Terry Kit-fong Au

Overhearing a Language During Childhood

Despite its significance for understanding of language acquisition, the role of childhood language experience has been examined only in linguistic deprivation studies focusing on what cannot be learned readily beyond childhood. This study focused instead on long-term effects of what can be learned best during childhood. Our findings revealed that adults learning a language speak with a more nativelike accent if they overheard the language regularly during childhood than if they did not. These findings have important implications for understanding of language-learning mechanisms and heritage-language acquisition.

A Verb Is Worth a Thousand Words: The Causes and Consequences of Interpersonal Events Implicit in Language.

Abstract This research examines peoples sensitivity to the causes and consequences of events implicit in interpersonal verbs. In Study 1, adults consistently attributed the cause of an action to the Agent for some action verbs (e.g., telephone ), and to the Patient for others (e.g., thank ). They consistently attributed the cause of an experience to the Stimulus rather than to the Experiencer for experiential verbs (e.g., amaze, admire ). Also, the consequences of interpersonal events were often judged to affect the Patient or Experiencer rather than the Agent or Stimulus. Study 2 showed that adults were sensitive to the causality implicit in interpersonal verbs even when they had not been explicitly asked to infer about the causes of the depicted events. In the last study, preschoolers were also sensitive to the implicit causality in interpersonal verbs, and their causal schemas were quite adult-like.

Holding on to childhood language memory

While early language experience seems crucial for mastering phonology, it remains unclear whether there are lasting benefits of speaking a language regularly during childhood if the quantity and quality of speaking drop dramatically after childhood. This study explored the accessibility of early childhood language memory. Specifically, it compared perception and production of Korean speech sounds by childhood speakers who had spoken Korean regularly for a few years during childhood to those of two other groups: (1) childhood hearers who had heard Korean regularly during childhood but had spoken Korean minimally, if at all; and (2) novice learners. All three groups were enrolled in first-year college Korean language classes. Childhood speakers were also compared to native speakers of Korean to see how native-like they were. The results revealed measurable long-term benefits of childhood speaking experience, underscoring the importance of early language experience, even if such experience diminishes dramatically beyond childhood.

Acquiring word meanings via linguistic contrast

Words are generally related in meaning and can often be organized into semantic domains. One way children may learn that two words belong to the same semantic domain is to hear the words used contrastively. This work examines the circumstances in which hearing a new word contrasted with familiar words from the same semantic domain may help young children induce the new word meaning. Some 3- and 4-year-olds were introduced to a novel color name or material name and heard it contrasted with familiar words; some heard the novel word used for referring to an object but received no explicit contrastive information; and some did not hear the novel word used at all prior to testing. All children were then given a variety of tests to determine what they had learned about the novel word. The results were that explicit linguistic contrast helped only in some situations. Children seemed to prefer material to color in hypothesizing about a new word meaning. Linguistic contrast helped children when it was consistent with this preference, but not when it was inconsistent. Thus, it helped children map a material name, but not a color name, onto the appropriate semantic domain.

Counterfactuals: In reply to Alfred Bloom

Bloom (1981) hypothesized that the differences in counterfactual constructions in English and Chinese might affect native speakers’ inclination to think counterfactually. Because there is a distinct counterfactual construction (the subjunctive) in English but not in Chinese, Chinese sptakers might be less inclined than English speakers to think counterfactually. To test his hypothesis, or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in general, Bloom prepared a story with several counterfactual implications, and asked some native Chinese and English speakers to read the story written in their native languages. He found that Chinese speakers were much less likely than English speakers to give counterfactual interpretations to the counterfactual story, and concluded that the absence of a distinct counterfactual marker could hinder counterfactual reasoning in Chinese. I have reservations about Bloom’s findings. When I (Au, 1983) read his counterfactual story, I found the Chinese text rather unidiomatic. The low counterfactual response rates given to Bloom’s Chinese versions of the story might have been due to the unidiomatic text rather than to difficulty of reasoning counterfactually in Chinese per se. I therefore tried to replicate his findings with both his story and a new counterfactual story. The Chinese bilinguals in my studies read eithe IlL2r Bloom’s or my story written iu either Chinese or English. They showed little difficulty in understanding the counterfactual in either story in either language, insofar as the English and Chinese were idiomatic. When given my story written in Chinese, nearly monolingual Chinese also gave mostly counterfactual responses. I therefore concluded that the absence a distinct counterfactual marker did not seem to hinder counterfactual reasoning in Chinese, and that the mastery of the English subjunctive by Chinese bilinguals might be quite tangential to their reasoning counterfactually in Chinese (cf. Au, 1983, In Press). Bloom (1984) has raised three objections to my (Au, 1983) conclusions

Early childhood language memory in the speech perception of international adoptees

It is as yet unclear whether the benefits of early linguistic experiences can be maintained without at least some minimal continued exposure to the language. This study compared 12 adults adopted from Korea to the US as young children (all but one prior to age one year) to 13 participants who had no prior exposure to Korean to examine whether relearning can aid in accessing early childhood language memory. All 25 participants were recruited and tested during the second week of first-semester college Korean language classes. They completed a language background questionnaire and interview, a childhood slang task and a Korean phoneme identification task. Results revealed an advantage for adoptee participants in identifying some Korean phonemes, suggesting that some components of early childhood language memory can remain intact despite many years of disuse, and that relearning a language can help in accessing such a memory.

Effectiveness of group cognitive-behavioral treatment for childhood anxiety in community clinics.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral treatment for childhood anxiety in a community clinic setting in Hong Kong, China. Forty-five clinically-referred children (age 6-11 years) were randomly assigned to either a cognitive-behavioral treatment program or a waitlist-control condition. Children in the treatment condition showed significant reduction in anxiety symptoms-both statistically and clinically-whereas children in the waitlist condition did not. After the waitlist period was over, the control group also received the treatment program and showed a similar reduction in symptoms. For the full sample of 45 children, the effectiveness of the intervention was significant immediately after treatment and in 3- and 6-month follow-ups. In addition, childrens anxiety cognition and their ability to cope with anxiety-provoking situations fully mediated the treatment gains. These results offer empirical support for cognitive-behavioral treatment programs in a non-Western cultural context and plausible mediators for how cognitive-behavioral therapy works.

Psychometric properties of the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale in a Hong Kong Chinese community sample

This study evaluated the psychometric properties of a widely used self-report anxiety scale-the Spence Childrens Anxiety Scale (SCAS) and the associated parent-report version (PSCAS)-in a Hong Kong Chinese community sample. While good psychometric properties of SCAS and PSCAS had been documented in Western cultural contexts (e.g., Australia), no systematic psychometric evaluation of the Chinese-translated SCAS and PSCAS has been published. In this study, psychometric properties of SCAS and PSCAS were examined with respect to four criteria: (a) factor structure, (b) descriptive statistics, (c) convergent validity with an anxiety cognition measure, and (d) internal consistency. Psychometric properties of SCAS and PSCAS for a Chinese community sample were found to be highly comparable with those published on Australian samples, thus providing a solid conceptual foundation for use of the Chinese version of SCAS and PSCAS.

Young Children's Analogical Reasoning across Cultures: Similarities and Differences.

A cross-cultural comparison between U.S. and Hong Kong preschoolers examined factors responsible for young childrens analogical reasoning errors. On a scene analogy task, both groups had adequate prerequisite knowledge of the key relations, were the same age, and showed similar baseline performance, yet Chinese children outperformed U.S. children on more relationally complex problems. Children from both groups were highly susceptible to choosing a perceptual or semantic distractor during reasoning when one was present. Taken together, these similarities and differences suggest that (a) cultural differences can facilitate better knowledge representations by allowing more efficient processing of relationally complex problems and (b) inhibitory control is an important factor in explaining the development of childrens analogical reasoning.

Children's Use of Information in Word Learning.

Whenever children hear a novel word, the context supplies information about its meaning. One way children may cope with so much information is to use whatever seems to make sense, given their prior knowledge and beliefs, while ignoring or quickly forgetting the rest. This work examined if and how childrens beliefs about word meanings may affect their use of contrastive linguistic information in the input in word learning. In Study 1, some 3- and 4-year-olds were introduced to a novel material or shape name and heard it contrasted with familiar words. Others merely heard the novel word used for referring to an object. These children were then tested to determine what they had learned about their new word meaning. In Study 2, another group of 3- and 4-year-olds were asked to name the materials and shapes used for introducing these novel terms. Children made use of linguistic contrast only in some situations. They benefited more when the novel term did not overlap much in denotation with any terms commonly known by 3- and 4-year-olds. These results suggest that children can use information in the input very efficiently in learning a term for an as-yet-unnamed category, but not in learning a term similar in denotation to a word they already know. Thus, the results are consistent with the claim that children believe every word has a unique denotation.