Phonological Neighborhood Density

Purpose This study investigated cumulative effects of language learning, specifically whether prior vocabulary knowledge or special education status moderated the effects of academic vocabulary instruction in high-poverty schools. Method Effects of a supplemental intervention targeting academic vocabulary in first through third grades were evaluated with 241 students (6–9 years old) from low-income families, 48% of whom were retained for the 3-year study duration. Students were randomly assigned to vocabulary instruction or comparison groups. Results Curriculum-based measures of word recognition, receptive identification, expressive labeling, and decontextualized definitions showed large effects for multiple levels of word learning. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that students with higher initial Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–Fourth Edition scores (Dunn & Dunn, 2007) demonstrated greater word learning, whereas students with special needs demonstrated less growth in vocabula...

Huei-Mei Liu receives royalties from sales of the Mandarin-Chinese Communicative Development Inventory-Taiwan, which is the assessment tool for evaluating children's grammatical outcomes in the present study. All other authors have declared that no other competing financial or nonfinancial interests existed at the time of publication.

Over the history of research on sign languages, much scholarship has highlighted the pervasive presence of signs whose forms relate to their meaning in a non-arbitrary way. The presence of these forms suggests that sign language vocabularies are shaped, at least in part, by a pressure toward maintaining a link between form and meaning in wordforms. We use a vector space approach to test the ways this pressure might shape sign language vocabularies, examining how non-arbitrary forms are distributed within the lexicons of two unrelated sign languages. Vector space models situate the representations of words in a multi-dimensional space where the distance between words indexes their relatedness in meaning. Using phonological information from the vocabularies of American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL), we tested whether increased similarity between the semantic representations of signs corresponds to increased phonological similarity. The results of the computationa...

The overall objective of this study was to evaluate the implementation of a Nordic Auditory Verbal (AV) intervention for children with all degrees and types of hearing impairment (HI) using all kinds of hearing technology. A first specific objective was to identify differences and similarities in early vocabulary development between children with cochlear implant (CI) compared with children with hearing aids (HAs)/Bone anchored hearing aids (Bahs) enrolled in a 3-year AVprogram, and to compare the group of children with HI to a control group of children with normal hearing (NH). A second specific objective was to study universal neonatal hearing screening (UNHS) using the 1-3-6 Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) guidelines. Introduction: Effect of AV intervention for children with HI using different hearing technology is not thoroughly studied. It is relevant to question, whether children with mild to moderate HI encounter the same intensive need for AV intervention as children with congenital deafness. Methods: A longitudinal and comparative study design was used involving two cohorts of children, i.e. 36 children with CI and 19 children with HA/Bahs. The children were the first in Denmark to receive a 3-year AV intervention by formally trained AV-practitioners. Children were tested annually with standardized speech and language tests, i.e. Peabody Picture Vocabulary test, Reynell test and a Danish test for active vocabulary, Viborgmaterialet. Categorical variables were compared using Fischer's exact test and continuous variables were compared using Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test, as data was not normally distributed. Results: Median age of diagnosis was 6 months and median age at intervention was 13 and 12 months respectively. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups in terms of scores according to age equivalency for the three tests. However, there was a significant difference between children with HI regardless of hearing technology and children with NH. Conclusion: Children with HI progressed over a three-year period, but they did not reach the same level as children with NH. The high completion rate of 98,2% of families over a three-year period indicates the relevance of AV practice in a Nordic country. Children were diagnosed later than 3 months and intervention also started later than recommended. A result that warrants further investigation.

Objective To determine the benefit of sequential cochlear implantation after a long inter-implantation interval in children with bilateral deafness receiving their second implant between 5 and 18 years of age. Study design Prospective cohort-study. Setting Tertiary multicenter. Patients 85 children with bilateral deafness and unilateral implantation receiving a contralateral cochlear implant at the age of 5 to 18 years. Method The primary outcomes were speech recognition in quiet and noise (CVC) scores. The secondary outcomes were language outcomes and subjective hearing abilities, all measured before and 12 months after sequential bilateral cochlear implantation. Medians of the paired

Over the history of research on sign languages, much scholarship has highlighted the pervasive presence of signs whose forms relate to their meaning in a non-arbitrary way. The presence of these forms suggests that sign language vocabularies are shaped, at least in part, by a pressure toward maintaining a link between form and meaning in wordforms. We use a vector space approach to test the ways this pressure might shape sign language vocabularies, examining how non-arbitrary forms are distributed within the lexicons of two unrelated sign languages. Vector space models situate the representations of words in a multi-dimensional space where the distance between words indexes their relatedness in meaning. Using phonological information from the vocabularies of American Sign Language (ASL) and British Sign Language (BSL), we tested whether increased similarity between the semantic representations of signs corresponds to increased phonological similarity. The results of the computational analysis showed a significant positive relationship between phonological form and semantic meaning for both sign languages, which was strongest when the sign language lexicons were organized into clusters of semantically related signs. The analysis also revealed variation in the strength of patterns across the form-meaning relationships seen between phonological parameters within each sign language, as well as between the two languages. This shows that while the connection between form and meaning is not entirely language specific, there are cross-linguistic differences in how these mappings are realized for signs in each language, suggesting that arbitrariness as well as cognitive or cultural influences may play a role in how these patterns are realized. The results of this analysis not only contribute to our understanding of the distribution of non-arbitrariness in sign language lexicons, but also demonstrate a new way that computational modeling can be harnessed in lexicon-wide investigations of sign languages.

PurposeThis study examined vocabulary profiles in young cochlear implant (CI) recipients and in children with normal hearing (NH) matched on receptive vocabulary size to improve our understanding of young CI recipients' acquisition of word categories (e.g., common nouns or closed-class words).MethodWe compared receptive and expressive vocabulary profiles between young CI recipients (n = 48; mean age at activation = 15.61 months, SD = 4.20) and children with NH (n = 48). The two groups were matched on receptive vocabulary size as measured by the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (Fenson et al., 2006): Words and Gestures form. The CI group had, on average, 8.98 months of hearing experience. The mean chronological age at completing the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories was 23.99 months (SD = 5.14) for the CI group and 13.72 months (SD = 1.50) for the NH group.ResultsThe CI group had a larger expressive vocabulary size than the receptive vocabulary size–matched NH group. The larger expressive vocabulary size was associated with the group difference in social words but not with common nouns. The analyses for predicate words and closed-class words included only children who produced the target categories. The CI group had a larger proportion of predicate words than the NH group, but no difference was found in closed-class words in expressive vocabulary.ConclusionsDifferences found in expressive vocabulary profiles may be affected by spoken vocabulary size and their age. A further examination is warranted using language samples to understand the effect of language input on children's vocabulary profiles.

The aim of this study is to evaluate whether Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) demonstrated early lexical composition similar to their hearing peers who were at the same vocabulary level and the extent to which children with CIs were sensitive to linguistic and conceptual properties when developing early lexicon. Method: Participants were 77 Mandarin-speaking children with CIs who received CIs before 30 months of age. Their expressive vocabulary was documented using the Infant Checklist of the Early Vocabulary Inventory for Mandarin Chinese 9 or 12 months after CI activation. Percent social words, common nouns, predicates (verbs, adjectives), and closed-class words in total vocabulary were computed for children at different vocabulary levels. Common nouns and verbs were further coded for their word class (noun, verb), word frequency, word length, and imageability to predict how likely a given noun or verb would be produced by children with CIs. Results: Like children with typical hearing, social words were the most dominant category when vocabulary size in children with CIs was smaller than 20 words; common nouns became the most dominant category when the vocabulary size reached 21 words. The difference in percent common nouns and percent predicates (i.e., noun bias) was similar in children with CIs and their hearing peers. In addition, verbs, common words, monosyllabic words, and more imageable words were more likely to be produced by children with CIs than their counterparts. Conclusions: Mandarin children with CIs showed language-specific patterns in early lexical composition like their hearing peers. They were able to use multiple linguistic and conceptual cues when approaching early expressive vocabulary despite perceptual and processing constraints.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the functional role of syllables in sign language and how the different phonological combinations influence sign production. Moreover, the influence of age of acquisition was evaluated. Deaf signers (native and non-native) of Catalan Signed Language (LSC) were asked in a picture-sign interference task to sign picture names while ignoring distractor-signs with which they shared two phonological parameters (out of three of the main sign parameters: Location, Movement, and Handshape). The results revealed a different impact of the three phonological combinations. While no effect was observed for the phonological combination Handshape-Location, the combination Handshape-Movement slowed down signing latencies, but only in the non-native group. A facilitatory effect was observed for both groups when pictures and distractors shared Location-Movement. Importantly, linguistic models have considered this phonological combination to be a privileged unit in the composition of signs, as syllables are in spoken languages. Thus, our results support the functional role of syllable units during phonological articulation in sign language production.

The number of phonological neighbors to a word (PND) can affect its lexical planning and pronunciation. Similar parallel effects on planning and articulation have been observed for other lexical variables, such as a word's contextual predictability. Such parallelism is frequently taken to indicate that effects on articulation are mediated by effects on the time course of lexical planning. We test this mediation assumption for PND and find it unsupported. In a picture naming experiment, we measure speech onset latencies (planning), word durations, and vowel dispersion (articulation). We find that PND predicts both latencies and durations. Further, latencies predict durations. However, the effects of PND and latency on duration are independent: parallel effects do not imply mediation. We discuss the consequences for accounts of lexical planning, articulation, and the link between them. In particular, our results suggest that ease of planning does not explain effects of PND on articulation.

Purpose Although children with hearing loss (HL) can benefit from cochlear implants (CIs) and hearing aids (HAs), they often show language delays. Moreover, little is known about the mechanisms by which children with HL learn words. One mechanism by which typically hearing (TH) children learn words is by acquiring word learning biases such as the “shape bias,” that is, generalizing the names of novel solid objects by similarity in shape. In TH children, the shape bias emerges out of regularities in the early vocabulary and, once acquired, has consequences for subsequent vocabulary development. Method Here, we ask whether children with HL exhibit similar word learning biases as TH children. In the current study, nineteen 2- to 3.5-year-old children with HL generalized the names of novel objects by similarity in shape or material. We compared their performance to that of 20 TH children matched on age and 20 TH children matched on vocabulary size. Results Children with HL were signific...

Purpose: Differences across language environments of prelingually deaf children who receive cochlear implants (CIs) may affect language acquisition; yet, whether mothers show individual differences in how they modify infant-directed (ID) compared with adult-directed (AD) speech has seldom been studied. This study assessed individual differences in how mothers realized speech modifications in ID register and whether these predicted differences in language outcomes for children with CIs.Method: Participants were 36 dyads of mothers and their children aged 0;8–2;5 (years;months) at the time of CI implantation. Mothers’ spontaneous speech was recorded in a lab setting in ID or AD conditions before ~15 months postimplantation. Mothers’ speech samples were characterized for acoustic–phonetic and lexical properties established as canonical indices of ID speech to typically hearing infants, such as vowel space area differences, fundamental frequency variability, and speech rate. Children wi...

Iconic mappings between words and their meanings are far more prevalent than once estimated and seem to support children’s acquisition of new words, spoken or signed. We asked whether iconicity’s prevalence in sign language overshadows two other factors known to support the acquisition of spoken vocabulary: neighborhood density (the number of lexical items phonologically similar to the target) and lexical frequency. Using mixed-effects logistic regressions, we reanalyzed 58 parental reports of native-signing deaf children’s productive acquisition of 332 signs in American Sign Language (ASL; Anderson & Reilly, 2002) and found that iconicity, neighborhood density, and lexical frequency independently facilitated vocabulary acquisition. Despite differences in iconicity and phonological structure between signed and spoken language, signing children, like children learning a spoken language, track statistical information about lexical items and their phonological properties and leverage t...

At the present time, there is no question that cochlear implants (CIs) work and often work very well in quiet listening conditions for many profoundly deaf children and adults. The speech and language outcomes data published over the last two decades document quite extensively the clinically significant benefits of CIs. Although there now is a large body of evidence supporting the "efficacy" of CIs as a medical intervention for profound hearing loss in both children and adults, there still remain a number of challenging unresolved clinical and theoretical issues that deal with the "effectiveness" of CIs in individual patients that have not yet been successfully resolved. In this paper, we review recent findings on learning and memory, two central topics in the field of cognition that have been seriously neglected in research on CIs. Our research findings on sequence learning, memory and organization processes, and retrieval strategies used in verbal learning and memory of categorized word lists suggests that basic domain-general learning abilities may be the missing piece of the puzzle in terms of understanding the cognitive factors that underlie the enormous individual differences and variability routinely observed in speech and language outcomes following cochlear implantation.

Children with unilateral cochlear implants (CIs) may have delayed vocabulary development for an extended period after implantation. Bilateral cochlear implantation is reported to be associated with improved sound localization and enhanced speech perception in noise. This study proposed that bilateral implantation might also promote early vocabulary development. Knowledge regarding vocabulary growth and composition in children with bilateral CIs and factors associated with it may lead to improvements in the content of early speech and language intervention and family counselling. To analyse the growth of early vocabulary and its composition during the first year after CI activation and to investigate factors associated with vocabulary growth. The participants were 20 children with bilateral CIs (12 boys; eight girls; mean age at CI activation = 12.9 months). Vocabulary size was assessed with the Finnish version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) Infant Form ...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate vocabulary development in Mandarin-speaking children with bilateral cochlear implants (CIs), bimodal stimulation (CI plus hearing aids [HAs]), or unilateral CIs during the first year after CI activation. Method: Participants included 23 children with simultaneous bilateral CIs, 23 children with bimodal stimulation, and 15 children with unilateral CIs. They all received CIs before 30 months of age. Parents were asked to endorse words that their child could understand only or understand and say using the Early Vocabulary Inventory for Mandarin Chinese at the day of CI activation and 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months after CI activation. Receptive and expressive vocabulary sizes were computed. Results: Growth curve analysis revealed that children with simultaneous bilateral CIs demonstrated faster growth of receptive vocabulary than those with bimodal stimulation, followed by those with unilateral CIs. Moreover, children with simultaneous bilateral CIs reached the 100-word mark for receptive vocabulary earlier than children with bimodal stimulation, followed by those with unilateral CIs. There were no significant differences among the three groups in expressive vocabulary. Conclusions: Bilateral CIs have an advantage over bimodal stimulation in early receptive vocabulary development in Mandarin, a tone language. HA usage is still recommended for those who receive one CI.

High word frequency and neighborhood density contribute to the accuracy and speed of word production in English adults (e.g., Vitevitch & Sommers 2003), and characterize early words in child English (e.g., Storkel 2004). The present study investigated a speech corpus of child German (ages 2;00-3;00) to further the understanding of the influence of frequency and density on production. Results for four children suggest that, contrary to English, words produced early are not from denser neighborhoods in an adult lexicon than later words. As in English, frequent words are produced before less frequent words. Implications on theory and methodology are discussed.

In the design of controlled experiments with language stimuli, researchers from psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, and related fields, require language resources that isolate variables known to affect language processing. This article describes a freely available database that provides word level statistics for words and nonwords of Mandarin, Chinese. The featured lexical statistics include subtitle corpus frequency, phonological neighborhood density, neighborhood frequency, and homophone density. The accompanying word descriptors include pinyin, ascii phonetic transcription (sampa), lexical tone, syllable structure, dominant PoS, and syllable, segment and pinyin lengths for each phonological word. It is designed for researchers particularly concerned with language processing of isolated words and made to accommodate multiple existing hypotheses concerning the structure of the Mandarin syllable. The database is divided into multiple files according to the desired search criteria: 1)...

Some network properties are shared among phonological lexicons of different languages, and this similarity makes the lexicon stands out from other complex networks (Vitevitch 2008; Turnbull & Peperkamp2017).
Among them, the numberof phonologically similarwords (degree) is known to be from phonotactics effect (Turnbull & Peperkamp 2017).
This study aims to test the validity of the observation in a phonotactically stratified lexicon.
The present study separated the Korean lexicon by lexical strata and showed that the distribution of degree was different by stratum.
From the light of phonotactic difference by stratum, the result is seemingly in line with the observation of the previous study.
However, a comparison with phonotactic pseudo-lexicons indicates that phonotactics alone cannot account for the difference by stratum.
As one of the extraneous factors, this work suggests resilience, namely the extent which a word can retain the UR in the diachronic development.
This study may shed light on the mechanism of the diachronic development in the phonological lexicon that results in the observed cross-linguistic similarities in the organization of the phonological
lexicon.

Purpose: We sought to evaluate the development of grammatical accuracy in English-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) over a 3-year span. Method: Ten children who received CIs before age 30 months participated in this study at 3, 4, and 5 years postimplantation. For the purpose of comparison, 10 children each at ages 3, 4, and 5 years with typical hearing were included as well. All children participated in a story-retell task. We computed percent grammatical communication units (PGCU) in the task. Results: Children with CIs showed significant improvement in PGCU over the 3-year span. However, they produced lower PGCU than children with typical hearing who had matched hearing age at 4 and 5 years postimplantation. At the individual level, some children with CIs were able to produce PGCU comparable to children with typical hearing as early as 3 years after implantation. Better speech-perception skills at earlier time points were associated with higher PGCU at later time points. Moreover, children with and without CIs showed similar rankings in the types of grammatical errors. Conclusion: Despite having auditory-perceptual and information-processing constraints, children who received CIs before age 30 months were able to produce grammatical sentences, albeit with a delayed pattern.

ASL-LEX is a lexical database that catalogues information about nearly 1,000 signs in American Sign Language (ASL). It includes the following information: subjective frequency ratings from 25–31 deaf signers, iconicity ratings from 21–37 hearing non-signers, videoclip duration, sign length (onset and offset), grammatical class, and whether the sign is initialized, a fingerspelled loan sign, or a compound. Information about English translations is available for a subset of signs (e.g., alternate translations, translation consistency). In addition, phonological properties (sign type, selected fingers, flexion, major and minor location, and movement) were coded and used to generate sub-lexical frequency and neighborhood density estimates. ASL-LEX is intended for use by researchers, educators, and students who are interested in the properties of the ASL lexicon. An interactive website where the database can be browsed and downloaded is available at http://asl-lex.org.

Downloaded From: http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/ by SUNY at Buffalo -Health Science Library, Ling-Yu Guo on 08/22/2015 Terms of Use: http://pubs.asha.org/ss/rights_and_permissions.aspx Downloaded From: http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/ by SUNY at Buffalo -Health Science Library, Ling-Yu Guo on 08/22/2015 Terms of Use: http://pubs.asha.org/ss/rights_and_permissions.aspx Guo et al.: Sensitivity to Word Statistics in CIs 989 Downloaded From: http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/ by SUNY at Buffalo -Health Science Library, Ling-Yu Guo on 08/22/2015 Terms of Use: http://pubs.asha.org/ss/rights_and_permissions.aspx *Significant at .05 level, one-tailed. **Significant at .01 level, one-tailed. Guo et al.: Sensitivity to Word Statistics in CIs 995 Downloaded From: http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/ by SUNY at Buffalo -Health Science Library, Ling-Yu Guo on 08/22/2015 Terms of Use: http://pubs.asha.org/ss/rights_and_permissions.aspx Guo et al.: Sensitivity to Word Statistics in CIs 997 Downloaded From: http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/ by SUNY at Buffalo -Health Science Library, Ling-Yu Guo on 08/22/2015 Terms of Use: http://pubs.asha.org/ss/rights_and_permissions.aspx Guo et al.: Sensitivity to Word Statistics in CIs 999 Downloaded From: http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/ by SUNY at Buffalo -Health Science Library, Ling-Yu Guo on 08/22/2015 Terms of Use: http://pubs.asha.org/ss/rights_and_permissions.aspx

Words differ in the number of phonologically similar neighbors they have in the lexicon. The density of a word’s phonological neighborhood has been argued to affect lexical planning and articulation. Here, we investigate whether the effects of phonological neighborhood density on articulation is mediated
through its effects on lexical planning or whether phonological neighborhood density has as an independent affect on articulation. In a picture naming experiment, we investigate the effect of neighborhood density on both lexical planning and articulation. We then test the extent to which the time course
of lexical planning predicts a word’s articulation and whether potential effects of density on articulation can be reduced to its effects on planning. We find that planning does influence articulation but there is an independent effect of neighborhood density on articulation. This leads us to review and discuss competing accounts of lexical planning, articulation, the link
between them, and the locus of phonological neighborhood densities effects on the two.

Keywords: language production; lexical planning; articulation; neighborhood density; confusability

This study investigates the capacity for targeted hyperarticulation of contextually-relevant contrasts. Participants communicated target words with nal /s/ or /z/ when a voicing minimal-pair (e.g., target dose, minimal-pair doze) either was or was not available as an alternative in the context. The results indicate that (1) talkers manipulate the duration of the voicing gesture to enhance a word-final voicing contrast, (2) they do so based on whether the context requires it, and (3) this can involve both elongation as well as shortening, depending on what enhances the contextually-relevant contrast. This suggests that talkers are capable of targeted, context-sensitive temporal enhancements.

Speech and language measures during grade school predict adolescent speech-language outcomes in children who receive cochlear implants (CIs), but no research has examined whether speech and language functioning at even younger ages is predictive of long-term outcomes in this population. The purpose of this study was to examine whether early preschool measures of speech and language performance predict speech-language functioning in long-term users of CIs. Early measures of speech intelligibility and receptive vocabulary (obtained during preschool ages of 3-6 years) in a sample of 35 prelingually deaf, early-implanted children predicted speech perception, language, and verbal working memory skills up to 18 years later. Age of onset of deafness and age at implantation added additional variance to preschool speech intelligibility in predicting some long-term outcome scores, but the relationship between preschool speech-language skills and later speech-language outcomes was not significantly attenuated by the addition of these hearing history variables. These findings suggest that speech and language development during the preschool years is predictive of long-term speech and language functioning in early-implanted, prelingually deaf children. As a result, measures of speechlanguage functioning at preschool ages can be used to identify and adjust interventions for very young CI users who may be at long-term risk for suboptimal speech and language outcomes.