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ERIC Number: EJ1224521
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Sep
Pages: 31
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: N/A
Print Exposure Predicts Pronoun Comprehension Strategies in Children
Arnold, Jennifer E.; Castro-Schilo, Laura; Zerkle, Sandra; Rao, Leela
Journal of Child Language, v46 n5 p863-893 Sep 2019
Language development requires children to learn how to understand ambiguous pronouns, as in "Panda Bear is having lunch with Puppy. He wants a pepperoni slice." Adults tend to link "he" with Puppy, the prior grammatical subject, but young children either fail to exhibit this bias (Arnold, Brown-Schmidt & Trueswell, 2007) or do so more slowly than adults (Hartshorne et al., 2015a; Song & Fisher, 2005). In the current study, we test whether language exposure affects this bias in elementary-school-age children. Children listened to stories like the one above, and answered questions like "Who wants a pepperoni slice?" which reveal their pronoun interpretation. Individual variation in the rate of selecting the subject character correlated with measures of print exposure, such that children who read more are more likely to follow the subject bias. This is the first study to establish that print exposure affects spoken pronoun comprehension in children.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A