Post on 05-Apr-2018
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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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Two Clause Complements
Group 3: Indirect Speech Infinitival Group 3: Indirect Speech Finite
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Two Clause Complements
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