovie-Sorin et al. 2006). Chierchia's approach analyzes the bare objects in (2) differently despite their comparable distribution and interpretation. Milk in (2a) is treated as a bare noun, while llet in (2b) is a DP with a null determiner head. 2. a. Children drink milk. b. Catalan: Els nens beuen llet. The-PL children drink milk. 3. Acquisition of Bare/DP Contrasts Research on the acquisition of DPs has identified typological variation in the timing of the acquisition of determiners. Lleó and Demuth (1999) showed that young Spanish children achieved adult levels of article production earlier than German-speaking children and proposed that prosodic differences across languages determine children's rates of determiner insertion. Guasti, Gavarró, de Lange, and Caprin (2008) examined determiner production in Catalan, Italian, and Dutch children under the age of 3, divided in groups according to linguistic development rather than age. While articles or protoarticles emerged at the same age across languages, there was a clear contrast in the overall rates of use and the pace of development, following the predictions of the NMP. At the initial stage, Catalan and Italian children had article omissions in roughly half of the NPs produced, but dropped substantially under 16% by the second stage. In contrast, Dutch children started with higher omission rates (92%) in the first stage and retained substantial omission rates in the later stage (39%). Guasti and colleagues note that Dutch is statistically different from Catalan and Italian, and conclude that differences in acquisition rates for the various language types exist beyond the effect of prosodic factors. Bilingual children learning Germanic and Romance languages exhibit comparable...

Acquisition of exhaustivity in wh-questions: A semantic dimension of SLI?

This paper investigates how exhaustivity in single and multiple wh-questions is acquired in German-speaking children with SLI. Comparing semantic and pragmatic accounts of exhaustivity, obligatory exhaustivity of multiple wh-questions is argued to be problematic for pragmatic approaches. A unified semantic approach is suggested that relates exhaustivity to an inherent property of the question meaning. Two question-with-picture experiments explored the comprehension of four wh-question types (single wh-questions with and without the quantifying question particle alles, paired and conjoined wh-questions) in 5-year-old children. Twenty children with SLI, 20 typically developing (TD) children, and 20 adults participated in Experiment 1, and 17 TD children in Experiment 2. The results indicate that 5-year-old TD children have acquired exhaustivity in single and paired wh-questions. The children with SLI mastered wh-alles-questions, but not the other wh-question types. For single wh-questions, the most frequent errors were singleton answers, and for paired and conjoined wh-questions exhaustive lists of subjects or objects; plural responses were not found. Within individual children, single wh-questions were acquired before paired wh-questions. These findings suggest that a unified theory for both single and paired wh-questions is desirable, one which attributes exhaustivity to universally exhausting the question domain – a property that SLI children do not possess. These results add to recent research indicating that children with SLI may have deficits in semantics.

Whorf reloaded: Language effects on nonverbal number processing in first grade—A trilingual study

The unit–decade compatibility effect is interpreted to reflect processes of place value integration in two-digit number magnitude comparisons. The current study aimed at elucidating the influence of language properties on the compatibility effect of Arabic two-digit numbers in Austrian, Italian, and Czech first graders. The number word systems of the three countries differ with respect to their correspondence between name and place value systems; the German language is characterized by its inversion of the order of tens and units in number words as compared with digital notations, whereas Italian number words are generally not inverted and there are both forms for Czech number words. Interestingly, the German-speaking children showed the most pronounced compatibility effect with respect to both accuracy and speed. We interpret our results as evidence for a detrimental influence of an intransparent number word system place value processing. The data corroborate a weak Whorfian hypothesis in children, with even nonverbal Arabic number processing seeming to be influenced by linguistic properties in children.

Symmetry in comprehension and production of pronouns: A comparison of German and Hebrew

In the course of language acquisition, children interpret pronouns differently from adults. In some languages and ages, children accept “The girl and grandma met, and then the girl drew her” as describing the girl drawing herself. This study tested whether this difficulty is symmetrically reflected in comprehension and production, by assessing the comprehension and production of pronouns and reflexives in children acquiring German and Hebrew. Comprehension was tested using a sentence-picture matching task in 44 German-speaking children aged 3;3-6;2, and 54 Hebrew-speaking children aged 2;4-6;7. Production was assessed using a sentence elicitation task for 44 German-speaking children aged 3;1-6;8, and 60 Hebrew-speaking children aged 2;4-6;7. The results indicate a very clear symmetry between comprehension and production of pronouns in language acquisition. German-speaking children master the comprehension of pronouns and do not allow for local antecedents for pronouns already from age 4;3, and they also do not use pronouns for local antecedents in production. Crucially, the Hebrew-speaking children, who allow local antecedents in pronoun interpretation up to age 6, also produce pronouns with local antecedents (namely, to describe reflexive actions) up to this age. An individual-level analysis of the performance of 50 Hebrew-speaking children who were tested in both comprehension and production yielded a similar symmetrical pattern: the children who incorrectly produced pronouns in the reflexive condition showed the same pattern in comprehension, choosing a reflexive picture (with local antecedent) for sentences with pronouns.

Spelling deficits in dyslexia: evaluation of an orthographic spelling training

Orthographic spelling is a major difficulty in German-speaking children with dyslexia. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an orthographic spelling training in spelling-disabled students (grade 5 and 6). In study 1, ten children (treatment group) received 15 individually administered weekly intervention sessions (60 min each). A control group (n = 4) did not receive any intervention. In study 2, orthographic spelling training was provided to a larger sample consisting of a treatment group (n = 13) and a delayed treatment control group (n = 14). The main criterion of spelling improvement was analyzed using an integrated dataset from both studies. Repeated-measures analysis of variance revealed that gains in spelling were significantly greater in the treatment group than in the control group. Statistical analyses also showed significant improvements in reading (study 1) and in a measure of participants' knowledge of orthographic spelling rules (study 2). The findings indicate that an orthographic spelling training enhances reading and spelling ability as well as orthographic knowledge in spelling-disabled children learning to spell a transparent language like German.