Learning dimensions of meaning: Children's acquisition of but.

Connectives such as but are critical for building coherent discourse. They also express meanings that do not fit neatly into the standard distinction between semantics and implicated pragmatics. How do children acquire them? Corpus analyses indicate that children use these words in a sophisticated way by the early pre-school years, but a small number of experimental studies also suggest that children do not understand that but has a contrastive meaning until they reach school age. In a series of eight experiments we tested children's understanding of contrastive but compared to the causal connective so, by using a word learning paradigm (e.g., It was a warm day but/so Katy put on a pagle). When the connective so was used, we found that even 2-year-olds inferred a novel word meaning that was associated with the sentence context (a t-shirt). However, for the connective but, children did not infer a non-associated contrastive meaning (a winter coat) until age 7. Before that, even 5-year-old children reliably inferred an associated referent, indicating that they failed to correctly assign but a contrastive meaning. Five control experiments ruled out explanations for this pattern based on basic task demands, sentence processing skills or difficulty making adult-like inferences. A sixth experiment reports one particular context in which five-year-olds do interpret but contrastively. However, that same context also leads children to interpret so contrastively. We conclude that children's sophisticated production of connectives like but and so masks a major difficulty learning their meanings. We suggest that discourse connectives incorporate a class of words whose usage is easy to mimic, but whose meanings are difficult to acquire from everyday conversations, with implications for theories of word learning and discourse processing.

Impact of COVID-19 lockdown on psychosocial factors, health, and lifestyle in Scottish octogenarians: The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 study.

BACKGROUND: Little is known about effects of COVID-19 lockdown on psychosocial factors, health and lifestyle in older adults, particularly those aged over 80 years, despite the risks posed by COVID-19 to this age group. METHODS: Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 members, residing mostly in Edinburgh and the surrounding Lothians regions in Scotland, mean age 84 years (SD = 0.3), responded to an online questionnaire in May 2020 (n = 190). We examined responses (experience and knowledge of COVID-19; adherence to guidance; impact on day-to-day living; social contact; self-reported physical and mental health; loneliness; and lifestyle) and relationships between previously-measured characteristics and questionnaire outcomes. RESULTS: Four respondents experienced COVID-19; most had good COVID-19 knowledge (94.7%) and found guidance easy to understand (86.3%). There were modest declines in self-reported physical and mental health, and 48.2% did less physical activity. In multivariable regression models, adherence to guidance by leaving the house less often associated with less professional occupational class (OR = 0.71, 95%CI 0.51-0.98) and poorer self-rated general health (OR = 0.62, 95%CI 0.42-0.92). Increased internet use associated with female sex (OR = 2.32, 95%CI 1.12-4.86) and higher general cognitive ability (OR = 1.53, 95%CI 1.03-2.33). Loneliness associated with living alone (OR = 0.15, 95%CI 0.07-0.31) and greater anxiety symptoms (OR = 1.76, 95%CI 0.45-1.24). COVID-19 related stress associated with lower emotional stability scores (OR = 0.40, 95%CI 0.24-0.62). Decreased physical activity associated with less professional occupational class (OR = 1.43, 95%CI 1.04-1.96), and lower general cognitive ability (OR = 0.679, 95%CI 0.491-0.931). CONCLUSIONS: Characteristics including cognitive function, occupational class, self-rated health, anxiety, and emotional stability, may be related to risk of poorer lockdown-related psychosocial and physical outcomes.

'Clap your hands' or 'take your hands'? One-year-olds distinguish between frequent and infrequent multiword phrases.

Although words are often described as the basic building blocks of language, there is growing evidence that multiword sequences also play an integral role in language learning and processing. It is not known, however, whether children become sensitive to multiword information at an age when they are still building knowledge of individual words. Using a central fixation paradigm, the present study examined whether infants between 11 and 12 months (N = 36) distinguish between three-word sequences (trigrams) with similar substring frequencies but different multiword frequency in infant-directed speech (e.g., high frequency: 'clap your hands' vs. low frequency: 'take your hands'). Infants looked significantly longer at frequent trigrams compared to infrequent ones. This provides the first evidence that infants at the cusp of one-word production are already sensitive to the frequency of multiword sequences, and suggests they represent linguistic units of varying sizes from early on, raising the need to evaluate knowledge of both words and larger sequences during development.

Home garden use during COVID-19: Associations with physical and mental wellbeing in older adults.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many aspects of people's lives. Lockdown measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 have been more stringent for those aged over 70, at highest risk for the disease. Here, we examine whether home garden usage is associated with self-reported mental and physical wellbeing in older adults, during COVID-19 lockdown in Scotland. This study analysed data from 171 individuals (mean age 84 ± 0.5 years) from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 study who completed an online survey approximately two months after lockdown commenced (May/June, 2020), and reported having access to a home garden. The survey also included items on garden activities (gardening, relaxing), frequency of garden usage during lockdown, and measures of self-rated physical health, emotional and mental health, anxiety about COVID-19, and sleep quality. Ordinal regression models were adjusted for sex, living alone, education, occupational social class, anxiety and depressive symptoms, body mass index, and history of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Neither gardening nor relaxing in the garden were associated with health outcomes. However, higher frequency of garden usage during lockdown was associated with better self-rated physical health (P = 0.005), emotional and mental health (P = 0.04), sleep quality (P = 0.03), and a composite health score (P = 0.001), after adjusting for covariates. None of the garden measures were associated with perceived change in physical health, mental and emotional health, or sleep quality, from pre-lockdown levels. The results of the current study provide support for positive health benefits of spending time in a garden-though associations may be bidirectional-and suggest that domestic gardens could be a potential health resource during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Change in Physical Activity, Sleep Quality, and Psychosocial Variables during COVID-19 Lockdown: Evidence from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936.

(1) Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected the lives of older people. In this study, we examine changes in physical activity, sleep quality, and psychosocial variables among older people during COVID-19 lockdown. We build on cross-sectional studies on this topic by assessing change longitudinally. We also examined whether participant characteristics including demographic, cognitive, personality, and health variables were related to more positive or negative changes during lockdown. (2) Methods: 137 older participants (mean age 84 years) from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 study were included in the analysis. They completed the same questionnaires assessing physical activity, sleep quality, mental wellbeing, social support, loneliness, neighbourhood cohesion, and memory problems before (mostly 2 years earlier) and again during national lockdown. (3) Results: On average, levels of physical activity were reduced (those doing minimal physical activity increased from 10% to 19%) and perceived social support increased during lockdown (effect size drm = 0.178). More positive change in the psychosocial and behavioural outcome variables during lockdown was associated with personality traits (greater intellect, emotional stability, and extraversion) and having a higher general cognitive ability. Participants with a history of cardiovascular disease, more symptoms of anxiety, or who lived alone were more likely to experience negative changes in the outcome variables during lockdown. (4) Discussion: These results provide further insight into the experiences of older people during the COVID-19 pandemic and could help to identify those at greatest risk of negative psychosocial or behavioural changes during this time.

Experiential Measures Can Be Used as a Proxy for Language Dominance in Bilingual Language Acquisition Research.

Language dominance is a multidimensional construct comprising several distinct yet interrelated components, including language proficiency, exposure and use. The exact relation between these components remains unclear. Several studies have observed a (non-linear) relationship between bilingual children's amount of exposure and absolute proficiency in each language, but our understanding of the relationship between language exposure and use and relative proficiency is limited. To address this question, we examined whether experiential-based measures of language dominance, operationalised here in the narrow sense of relative language proficiency, can provide an efficient alternative to the more labor-intensive performance-based measures often used in the literature. In earlier work, Unsworth (a) examined the relationship between relative proficiency and language exposure and use in a group of English-Dutch bilingual preschool children residing in the Netherlands. This study expands these findings by examining Dutch-English preschool children of the same age residing in the United Kingdom in order to cover the full dominance continuum. Participants were 35 simultaneous bilingual children (2;0-5;0) exposed to English and Dutch, 20 resident in the Netherlands and 15 in the United Kingdom. Relative amount of language exposure and use were estimated using a parental questionnaire. To obtain performance-based measures of language proficiency, children's spontaneous speech was recorded during a half-hour play session in each language. The transcribed data were used to derive MLU (words), average length of the longest five utterances, the number of different verb and noun types. Single word vocabulary comprehension was assessed using standardized tests in both languages. Following Yip and Matthews (2006), relative proficiency was operationalised using differentials. In line with Unsworth (2016a), English-dominant children typically had less than approx. 35% exposure to Dutch and used Dutch less than approximately 30% of the time. Curve-fitting analyses revealed that non-linear models best fit the data. Logistic regression analyses showed that both exposure and use were good predictors of dominance group membership assigned using the same approach as Unsworth (2016a), that is, using SDs. Dominance groups derived independently using cluster analyses overlapped with the groups derived using SDs, confirming that relative amount of exposure and use can be used as a proxy for language dominance.

Why Choo-Choo Is Better Than Train: The Role of Register-Specific Words in Early Vocabulary Growth.

Across languages, lexical items specific to infant-directed speech (i.e., 'baby-talk words') are characterized by a preponderance of onomatopoeia (or highly iconic words), diminutives, and reduplication. These lexical characteristics may help infants discover the referential nature of words, identify word referents, and segment fluent speech into words. If so, the amount of lexical input containing these properties should predict infants' rate of vocabulary growth. To test this prediction, we tracked the vocabulary size in 47 English-learning infants from 9 to 21 months and examined whether the patterns of growth can be related to measures of iconicity, diminutives, and reduplication in the lexical input at 9 months. Our analyses showed that both diminutives and reduplication in the input were associated with vocabulary growth, although measures of iconicity were not. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that phonological properties typical of lexical input in infant-directed speech play a role in early vocabulary growth.

Reduplication facilitates early word segmentation.

This study explores the possibility that early word segmentation is aided by infants' tendency to segment words with repeated syllables ('reduplication'). Twenty-four nine-month-olds were familiarized with passages containing one novel reduplicated word and one novel non-reduplicated word. Their central fixation times in response to these as well as new reduplicated and non-reduplicated words introduced at test showed that familiarized reduplicated words were segmented better than familiarized non-reduplicated words. These results demonstrate that infants are predisposed to segment words with repeated phonological elements, and suggest that register-specific words in infant-directed speech may have evolved in response to this learning bias.

Two-year-olds but not younger children comprehend it in ambiguous contexts: Evidence from preferential looking.

Children use pronouns in their speech from the earliest word combinations. Yet, it is not clear from these early utterances whether they understand that pronouns are used as substitutes for nouns and entities in the discourse. The aim of this study was to examine whether young children understand the anaphoric function of pronouns, focusing on the interpretation of the pronoun it in English-speaking children at 1;6 and 2;0. We tested whether adults and children would prefer to look at a previously introduced vs. novel visual object depending on the argument form (it, the + noun, a + noun , or silence). Results demonstrate that, like adults, two-year-olds understand that it refers to a previously introduced referent. There is no evidence that this knowledge is established in children at 1;6. This suggests that some time between 1;6 and 2;0 children come to understand that it refers to a highly accessible referent introduced in the prior context.