lang acq meeting 26th_aa

7/31/2019 Lang Acq Meeting 26th_AA

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Using Developmental Science toDesign a Computerized Preschool

Language Assessment

Grant from IESJill de Villiers

Athulya Aravind

With: coPIs:

Roberta Golinkoff, U. Delaware

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Temple

Aquiles Iglesias, Temple

Mary Wilson, Laureate learning, VT.


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Why?

What is needed is a quick and easy to administer languageassessment that can be used

a) as an early warning signal for children with language issues;

b) as a way to compare curricular and language interventions; and

c) as a research tool.

The assessment will yield profiles in two areas of competency:

(a) vocabulary and word learning strategies and

(b) grammar and the use of syntax in comprehension.

These competencies comprise a broad profile of verbal abilities thatreflect both

a) theproducts of learning, or milestones, and

b) learningprocesses, or the use of learning strategies.


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Test comparison and the advantages of what we propose


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Why do this with a touch screen and

computer?


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Product ProcessVocabulary Known Nouns Fast Mapping: Nouns

Known Verbs Fast Mapping: Adjectives

Spatial Relational

Prepositions

Clausal Connectives

Grammar Simple and Complex Wh-

Questions

Syntactic Bootstrapping

Two-Clause Sentence

Complements

Generalizing Novel Active

Verb to Passive Voice

Prepositional Phrases

Past Auxiliary

The decisions about what to include based on evidence, age range.


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Known Nouns

Target Phonological

Foil

Leaf Leg

Thematic Foil Conceptual Foil

Tree (with no

leaves)

Branch

Category: Parts Category: Superordinate

Target Phonological

Foil

Toy Tray

Thematic Foil Conceptual Foil

Children Beverage (Milk)

Difficulty: this was a compromise with reviewers who thought it was important.

We think its a ridiculous goal to find 4 items that have the right properties.


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Known Verbs

Cleaning/Drawing

NB: maybe equally impossible, but verbs are a bit more culturally neutral, and we have

The huge advantage of animation. But can children take in two things at once?

Singing/Waving

Clapping/Drumming


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Spatial Relational Prepositions

We are testing a small number of contrasts in later developing prepositions: in front, behind,

between, above, below. See later preposition phrases test too.


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Clausal ConnectivesTemporal Connectives:

Target:

Grandma cleaned while the baby

slept

Foil:Grandma cleaned until the baby slept

Causal Connectives:Target: The mother held the babys hand in

case he fell down.Foil: The mother held the babys hand because

he fell down.

These connectives are important in early

reading, and very little is known about

their development: CHILDES searches reveal

interesting errors.


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Fast Mapping Nouns

Type Instructions Target Foils

1 Fast Mapping

Basic Level"Where is the blick"

Green snake-like

bubble blower

Bubbles, Cheese,

Keys

2 Extension Basic

Level

"Can you find another

blick"

Blue snake-like

bubble blower

Shoes, Bird, PVC

Pipe (novel

distractor)

3 Fast Mapping

Superordinate

Category

"Where is the dax"Purple squishy,

puffy object

Doll, Toy truck,

Blocks

4 Extension

Superordinate

Category

"Can you find anotherdax"

Red squishy, puffyobject

Toy airplane,

Rubber duck,Shaking barbell

(novel distractor


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Fast Mapping Adjectives

Based on work by e.g. Waxman, we are testing when children can generalize a property word

to new items: fast mapping and generalization.

Types of Trials

Fast Mapping Extension

1. Within-basic (dog

another dog)

Across-basic (but within

superordinate) (dog

cat)

2. Across-basic (but

within superordinate)

(dog cat)

Across-superordinate

(dogtruck)

3. Across-superordinate

(dog truck)

Novel object (dog

unknown object)

Trial Type Target Foil 1 Foil 2

Ostension

Look, this is a

blishish cup!

Object with target

property (e.g.,blueleopard print cup)

Fast Mapping

Can you show mea blickish one?

Object with targetproperty (e.g., green

leopard print cup)

Object with uniqueproperty (e.g., green

striped cup)

Green novel object

Extension

Can you show me

anotherblickish

one?

Different object withtarget property (e.g.,

red leopard print

plate)

Object with sameunique property as foil

1 (e.g.,red striped

plate)

Same object as objectused in ostension

demonstration (e.g., red

cup)


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Wh-questions

Tom and I have been working for several years to develop a product with

Laureate Learning called Question Quest. It trains all the different levels

of simple (one clause) wh-questions, and we tested a big group of children

this summer on the 80 items to see what seemed promising to distinguish

these ages. The items were e.g.:

Who/what is on the bed? (lexical diffs between who/what)

Who pushed the baker/who did the baker push? (subject/object)

What did the baby eat/what did the baby eat with? (Preposition

stranding)

How/why did the boy wash the dog? (lexical contrast of harder wh)

Who ate what? (paired exhaustive)


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Wh-Questions

What is the baby eating with?

(What is the baby eating?)

Who is pushing the baker?

(Who is the baker pushing?)


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Wh-Questions

Who is playing what? Why is the boy filling the washtub?

(How is the boy filling the washtub?)


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Pilot Data for Wh-Question Modules

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

3 4 5

A

v

g

C

o

r

r

e

ct

R

e

s

p

o

n

s

e

Age Group

Who/What

What/With What

Subject/Object

Exhaustive Sets

How/Why

We are now doing two things: finding the BEST items and testing a wider sample of SES


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Complements We know that one of the most sensitive changes from 3-5 is in mastery of complementation.

In the grant, we posited that the best test would be a contrast between: Whinfinitival complement

a) What did the man say to bring?

(where what was brought did not match what was said: saying was unfulfilled, not false)

Wh tensed complement

b) What did the man say he brought?

(where what was brought did not match what was said: saying was false).

In our BU paper, we will show that with the same verb say, and stories, children aged 3 to 5 treat

a) and b) quite differently:

i) They more often answer b) with reality i.e. what was brought.

ii) They answer a yes/no version c) with yes, but variably on d):

c) Did the man say what to bring?

d) Did the man say what he brought?

iii) They answer the medial question of c) wrt the top verb. But with d), the bottom verb


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Issue Together with Tom and Peter and Helen Tager-Flusberg. Laureate also

made a new training module on Theory of Mind containing these verycontrasts.The advantage was that the stories were all enacted inanimation, with direct speech events, reducing the need for so muchnarration. The answer is just pointed at, not spoken.

BUT, we found pilot children doing equally well on infinitivals and tensed!

Is it perhaps because the disparities between what was said and what

was done were not encoded in speech, OR, because both kinds of speech acts occurred in the tensed event,

perhaps children were not really answering the final question? e.g. theymight have been answering What did the mother say to Amy to do?

Instead of

What did the mother say Amy was doing? OR, is it that direct speech is much easier than indirect?


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Two-Clause Complements

Pilot Testing Scheme

Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4

Infinitival

Complement

Clauses

Direct Speech No verbal

encoding of

alternate action

Direct Speech Alternate

Action

encoded

Indirect Speech

Finite

Complement

Clauses

Direct Speech

No verbalencoding of

alternate action

Direct Speech

Alternate

Action

encoded

Indirect

Speech Instructions,

Alternate

action,

Report

Indirect

Speech Instructions,

Report,

Alternate

action


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Two Clause Complements

Group 2: Direct Speech Infinitival Group 2: Direct Speech Finite


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Group 3: Indirect Speech Infinitival Group 3: Indirect Speech Finite


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Group 4: Indirect Speech Infinitival Group 4: Indirect Speech Finite


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Prepositional phrases

Most studies have been of the semantic

contrasts in prepositions.

Some work has been done on parsing and

attachment (e.g. Trueswell: put the frog on

the blanket in the cup)

We wanted to see if children had the syntax

mastered and what errors might occur with

first single then double prep phrases.

l h


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Prepositional PhrasesSingle-PP Recursive PPs

Adjunct PPs


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Past Auxiliary

Who was crying?

We chose this because it is a dialect neutral piece of morphology about tense, found to be

useful in production on the DELV. But can we make it work in comprehension? Opinions!


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Syntactic BootstrappingDesign

Actions are presented with audio(e.g., Look! The boy is

wezzling!)

(4s)

Actions are presented withprompt (e.g., Touch where the

boy is wezzling!) (4s)

Action presented without audioto allow the child enough time to

respond (10 seconds)


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Generalizing Novel Verb to Passive

Verb Action Passive Question Type

Glorping One actor bends

another actor sideways

from behindThe girl is glorping

the boy

Which one got

glorped?

Choices: boy/girl

Target answer: boy

Reversible action

Chazzing A boy is moving a

basketball between his

hands in a back and

forth motion

The boy is chazzing

the ball

Which one got

chazzed?

Choices:

Boy/ball

Target answer: ball

Nonreversible action

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