Christine S. Schipke

Left prefrontal cortex activation during sentence comprehension covaries with grammatical knowledge in children.

Childrens language skills develop rapidly with increasing age, and several studies indicate that they use language- and age-specific strategies to understand complex sentences. In the present experiment, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and behavioral measures were used to investigate the acquisition of case-marking cues for sentence interpretation in the developing brain of German preschool children with a mean age of 6 years. Short sentences were presented auditorily, consisting of a transitive verb and two case-marked arguments with canonical subject-initial or non canonical object-initial word order. Overall group results revealed mainly left hemispheric activation in the perisylvian cortex with increased activation in the inferior parietal cortex (IPC), and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for object-initial compared to subject-initial sentences. However, single-subject analysis suggested two distinct activation patterns within the group which allowed a classification into two subgroups. One subgroup showed the predicted activation increase in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) for the more difficult object-initial compared to subject-initial sentences, while the other group showed the reverse effect. This activation in the left IFG can be taken to reflect the degree to which adult-like sentence processing strategies, necessary to integrate case-marking information, are applied. Additional behavioral data on language development tests show that these two subgroups differ in their grammatical knowledge. Together with these behavioral findings, the results indicate that the use of a particular processing strategy is not dependent on age as such, but rather on the childs individual grammatical knowledge and the ability to use specific language cues for successful sentence comprehension.

The role of pause as a prosodic boundary marker: Language ERP studies in German 3- and 6-year-olds

Spoken language is hierarchically structured into prosodic units divided by prosodic breaks. The largest prosodic breaks in an utterance are intonational phrase boundaries (IPBs), which are defined by three acoustic cues, namely, pitch change, preboundary lengthening, and pausing. Previous studies have revealed that the electrophysiological marker of IPB perception, the Closure Positive Shift (CPS), is established between 2 and 3 years of age. Here, we examined the neural activity underlying IPB perception in children by targeting their reliance on pausing; hypothesized to be a key boundary cue in German. To evaluate the role of pausing, we tested IPB perception without the boundary pause, but with pitch change and preboundary lengthening. We tested children at the age of 3 years, when the CPS in response to IPBs has just emerged, and at 6 years, when language abilities are further developed. Results revealed that 6-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, show the CPS in response to IPBs without full prosodic marking. These results indicate developmental differences with respect to the role of pausing as a prosodic boundary cue in German. The correlation of childrens IPB perception and their syntactic abilities further corroborates the close prosody-syntax interaction in childrens advancing ability to process phrase structure.

Brain responses to case-marking violations in German preschool children

The processing of case-marking and argument structures was investigated in children at the age of 3 years, 4 years and 6 months, and 6 years. Two event-related potential (ERP) experiments were conducted in a case-marked language, i.e. German, comparing the processing of (a) double-nominative violations with subject-initial structures and (b) double-accusative violations with object-initial structures. It is known that for both violation types, adults display a biphasic N400/P600 ERP response, reflecting thematic-semantic, and syntactic processes. For double-nominative violations, 3-year-old children already show an adult-like processing pattern revealing their abilities to repair the tested structure. For double-accusative violations, ERP results indicate developmental processing differences with even 6-year-old children not showing an adult pattern. This suggests a late development of the complete function of the accusative case.

Early word formation in German language acquisition: A study on word formation growth during the second and third years

This study investigates the development of German word formation as an important step in mastering complex lexical items for the language learning child. Thirty mother— child dyads participated. Means of word formation and resulting word categories were analyzed in children’s spontaneous speech at ages 1;9, 1;11, 2;6, and 3;0. In contrast to the acquisition of English, the results show simultaneous development of compounds and derivations. German toddlers produce more verbal than nominal derivations and more compounds based on verbs than on nouns. The findings suggest that (1) there are cross-linguistic differences in the development of word formation devices, and (2) children rely heavily on verbs in word formation.