Temperament and children's accuracy and attention during word learning.

When hearing a novel word, children typically rule out familiar objects and assume a speaker is referring to a novel object. This strategy is known as fast mapping, and young children use this with a high degree of accuracy. However, not all children engage in fast mapping to the same extent and temperament can play a role. Shyness is associated with poorer fast mapping and less attention to target objects, which is associated with poorer retention (Hilton et al., 2019; Hilton & Westermann, 2017). We further investigated the relationship between temperament and fast mapping by presenting 2.5-year-old children with 8 familiar target fast mapping trials and 4 novel target trials presented twice. We considered two temperamental dimensions: approachability due to its similarity to shyness; and reactivity, which could predict children's capacity to engage during fast mapping. We found an association between approachability and fast mapping accuracy the second time children fast-mapped novel targets, and approachability was associated with greater retention accuracy. Reactivity predicted proportions of target looking during fast mapping with less reactive temperament scores associated with greater focus on targets. This provides support for a relationship between two dimensions of temperament and fast mapping and retention. Approachability may be associated with a further opportunity to fast map and memory for novel words, and/or how willing children are to guess the targets. Reactivity may be associated with the capacity to focus during word learning situations. Different aspects of temperament could have implications for children's capacity to disambiguate and learn words.

The effect of sung speech on socio-communicative responsiveness in children with autism spectrum disorders.

There is emerging evidence to demonstrate the efficacy of music-based interventions for improving social functioning in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). While this evidence lends some support in favor of using song over spoken directives in facilitating engagement and receptive intervention in ASD, there has been little research that has investigated the efficacy of such stimuli on socio-communicative responsiveness measures. Here, we present preliminary results from a pilot study which tested whether sung instruction, as compared to spoken directives, could elicit greater number of socio-communicative behaviors in young children with ASD. Using an adapted single-subject design, three children between the ages of 3 and 4 years, participated in a programme consisting of 18 sessions, of which 9 were delivered with spoken directives and 9 with sung. Sessions were counterbalanced and randomized for three play activities-block matching, picture matching and clay play. All sessions were video-recorded for post-hoc observational coding of three behavioral metrics which included performance, frequency of social gesture and eye contact. Analysis of the videos by two independent raters indicated increased socio-communicative responsiveness in terms of frequency of social gesture as well as eye contact during sung compared to spoken conditions, across all participants. Our findings suggest that sung directives may play a useful role in engaging children with ASD and also serve as an effective interventional medium to enhance socio-communicative responsiveness.

Improved effectiveness of performance monitoring in amateur instrumental musicians.

Here we report a cross-sectional study investigating the influence of instrumental music practice on the ability to monitor for and respond to processing conflicts and performance errors. Behavioural and electrophysiological indicators of response monitoring in amateur musicians with various skill levels were collected using simple conflict tasks. The results show that instrumental musicians are better able than non-musicians to detect conflicts and errors as indicated by systematic increases in the amplitude of the error-related negativity and the N200 with increasing levels of instrumental practice. Also, high levels of musical training were associated with more efficient and less reactive responses after experience of conflicts and errors as indicated by reduced post-error interference and post-conflict processing adjustments. Together, the present findings suggest that playing a musical instrument might improve the ability to monitor our behavior and adjust our responses effectively when needed. As these processes are amongst the first to be affected by cognitive aging, our evidence could promote musical activity as a realistic intervention to slow or even prevent age-related decline in frontal cortex mediated executive functioning.