Margherita Orsolini

Universals in Morphological Representation: Evidence from Italian

The dual mechanism hypothesis argues that the apparent contrast, in English inflectional morphology, between a rule-based default procedure, generating regular past-tense forms, and listed irregular forms stored in an associative net, reflects universal constraints on the properties of possible morphological systems. This research asked whether these constraints can be shown to hold, in the ways predicted by the dual mechanism hypothesis, for Italian past-tense inflection. Experiment 1, using a cross-modal repetition priming task, showed that priming generated by regular inflected pairs (giocarono/giocare) does not differ from prim ing by irregular inflected pairs (scesero/scendere). Experiment 2, using an elicitation task where subjects produce past-tense forms for novel verbs, not only showed little evidence for the presence of an underlying default, but also demonstrated that phonological similarity can affect both regularised and irregularised elicitation patterns. The results of both experiments cont...

From phonological recoding to lexical reading: A longitudinal study on reading development in Italian

In this longitudinal study we analyse the early phases of reading development in Italian and explore the transition from phonological to lexical reading. A group of 28 Italian children was tested in four phases. Language and cognitive skills were first assessed in the preschool. Reading performance was then tested in three different sessions, in grade 1 and 2, using off-line naming tasks. To identify lexical reading we included in our test Italian words that have atypical stress assignment and can be pronounced with fluent prosody only by using lexical look up. Our findings show that phonological reading develops from aloud conversion of small orthographic units (e.g., single graphemes) to aloud conversion of whole strings. Such development underlies a systematic expansion of lexical reading. Children who deployed lexical reading for a low percentage of words at the end of grade 2 were likely to rely on grapheme by grapheme conversion still at the end of grade 1. Phonological, lexical, visual attention, and orthographic memory skills contribute to the systematic development of lexical reading.

Acquiring Regular and Irregular Inflection in a Language with Verb Classes

The dual mechanism model claims that only rule-generated inflections are productive; that is, can be applied to words borrowed from other languages or derived from other grammatical categories (e.g. verbs derived from nouns or adjectives). Productivity, high generalisability and insensitivity to type or token frequency effects are intertwined properties of rule-generated inflections across languages (Pinker, 1991). We tested this cross-linguistic prediction in two experiments investigating Italian childrens spontaneous performance with the past definite (Experiment 1) and their elicited performance with the past definite and the past participle (Experiment 2). Our findings show that performance profiles with productive and unproductive inflections cannot be “categorically distinguished”. The phonologically transparent morphological patterns exhibited by an unproductive verb class are high in generalisability when children make errors with root change verbs. The morphological patterns exhibited by a semi-...

Re-introduction of Referents in Italian Children's Narratives.

In this study we investigate the re-introduction of referents in the Frog stories told by Italian children aged 4-10 (N = 100). We found that for every age group full nouns are the most frequent forms used for reference re-introduction. Null forms, such as clitic pronouns or person/number inflection on the verb, are the second most frequent forms. A detailed analysis of null forms shows that children of different ages exploit different properties of the verbal and non-verbal context which can make a referent predictable. Compared to preschoolers, elementary school children are more likely to use null forms when the semantic content of the verb, or the structure of the preceding text make referents inferrable. On the other hand, preschoolers tend to exploit the importance of a character in the story plot, or the visual availability of the referent in the non-verbal context, as properties that make an entity salient enough to prevent the speaker from using overt linguistic forms such as full nouns. Our study confirms results of previous research, showing that elementary school children are more competent than preschoolers in integrating the semantic content of the current utterance into the context generated by previous discourse.

Episodic structure in children's fantasy narratives: “Breakthrough” to decontextualised discourse

Abstract In this paper, episodic structure is invoked to explain decontextualised processes of discourse construction and, in particular, the use of cohesive devices in childrens fantasy narratives.

Metalinguistic skills in children: what develops?

The aim of this study is to test develo pmental changes in metalinguistic skills in primary school children, using the distinction proposed by Bialystock (1986) between «analyzed knowledge» and «executive control», as two components of metalinguistic awareness involved in different tasks. 60 first, second ami third grade children were individually interviewed on two tasks. In the first task (guided word substitution) children were asked to substitute an underlined word with five alternatives, thus producing new sentences to be judged on their semantic and/ or morpho-syntactical acceptability. In the second task (free word substitution), children have to fiad out the word that can be cancelled ami substituted with a new one. In both tasks children have to express an acceptability judgement, giving reasons for it. Each subject receives two scores for each task. Results from two-way Anova show that the «control» component does not change much, while the «analyzed knowledge» changes signi ficantly, although alto third grade children are more aware of semantic than of morpho-syntactic features of language.

Semantic Abilities Predict Expressive Lexicon in Children with Typical and Atypical Language Development

In this study we used a semantic battery assessing the conceptual, lexical, and metacognitive level in semantic relationships to predict expressive lexicon in preschool children with typical and atypical language development. Our regression analyses showed that the tests of our semantic battery altogether accounted for 24% of variance in expressive lexicon after controlling for age and phonological short-term memory. The ability to memorize picture-cue/word pairs that were linked by taxonomic relations made a unique contribution to the expressive lexicon, and was a reliable marker of delayed expressive vocabulary in a group of children with specific language impairment.

Information exchange in classroom conversation: Negociation and extension of the focus

This research is concerned with clarifying whether teacher’s communicative strategies affect children’s conversational relevance in classroom discourse.34 conversations between teacher and children in a nursery school in a Rome suburb of low social class, collected with a «quasi-experimental» methodology, have been audiotaped and analysed. 5961 turns at talk have been categorised in order to identify different levels of relevance of the teacher’s and children’s conversational contributions. Categories describe the links between the present turn and the focus or the topic of the preceding turn. Frequencies of turn categorization were elaborated by computing transitional probabilities.Results of sequential analysis show that the children most often extend or elaborate on the information introduced by the teacher when the teacher has just extended the topic of a child speaker.In the group observed in this research peer interaction can however take on a function similar to that of teacher-children interaction: high relevance to a preceding utterance somehow «activates» a subsequent highly relevant contribution by another child.RésuméCette recherche se propose de voir si les stratégies comunicatives de l’enseignant influencent la pertinence des conduites conversationnelles des enfants dans les conversations en classe. 34 conversations, recuellies dans une école maternelle de Rome, avec une méthodologie «quasi-expérimentale», ont été audio —enregistrées et analysées. 5961 tours de parole ont été catégorisés. Les catégories decrivent la liaison entre chaque tour de parole et la centration du tour précédent. Les fréquences des catégorisations ont été elaborées en calculant les probabilités transitionnelles. Les résultats des analyses sequentielles montrent que les interventions où l’enseignant se réfère fortement à la centration introduite par le précédent locuteur sont suivies significativement par des interventions où l’enfant développe et élabore l’information introduite par l’enseignant. Ce même résultat a été observé quand le locuteur précédent est un enfant qui se réfère à la centration du précédent message.

‘And You? What Do You Think Then?’ Taking Care of Thought and Reasoning in Intellectual Disability

Intellectual disability is a frequent but still ill-defined condition. This encompasses individuals with heterogeneous cognitive profiles who are included in a same diagnostic category, on the basis of (1) an IQ score below approximately 70 and (2) a clinical assessment of deficits in adaptive functioning. In the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the core deficits of intellectual functioning include the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn academic skills, and learn from experience. Although each of these complex abilities could be analysed through both specific neuropsychological tasks and qualitative ecologically sound methods, the assessment of intellectual functioning is still centred on IQ. In recent years, there has been considerable debate as to whether a general mental function such as intelligence can map onto measures drawn from statistical analyses on the subtests concurring to IQ or, whether it should be better grounded onto the findings of developmental psychology and neuropsychology. It has been pointed out that there are several types of intelligent thinking (Gardner, 1999; Sternberg, 1985), and that acting purposefully, monitoring behaviour, planning and organising activities, are important cognitive functions that are not tapped by psychometric intelligence tests (Ardila, 1999; Fiorello et al., 2007; Greenspan & Woods, 2014; Salvador-Carulla & Bertelli, 2008).

Treating Arithmetical Text Problem Solving in a Child with Intellectual Disability: An Observative Study

In this single case study we analyze the treatment focused on arithmetical text problems with a multiplicative structure that was offered to Lu., a 7.8-years-old child who had been diagnosed with mild mental retardation and a genetic anomaly (cariotype 47 XYY) associated with learning disabilities and language delay. Our main aim is to analyze the lon- gitudinal learning profile of our target child in order to identify both the major sources of difficulties interfering with ef- fective learning and the internal cognitive constructions linked to his acquisitions. We deploy qualitative observations tracking the longitudinal changes in the procedures that Lu. applied to the tasks and in adult-child interactive talk. We identified three types of cognitive difficulties interfering with effective learning of solving arithmetical text problems: sensitivity to interference effects in verbal working memory, difficulties with complex coordination of sequential actions, slow automatization. The longitudinal analysis of the adult-child interactive talk showed that the childs talk changed from being almost exclusively focused on giving simple answers, to producing descriptions and anticipation of computations or procedures. It is likely that this use of language provided Lu. with an abstract representational format that triggered an in- ternal reorganization and conceptualisation of the acquired problem-solving procedures.