Throughout this study, I investigate the interaction that occurs between a parent and her child when creating a collaborative drawing. The purpose of this study is to find ways in which to change common images of children and their capabilities in forming and making decisions, problem solving and communication skills, and imaginative story telling abilities. This research seeks to answer some of the following questions: In what ways are children and adults influenced by the child taking ownership of the artmaking experience and how does giving the child ownership and control over the experience change the experience for the adult? I observe two mothers as they collaborate with their young sons (ages 3 and 4) to create a drawing, discuss their experience with them and analyze their final images. Utilizing these methods, I uncover common themes and ideas about the view that adults have of children and ways of shifting these ideas of power and control over to children. I provide my recommendations and implications for the field of early childhood art education and offer a guide for parents when working with their young children.

Disruptive behavior disorders including Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Conduct Disorder (CD), and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), are listed among the most common reasons youth are referred for mental health services (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention [CDC], 2016b; Kazdin, Mazurick, Siegel, & 1994). Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is one intervention that has been found to reduce clinically significant levels of disruptive behavior. The purpose of the current study was to determine the form of change, typical change trajectory, and individual variation in change for disruptive behavior across the two phases of PCIT; the Child-Directed Interaction (CDI) and Parent-Directed Interaction (PDI) phases. In addition, the current study determined which child and caregiver characteristics were associated with variation in change across CDI and PDI. Participants included a total of 75 children in PCIT between the ages of 2 to 8 years. Children and their caregiver(s) attended PCIT weekly at a university-based, outpatient clinic. The Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (ECBI) was completed at every treatment session to indicate the intensity of disruptive behavior. Child and caregiver characteristics including the caregiver and the child’s gender, the caregiver’s income and marital status, the caregiver’s relationship with the child, the number of caregivers in PCIT, the child’s primary diagnosis, and the child’s medication status, were obtained through medical record abstraction. Results indicated the form of change in disruptive behavior, as measured on the ECBI Intensity scale, was linear in CDI and curvilinear in PDI. The average trajectory indicated disruptive behavior decreased throughout PCIT treatment. The decrease in ECBI Intensity scores during CDI was statistically significant, as well as the variance in children’s ECBI Intensity scores at the beginning of PDI. Caregiver marital status significantly predicted the ECBI Intensity score, which was higher for the divorced or separated group at the first session of PDI than other groups. Caregiver type also significantly predicted the ECBI Intensity score. When the caregiver was a grandparent, the ECBI Intensity score was lowest at the first session of PDI. However, the change in the ECBI Intensity slope for the biological parent group was steeper in comparison when transitioning from CDI to PDI, and less steep throughout PDI, than the grandparent group. Number of caregivers also was a significant predictor, with more caregivers present in PCIT indicating a greater decrease in the ECBI Intensity score. Significant child characteristic predictors were diagnosis code and medication status. For a diagnosis of Other (e.g., Adjustment Disorder, Selective Mutism), the ECBI Intensity score at the intercept was less than the ODD; ADHD; and Other Specified/Unspecified Disruptive, Impulse-Control, and CD groups; and higher than the Autism Spectrum Disorder/Social Pragmatic Communication Disorder group. A medication status of combined (greater than one psychopharmacological medication prescribed) indicated a higher ECBI Intensity score at the intercept, in comparison to the other groups. There was also a steeper change in slope throughout PDI when the diagnosis was ADHD in comparison to the ASD/SCD group. Last, when the medication status was single (one psychopharmacological medication prescribed), the change in slope during CDI for the ECBI Intensity score was steeper than the combined medication group. In summary, findings indicated disruptive behavior decreased during PCIT. However, clinicians and families may expect a slight increase in disruptive behavior at the beginning of PDI, or to see a slower rate of change in behavior, before the rate of change eventually speeds up and disruptive behavior decreases. Clinicians may see differences in the rate of change during PCIT based on caregiver and child characteristics and should use this information to guide discussions with families in the future. Future research should be conducted to determine if results may be replicated across different participant groups. Future studies may also follow-up on the maintenance of treatment gains after completing PCIT based on differences in rate of change for various caregiver and child characteristics examined in the current study.

Children with cochlear implants show deficits in identifying emotional intent of utterances without facial or body language cues. A known limitation to cochlear implants is the inability to accurately portray the fundamental frequency contour of speech which carries the majority of information needed to identify emotional intent. Without reliable access to the fundamental frequency, other methods of identifying vocal emotion, if identifiable, could be used to guide therapies for training children with cochlear implants to better identify vocal emotion. The current study analyzed recordings of adults speaking neutral sentences with a set array of emotions in a child-directed and adult-directed manner. The goal was to identify acoustic cues that contribute to emotion identification that may be enhanced in child-directed speech, but are also present in adult-directed speech. Results of this study showed that there were significant differences in the variation of the fundamental frequency, the variation of intensity, and the rate of speech among emotions and between intended audiences.

No description available.

Jusqu’à l’âge de 4 ans, les enfants francophones et anglophones se désignent et désignent leur interlocuteur à l’aide de formes différentes standard et non standard de référence à soi et à l’autre. Par le passé, des paramètres d’ordres sémantique, morphosyntaxique et pragmatique ont été étudiés, afin d’identifier les facteurs en jeu dans la production de ces différentes formes. Dans cette étude, nous analysons le rôle du langage adressé à l’enfant, par les parents. Des études précédentes ont en effet suggéré que les usages à la fois standard et non standard de référence à soi et à l’enfant-interlocuteur pouvaient jouer un rôle dans le processus d’acquisition des pronoms personnels (cf. Rabain-Jamin et Sabeau-Jouannet, 1989; Budwig, 1996; Kirjavainen et al., 2009; Morgenstern, 2011). Aucune étude systématique des énoncés des parents adressés à l’enfant n’a cependant été réalisée à ce jour. Pour apporter des éléments de réponse à cette question, nous analysons les données issues de 4 corpus de la base de données CHILDES. Ces corpus sont constitués d’enregistrements vidéo mensuels d’interactions libres dans 2 dyades francophones et 2 dyades anglophones. Partant des formes non standard de référence à soi et à l’interlocuteur produites par les enfants, nous questionnons d’une part l’influence de la fréquence de formes et de constructions similaires dans l’input, sur les productions des enfants. Observant d’autre part que les enfants emploient des formes différentes dans des contextes différents, nous nous demandons si ces associations forme-fonction sont présentes dans l’input ou si elles sont créées par l’enfant. Notre méthode d’analyse se situe donc au croisement des approches constructivistes et fonctionnalistes du processus d’acquisition du langage. Nos observations suggèrent que les productions des enfants reflètent à la fois les spécificités de l’input et leurs propres analyses du langage qui leur est adressé. Progressivement, l’input des enfants se fait plus important et plus diversifié et les enfants acquièrent de nouveaux outils pour exprimer leurs intentions communicatives. Ils sont alors en mesure de se désigner comme locuteur et de désigner leur interlocuteur en tant que tel, quelle que soit la situation. / Before the age of 4, English- and French-speaking children use standard and non standard forms to refer to themselves and their addressee. In the past, several semantic, morphosyntactic and pragmatic parameters have been investigated as potential factors responsible for these various forms. In the present study, we examine the role of parental speech on children’s productions. Previous research has in fact suggested that parents’ standard as well as non standard ways of referring to themselves and their child when addressing her, may play a role in the process of pronoun acquisition (cf. Rabain-Jamin and Sabeau-Jouannet, 1989; Budwig, 1996; Kirjavainen et al., 2009; Morgenstern, 2011). However, no systematic study of the speech parents address to their child has been conducted. To tackle this issue, we perform analyses on 4 corpora from the CHILDES database, composed of monthly video-recorded interactions in 2 French-speaking and 2 English-speaking dyads. Taking the children’s non standard ways of referring to themselves and their interlocutor as our starting point, we first question the influence of the frequency of similar forms and constructions observed in the input, on the children’s productions. Observing that the children use different forms in different contexts, we then ask whether these form-function associations can also be found in the input or whether children create them. Our method therefore combines constructivist approaches and functionalist approaches to the process of language acquisition. Our observations suggest that children’s productions reflect both the specificities of the surrounding input and their own linguistic and cognitive analyses. As they observe and use more and more language, acquire additional linguistic means of expressing their communicative intentions, and as the input and feedback they receive becomes diversified, children gradually come to refer to themselves as speakers and to their addressees as interlocutors.

Human language has two fundamental requirements: it must allow competent speakers to exchange messages efficiently, and it must be readily learned by children. Recent work has examined effects of language predictability on language production, with many researchers arguing that so-called “predictability effects” function towards the efficiency requirement. Specifically, recent work has found that talkers tend to reduce linguistic forms that are more probable more heavily. This dissertation proposes the “Predictability Bootstrapping Hypothesis” that predictability effects also make language more learnable. There is a great deal of evidence that the adult grammars have substantial statistical components. Since predictability effects result in heavier reduction for more probable words and hidden structure, they provide infants with direct cues to the statistical components of the grammars they are trying to learn. The corpus studies and computational modeling experiments in this dissertation show that predictability effects could be a substantial source of information to language-learning infants, focusing on the potential utility of phonetic reduction in terms of word duration for syntax acquisition. First, corpora of spontaneous adult-directed and child-directed speech (ADS and CDS, respectively) are compared to verify that predictability effects actually exist in CDS. While revealing some differences, mixed effects regressions on those corpora indicate that predictability effects in CDS are largely similar (in kind and magnitude) to predictability effects in ADS. This result indicates that predictability effects are available to infants, however useful they may be. Second, this dissertation builds probabilistic, unsupervised, and lexicalized models for learning about syntax from words and durational cues. One series of models is based on Hidden Markov Models and learns shallow constituency structure, while the other series is based on the Dependency Model with Valence and learns dependency structure. These models are then used to measure how useful durational cues are for syntax acquisition, and to what extent their utility in this task can be attributed to effects of syntactic predictability on word duration. As part of this investigation, these models are also used to explore the venerable “Prosodic Bootstrapping Hypothesis” that prosodic structure, which is cued in part by word duration, may be useful for syntax acquisition. The empirical evaluations of these models provide evidence that effects of syntactic predictability on word duration are easier to discover and exploit than effects of prosodic structure, and that even gold-standard annotations of prosodic structure provide at most a relatively small improvement in parsing performance over raw word duration. Taken together, this work indicates that predictability effects provide useful information about syntax to infants, showing that the Predictability Bootstrapping Hypothesis for syntax acquisition is computationally plausible and motivating future behavioural investigation. Additionally, as talkers consider the probability of many different aspects of linguistic structure when reducing according to predictability effects, this result also motivates investigation of Predictability Bootstrapping of other aspects of linguistic knowledge.

This diploma thesis deals with communication in kindergarten in selected communicative situations. The first part defines basic theoretical terms and, based on previous research, summarizes findings about pre-school education and mental and language development in pre- school children. The thesis also explains factors that influence language acquisition, child directed speech and pedagogical communication. The second part's main focus lies in describing communicative situations and in qualitative analysis of the acquired data - video recordings of selected communicative situation. The pocess of recording took place after previous agreement with two kindergartens. The recordings were transcribed according to the modified manual for the DIALOG database. The analysis is focused on the nature of the pedagogical communication in kindergarten. Our findings were compared to previous research results. Keywords communication, pedagogical communication, language acquisition, child directed speech, kindergarten

Magister Public Health - MPH / Background: Childhood obesity is on the rise in South Africa (SA) and child-directed marketing (CDM) is one of the contributing factors to children’s unhealthy food choices and consumption. This study assessed CDM on pre-packaged breakfast cereals available in South African supermarkets and describe the nutrient composition of these pre-packaged products. Methods: A descriptive observational study of CDM on pre-packaged breakfast cereals was undertaken with quantitative analysis of the nutrient composition of these products. Secondary data from the “Researching obesogenic food environments in South Africa and Ghana” study in 2019 was examined. An independently reviewed codebook of definitions of CDM was developed and breakfast cereals were assessed to identify CDM. The CDM questionnaire was developed in REDCap, an online research database and data captured therein. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for cross tabulations and one-way ANOVAs. All analysis with p value < 0.05 was taken as significant.

“Anaphora” is a label used for a referential expression that connects one entity (e.g. a pronoun) to another previously established entity (e.g. a proper name). The previously established entity is called an antecedent. The use of anaphora will, in this study, be referred to as referential behaviour. The study was based around audio and video recordings of free play between a Swedish parent and his/her child. 10 parents and their children were recorded. The referential behaviour of the parents was analysed. The sessions took place when the children were 3, 6, 9 and 12 months old. Recent studies indicate that speech directed at children during a child's first six months contains a larger amount of pronouns than the speech directed at children between 6 and 12 months of age. The purpose of the study was to examine if the decline of pronouns was visible in Swedish child- directed speech, and to see how different types of anaphora appeared in the same speech. Correlations between the visible changes of different types of referential expressions were also examined. A drop in the use of anaphoric pronoun with an explicit antecedent was found for the last two ages, which confirmed the study’s hypothesis. The results were also compared to each child’s vocabulary development.

Studies of Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian language learners converge on the finding that morphological features of nouns are first generalized to word clusters of high morpho-phonological similarities such as diminutives, that grammatical categorisation is are more easily applied to novel words that fall into these clusters. The present thesis explores whether the facilitating effect of diminutives on the acquisition of complex noun morphology can be extended to Serbian, a south Slavic language, morphologically similar to Russian and Polish. Specifically, the thesis explores the role of parameters responsible for the obtained diminutive advantage: high frequency of a particular cluster of words in child-directed speech (CDS) and morpho-phonological homogeneity within this cluster. A corpus analysis of the distribution of diminutives in Serbian CDS indicated a rather unexpected difference in frequency relative to Russian and Polish CDS, despite the high similarity of the diminutive derivation across these three Slavic languages. Out of the total number of nouns in Serbian CDS only 7% were diminutives, compared to 20-30% in Polish and 45% in Russian. Two experimental studies explored whether the low frequency of diminutives in Serbian CDS attenuates the diminutive advantage in morphology learning compared to Russian and Polish. In the first two experiments, Serbian children exhibited a strong diminutive advantage for both gender agreement and case marking in the same range as Russian children, indicating that morpho-phonological homogeneity within the cluster of diminutives may play as important a role as their frequency for grammatical categorisation of novel nouns. A third study investigated in more detail the effects of morpho-phonological homogeneity on the emergence of the diminutive advantage using a gender-agreement task with novel nouns in simplex and pseudo-diminutive form over four sessions with Serbian children. The results showed a pseudo-diminutive advantage for gender agreement by Session 2, suggesting that the categorisation of nouns into grammatical categories is based on morpho-phonological homogeneity of the word cluster, emerges relatively fast, and can occur despite the much lower frequency of diminutives in Serbian CDS. Finally, a series of neural network simulations designed to capture the pattern of results from the third experimental study was used to examine to what extent a simple associative learning mechanism, relying on morpho-phonological similarity of the noun endings, can explain the findings. The performance of three models, a whole-word feed-forward network, a Simple Recurrent Network (SRN) and a last-syllable feed-forward network, was compared to the experimental data. The superior fit of the SRN suggests that gender learning is based on a very fast sequential build-up of representations of the entire word, allowing the system to exploit the predictive power of word stems to anticipate regularised endings. Overall, the findings of this thesis contribute to our general understanding of mechanisms responsible for the acquisition of complex inflectional noun morphology in two ways. First, by extending experimental studies and neural network simulations to Serbian, the results underline the universality of the idea that noun morphology is learned and processed through a single-route associative mechanism based on the frequency and morpho-phonological structure of nouns. More specifically, the results from experimental studies and neural network simulations demonstrate that for diminutives, the low-level grammatical categorisation is based mainly on the morpho-phonological similarity of word endings, and can emerge after just a few exposures. And second, the neural network simulations suggest that during the process of categorisation of nouns into gender categories, learners rely not only on predictable information from the noun endings, but also on phonological regularities in the stems of nouns. Taken together, these findings contribute also to a better understanding of the facilitating role of CDS in morphology acquisition.