Three questions were investigated in the current study. First, do children with ADHD have language deficiencies in comparison to non-referred peers? Second, are there diagnostic group differences in parent and child storytelling when interacting in a joint picture-book setting or in parent reported home literacy habits? Third, are these differences related to child language scores? Parents of 25 children with ADHD and 39 comparison children, average age 7 years 6 months, told their children a story based on a wordless picture-book, and children then retold the story to an examiner without using the book. In addition, children made up two of their own stories and completed a standardized test of receptive and expressive language abilities. Children with ADHD demonstrated an expressive language deficiency compared to the non-referred children, but there was no group difference in receptive language scores. Parents of children in both groups told stories of similar length and complexity, as well as affective and responsive quality. However, for the ADHD group but not the comparison group, more positive and responsive parents told stories on a lower grade level. The length of the childs retell of the parents story did not differ across groups but children with ADHD told shorter stories when asked to make up their own stories without the external structure or salience of visual cues. Further, there were no significant group differences in the relations between parent storytelling and child language scores. The implications of these findings for understanding parent and child storytelling and language abilities of children with ADHD are discussed.

The theoretical basis of psychological and emotional distress such as anxiety in individuals with autism is under researched. The present study draws upon a mainstream information processing model of childhood anxiety along with theoretical accounts of autism to investigate some of the possible factors associated with the development and maintenance of anxiety in this population. Adolescents with high functioning autism were compared to two comparison control groups on measures of anxiety and social worries. Comparison groups were children with expressive language disorder and typically developing children. There were 15 children in each group aged between 11-16 years and matched across groups for age and gender. Children with autism were found to be more anxious than typically developing children. There were no significant differences between groups in levels of social worries as reported by the children themselves. Parent ratings showed that children with autism were perceived to have considerably more social worries than both comparison groups. The groups were compared on measures of the recognition and expression of emotion, theory of mind and/or central coherence abilities, social and communication abilities and social competence with peers. The children with autism performed significantly worse than both comparison groups on the measure of social ability. They also perceived themselves to be less socially competence with peers. On the measure of emotional recognition and theory of mind/central coherence, the children with autism performed at a similar level to children with an expressive language disorder. Children with expressive language disorder showed poorer performance than children with autism and typically developing children on the measure of communication. The pattern of between group differences for self perceived social competence with peers was the same as the pattern of difference for anxiety. Social ability was found to correlate negatively with anxiety for the autism group. Therefore social competence with peers and impairments in social ability were highlighted as possible factors associated with anxiety in adolescents with high functioning autism. A simple schematic model of how such factors may be associated with the experience of anxiety in adolescents with high functioning autism is presented, from an information processing perspective. Impaired social ability is considered in relation to the response access or construction stage of the information processing sequence. It is suggested that adolescents with high functioning autism may lack the social skills required for adaptive coping responses to anxiety provoking situations, showing greater reliance on responses directed at escape or avoidance. The selection of escape/avoidant responses at the response selection stage of the information processing sequence is considered in relation to the possible lack of perceived competence and low estimation of coping ability for children with autism. The implications of these findings for clinical practice are discussed and recommendations for future research are made.

No description available.

No description available.

An important question in teaching language is, what accounts for the emergence of either receptive or expressive labels when teaching only one of them? The teaching procedures in the present study were intended to reproduce the natural development of bidirectional naming in which caregivers comment on the items a child is interacting with and children echo those vocalizations they hear. Thus, the only vocalizations presented by the researcher during teaching occurred after the learner pointed to a specific stimulus, and were specific to the stimulus being targeted. These vocalizations are referred to in this study as stimulus-specific consequences. The purpose of this research was to investigate if the stimulus-specific consequences could become discriminative stimuli for receptive labels, and lead to the emergence of expressive labels. Three studies were conducted, each with four adults. Results demonstrated that using a stimulus-specific consequence during teaching led to receptive labels for all participants, but led to the emergence of expressive labels for only four participants. In other words, bidirectional naming did not occur for the majority of participants. Factors that may improve interrelations between receptive and expressive labels were analyzed, but further evaluations are needed to account for the inconsistent demonstrations of naming.

No description available.

A translator works as a mediator between an original work that has been written in one language, a source text, and those who will be the audience of the translation, or, in other words, the target text. Translating a text is often a challenging task, as the translator must keep in mind both the source text and its author’s intentions with the text, and also its intended audience, but also keep in mind the target audience of the target text. Translating can become even more challenging with children’s literature, as they, among other things, often can contain very creative, imaginative and playful use of language. In this study, The BFG, a popular children’s book from 1982 written by the British author Roald Dahl, is analyzed – both the English source text and the Japanese translation by Taeko Nakamura. The research question to be answered is the following: When looking at the speech style, or idiolect, of the character "the BFG" of Roald Dahl’s The BFG, with a focus on neologisms, wordplay and allusions, what difficulties exist in the source text and what efforts have been made by the translator in attempts to achieve an equivalent effect in the target text? The results of this study display several difficulties that can arise when attempting to translate the idiolect of the BFG, especially due to its vast amount of expressive language. Replacement with standard language and deletion were two of the main translation strategies, and the number of identified cases of neologisms, wordplay and allusions in the source text was over double the amount identified in the target text. However, it is also shown how the translator has used different means to compensate for the source text features that may have gotten lost in translation.

Relations between preschool-aged children’s expressive language ability and externalizing behaviors remain poorly understood and may be moderated by other influences, including child sex, temperamental anger/frustration, receptive language, and adaptive communication skill (i.e., “real-world” usage of language). The present study used person- and variable-centered approaches to (a) identify meaningful classes of children based on these attributes, and (b) test for class-specific differences in the relation between expressive language and later externalizing behaviors. Participants were 144 preschool-aged children (M = 47.43 months; 51% male) who were recruited from semirural Head Start centers and assessed at two time points, approximately five months apart. Latent class analysis identified three classes of children: (a) the Typical Language/Higher Anger class (average language/communication abilities and higher anger/frustration), (b) the High Communication/Average Anger class (only female children with high adaptive communication and otherwise average attributes), and (c) the Verbally Competent/Lower Anger class (high language/communication abilities and lower anger/frustration). Expressive language negatively predicted Time 2 externalizing behaviors more strongly among the High Communication/Average Anger class, compared to the Typical Language/Higher Anger class. Across the entire sample, there was a negative predictive relation between expressive language and Time 2 externalizing behaviors, which was moderated by anger/frustration and adaptive communication. Overall, among children with competent skills in expressive language and at least one additional domain (e.g., higher adaptive communication, lower anger/frustration), higher expressive language more strongly predicted lower levels of Time 2 externalizing behaviors, relative to children with fewer concurrent competencies. Higher levels of expressive language were not related—or were less strongly related—to later externalizing behaviors among children with fewer concurrent competencies. Results underscore the proximal role of temperamental and adaptive communicative attributes in supporting expressive language usage and suggest different intervention strategies for children with different configurations of attributes. / Psychology

L’étude de l’orientation mentale (OM), soit l’habileté des parents à concevoir et à traiter leur enfant comme un individu disposant d’une vie mentale autonome et active (Meins, 1997), a gagné en intérêt grâce à la démonstration de ses associations avec plusieurs sphères du développement de l’enfant, entre autres avec le style d’acquisition linguistique chez les enfants de 20 mois ainsi que le développement de la théorie de l’esprit chez les enfants d’âge préscolaire (p. ex., Meins & Fernyhough, 1999). En dépit de ces résultats, l’étude du développement du vocabulaire et des stades initiaux de la théorie de l’esprit chez les enfants a été négligée dans cette littérature. La présente thèse est composée de trois articles empiriques et vise à combler certaines lacunes de la littérature actuelle. Le premier article vise à examiner les liens longitudinaux entre l’OM maternelle et le vocabulaire expressif chez les enfants de 2 ans. Les deuxième et troisième articles ont pour but d’évaluer les relations longitudinales entre l’OM maternelle, la sécurité d’attachement des enfants et les toutes premières articulations de la théorie de l’esprit chez les enfants de 2 ans, puis 2 ans plus tard, avec la théorie de l’esprit chez les enfants de 4 ans. Les données des trois articles proviennent de cinq visites effectuées au domicile de 84 dyades mère-enfant. À 12 mois, l’OM maternelle a été mesurée lors de jeux libres mère-enfant à l’aide du système de codification de Meins et al. (2001). À 15 mois, la sécurité d’attachement de l’enfant a été mesurée par un observateur avec le Q-Sort d’attachement (Waters & Deane, 1985). À 2 ans, les mères ont évalué le langage de leur enfant à l’aide des inventaires MacArthur du développement de la communication (Dionne, Tremblay, Boivin, Laplante, & Pérusse, 2003). Finalement, la théorie de l’esprit de l’enfant a été mesurée à 2 et 4 ans à l’aide de diverses tâches expérimentales (Carlson, Mandell, & Williams, 2004). Les résultats du premier article indiquent que l’OM maternelle est associée au développement du vocabulaire expressif des enfants de 2 ans. Les résultats des deuxième et troisième articles indiquent que la compréhension des enfants de 2 et 4 ans aux tâches de théorie de l’esprit est associée à l’OM maternelle. De plus, ces deux articles ont démontré que les garçons, mais pas les filles, présentant des comportements d’attachement davantage sécures ont obtenu de meilleures performances à une tâche demandant la compréhension des perspectives visuelles de leur mère à 2 ans et de celles d’une étrangère à 4 ans. En conclusion, les résultats de la thèse suggèrent que l’utilisation que les mères font de commentaires mentaux à 12 mois semble favoriser l’acquisition de mots dans le vocabulaire expressif de leur enfant à 2 ans ainsi que le développement d’une meilleure compréhension aux tâches de théorie de l’esprit à 2 et 4 ans. / Studies on mind-mindedness (MM), which is an indication of parents’ inclination to conceive and treat their child as an independent individual with an autonomous and active mental life (Meins, 1997), have grown in interest because of the associations found with children’s developmental areas, such as with 20-month-olds’ acquisition of linguistic style and with preschoolers’ theory of mind development (ToM) (e.g., Meins & Fernyhough, 1999). Despite these results, studies on expressive vocabulary and earlier ToM stages were neglected in this literature. This thesis is composed of three empirical articles and aims to fill the gaps in the current literature. The first paper aims to examine the longitudinal links between maternal MM and children’s expressive vocabulary at 2 years of age. The second and third articles aim to evaluate the prospective relations between maternal MM, children’s attachment security and 2-year-olds’ first articulations of ToM understanding, and 2 years later, with 4-year-olds’ ToM understanding. The data of the three articles was collected from five home visits made with 84 mother-infant dyads. At 12 months, maternal MM was measured during mother-child free plays with Meins et al. (2001) coding scheme. At 15 months, children’s attachment security was measured with the Attachment Q-Sort (Waters & Deane, 1985) by a research assistant. At 2 years of age, mothers were asked to complete the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (Dionne, Tremblay, Boivin, Laplante, & Pérusse, 2003) to measure their child’s expressive vocabulary. Finally, children’s ToM was assessed with different experimental tasks at 2 and 4 years of age (Carlson, Mandell, & Williams, 2004). Results of the first paper suggested that maternal MM is related to children’s expressive language at 2 years of age. Results of the second and third papers proposed that 2- and 4-year-olds’ understanding on ToM tasks is associated with maternal MM. Furthermore, results from these two articles showed that more securely attached boys, but not girls, performed better on a task requiring comprehension of their mothers’ visual perspective at 2 years of age and of a stranger’s visual perspective at 4 years of age. In conclusion, results of this thesis suggest that mothers more inclined to use mental comments at 12 months have children that acquire more words in their expressive vocabulary at 2 years of age and who show a better understanding on ToM tasks at 2 and 4 years of age.

L’étude de l’orientation mentale (OM), soit l’habileté des parents à concevoir et à traiter leur enfant comme un individu disposant d’une vie mentale autonome et active (Meins, 1997), a gagné en intérêt grâce à la démonstration de ses associations avec plusieurs sphères du développement de l’enfant, entre autres avec le style d’acquisition linguistique chez les enfants de 20 mois ainsi que le développement de la théorie de l’esprit chez les enfants d’âge préscolaire (p. ex., Meins & Fernyhough, 1999). En dépit de ces résultats, l’étude du développement du vocabulaire et des stades initiaux de la théorie de l’esprit chez les enfants a été négligée dans cette littérature. La présente thèse est composée de trois articles empiriques et vise à combler certaines lacunes de la littérature actuelle. Le premier article vise à examiner les liens longitudinaux entre l’OM maternelle et le vocabulaire expressif chez les enfants de 2 ans. Les deuxième et troisième articles ont pour but d’évaluer les relations longitudinales entre l’OM maternelle, la sécurité d’attachement des enfants et les toutes premières articulations de la théorie de l’esprit chez les enfants de 2 ans, puis 2 ans plus tard, avec la théorie de l’esprit chez les enfants de 4 ans. Les données des trois articles proviennent de cinq visites effectuées au domicile de 84 dyades mère-enfant. À 12 mois, l’OM maternelle a été mesurée lors de jeux libres mère-enfant à l’aide du système de codification de Meins et al. (2001). À 15 mois, la sécurité d’attachement de l’enfant a été mesurée par un observateur avec le Q-Sort d’attachement (Waters & Deane, 1985). À 2 ans, les mères ont évalué le langage de leur enfant à l’aide des inventaires MacArthur du développement de la communication (Dionne, Tremblay, Boivin, Laplante, & Pérusse, 2003). Finalement, la théorie de l’esprit de l’enfant a été mesurée à 2 et 4 ans à l’aide de diverses tâches expérimentales (Carlson, Mandell, & Williams, 2004). Les résultats du premier article indiquent que l’OM maternelle est associée au développement du vocabulaire expressif des enfants de 2 ans. Les résultats des deuxième et troisième articles indiquent que la compréhension des enfants de 2 et 4 ans aux tâches de théorie de l’esprit est associée à l’OM maternelle. De plus, ces deux articles ont démontré que les garçons, mais pas les filles, présentant des comportements d’attachement davantage sécures ont obtenu de meilleures performances à une tâche demandant la compréhension des perspectives visuelles de leur mère à 2 ans et de celles d’une étrangère à 4 ans. En conclusion, les résultats de la thèse suggèrent que l’utilisation que les mères font de commentaires mentaux à 12 mois semble favoriser l’acquisition de mots dans le vocabulaire expressif de leur enfant à 2 ans ainsi que le développement d’une meilleure compréhension aux tâches de théorie de l’esprit à 2 et 4 ans. / Studies on mind-mindedness (MM), which is an indication of parents’ inclination to conceive and treat their child as an independent individual with an autonomous and active mental life (Meins, 1997), have grown in interest because of the associations found with children’s developmental areas, such as with 20-month-olds’ acquisition of linguistic style and with preschoolers’ theory of mind development (ToM) (e.g., Meins & Fernyhough, 1999). Despite these results, studies on expressive vocabulary and earlier ToM stages were neglected in this literature. This thesis is composed of three empirical articles and aims to fill the gaps in the current literature. The first paper aims to examine the longitudinal links between maternal MM and children’s expressive vocabulary at 2 years of age. The second and third articles aim to evaluate the prospective relations between maternal MM, children’s attachment security and 2-year-olds’ first articulations of ToM understanding, and 2 years later, with 4-year-olds’ ToM understanding. The data of the three articles was collected from five home visits made with 84 mother-infant dyads. At 12 months, maternal MM was measured during mother-child free plays with Meins et al. (2001) coding scheme. At 15 months, children’s attachment security was measured with the Attachment Q-Sort (Waters & Deane, 1985) by a research assistant. At 2 years of age, mothers were asked to complete the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (Dionne, Tremblay, Boivin, Laplante, & Pérusse, 2003) to measure their child’s expressive vocabulary. Finally, children’s ToM was assessed with different experimental tasks at 2 and 4 years of age (Carlson, Mandell, & Williams, 2004). Results of the first paper suggested that maternal MM is related to children’s expressive language at 2 years of age. Results of the second and third papers proposed that 2- and 4-year-olds’ understanding on ToM tasks is associated with maternal MM. Furthermore, results from these two articles showed that more securely attached boys, but not girls, performed better on a task requiring comprehension of their mothers’ visual perspective at 2 years of age and of a stranger’s visual perspective at 4 years of age. In conclusion, results of this thesis suggest that mothers more inclined to use mental comments at 12 months have children that acquire more words in their expressive vocabulary at 2 years of age and who show a better understanding on ToM tasks at 2 and 4 years of age.