No description available.

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) is a widely used receptive vocabulary screening tool, but it is not without its limitations, such as inadvisable I.Q. usage and a standardization procedure that lacks scope. A revision of the PPVT, known as the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) was published in 1981, and contains a more complete standardization procedure as well as some structural changes of the test itself (Dunn, 1981). Speech/language pathology, whose diagnosticians most commonly use the age equivalent value, is a profession that would gain from information which deals with the equivalency of the PPVT-R to the original PPVT. The purpose of the study was to compare age equivalent values obtained from the PPVT and the PPVT-R for a preschool aged population. Specifically, this study sought to discover whether or not significant differences existed between the age equivalent values derived from the PPVT and the PPVT-R. Eighty children, age three years, six months to four years, six months participated as subjects in the study, selected on the basis of their chronological age and enrollment in one of ten selected preschools. The subjects were divided into four groups (N=20), and each group was administered one form of the PPVT (A or B) and one form of the PPVT-R ( L or M). The resultant groupings were: I (A and L); II (A and M); III ( B and L); and IV ( B and M).

The selection of the initial lexicon is one of the most important decisions made in the implementation of augmentative communication systems with preliterate, nonspeaking preschool children. If a communication aid is to be adopted by a child, the words available on the device must be interesting to the child and encourage communication. The vocabulary must allow for cognitive growth and foster language development. Ideally, a lexicon would be customized for each nonspeaking child's particular interests, vocabulary needs and developmental level. The reality is that vocabulary selection is a difficult and time consuming process. Parents and clinicians do not always have the time or expertise to develop an individualized lexicon and must depend on a prepared list. These lists are not always appropriate for preschool children. A carefully developed core vocabulary could serve as a framework for the initial lexicon and would ensure that the words available to the children promoted communication and language growth. This would allow caregivers to concentrate on the smaller individualized portion of the lexicon.

Children with severe physical disabilities often do not have the capabilities for oral communication. Therefore, the vocabulary needs of nonspeaking children has been a subject of research in the area of augmentative communication for a number of years. The idea of allowing children with disabilities the opportunity for expression and communication is one not easily ignored. Obtaining vocabulary items, however, that are useful to nonspeaking disabled children that also meet normal language acquisition standards has been a concern. This study specifically addresses this concern by looking into the vocabulary issues of twins. The purpose of this research project is to verify that differences exist in the expressive vocabulary needs that are determined for a nonspeaking, cerebral-palsied twin and a speaking, able-bodied twin by a caregiver despite similar verbal environments.

Long-term studies with both native and non-native speakers of English have shown that vocabulary can be learned passively or "incidentally" simply through the act of reading, even through reading for pleasure. Generally, studies of incidental vocabulary learning have tested subjects' knowledge of words learned after reading novels or other longer works of prose fiction. Eighty-four students from a short-term ESL program participated as subjects in this study. Subjects were divided into three treatment groups and one control group. All subjects were given a 100-i tern word-recognition pretest, containing 45 test words and 55 dis tractors. The three treated groups were each given three treatments meant to increase their vocabulary knowledge: Vocabulary exercises alone, short story reading alone, and a combination of vocabulary exercises and short story reading (using a short story which contained the words taught in the exercises). Fifteen of the 45 test words were taught under each treatment. All subjects were then given a 45-item multiple-choice post-test, testing the 45 vocabulary words taught in the three treatments. It was hypothesized that story-reading alone would produce the highest gains between pre- and post-test scores, exercises and story together would produce median scores, and exercises alone would produce the lowest scores. Analysis of the data revealed a much different pattern: Story-reading alone actually produced the lowest score gains, while the two treatments involving exercises produced gains that were similarly high. Apparently, vocabulary exercises combined with a short story provided the extra context and practice the subjects needed to learn those words better than did story reading alone. Vocabulary exercises alone produced better scores than story reading alone perhaps because the subjects were accustomed to the task of learning vocabulary words through exercises, and because the task (learning words) was obvious. The subjects were probably not accustomed to learning words simply through reading stories, nor was the task of learning words obvious in that case. Thus, given the special parameters of this study and its subjects, score gains were lowest on the treatment that was expected to produce the highest gains.

In order to learn a new word, a young child must extricate the correct object from multiple possible items in front of them, make an initial association between the specific word-form and the particular referent, robustly link the new word and referent and integrate the new word into their lexicon. Recent research suggests processes that focus attention on the most novel objects in a complex environment, as well as the child's own developing vocabulary play critical roles in this process. This thesis aims to understand the influence of novelty and prior vocabulary knowledge on referent selection and how the interaction of novelty and knowledge can lead to word learning. A series of empirical studies first probed the use of children's endogenous novelty bias in a referent selection task, and then explored how the use of novelty was related to retention of newly mapped word-referent pairs. A second set of studies explored children's use of vocabulary knowledge in ambiguous learning situations by varying the strength of knowledge for competing items present during novel word learning. Finally, a Hebbian Normalized Recurrent Network model was used to explore the underlying associative process of referent selection and retention in novelty- or knowledge-based word learning tasks. Counter to prior work, results here suggest that novelty can override knowledge and in fact, be a detriment to word learning. Children demonstrate a novelty bias across multiple contexts and tasks, but the dominant use of novelty does not translate to retention and does not appear to implicate the use of the child's lexicon. As novelty diminishes and vocabulary knowledge increases, some children can overcome this bias and demonstrate retention for new word-referent pairs. Moreover, the results also suggest that when disambiguation requires the use of weak prior knowledge, more cognitive processing is necessary. The increases in processing subsequently translate to retention for new word-referent pairs. The empirical and computational results together suggest potential limitations of these findings to word learning and suggest future directions exploring variability in object and word representations during learning.

This observational study examined the relationships among home literacy environments, classroom language-literacy environments, and lexical and early literacy skills for 101 (56 male, 45 female) preschool and kindergarten children between the ages of 48 and 69 months. Data for multiple regression analyses were collected from 14 classrooms across 7 early childhood education centers in central Florida using the Home Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ), the Early Language & Literacy Classroom Observation Toolkit (ELLCO), and the Kaufman Survey of Early Academic and Language Skills (KSEALS). Seven classrooms scored in the proficient-to-exemplary range on the ELLCO; 3 were rated as basic, and 4 were rated as limited. A statistically significant relationship (r = .20, p < .05) was identified between frequency of children’s visits to the public library and classroom quality ratings. The home literacy environment accounted for 8.1% of the variance in student Vocabulary scores (r = .29, p < .01) and 3.9% of the variance in Numbers, Letters and Words scores (r = .20, p < .05) above and beyond teacher and parent education levels. Correlations between ELLCO ratings and students’ K-SEALS subtest scores were statistically non-significant. Analyses revealed a statistically significant difference (t = - 4.75, p < .001) in ELLCO scores by age group. The number of children’s books at home was statistically related to vocabulary scores (r = .26, p < .01). Program costs were not statistically related to classroom quality (r = -.002, p < .996). It was suggested that early childhood professionals gather information about home literacy environments to assist in identifying at-risk students. Parents should be provided with resources to enhance children’s language-literacy experiences at home. Further, parents need assistance in evaluating and selecting high-quality early childhood education programs. The use of academic testing as an indirect measure of classroom quality was not supported. However, teachers’ educational backgrounds were related to classroom quality, highlighting the need for qualified providers. Early childhood teacher mentoring programs are needed to help improve classroom language-literacy curricula. Student assessments should be informed by the kinds of learning opportunities available to young children in their homes and communities.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

<p>Based on the survey of Chinese students in a Sweden university,the present study finds out that Chinese EFL learners at a low level can benefit from incidental English vocabulary acquisition through reading aided by glosses, that they prefer glosses in reading materials, and whether Chinese gloss and English gloss differ in effectiveness on incidental vocabulary learning.</p>