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To investigate whether acquisition of the perspective-marking grammar of complement-clause constructions supports progression in children’s false-belief reasoning, we conducted a training study with 76 English-speaking three-year-olds from the North-West of England (age range: 3;0-3;10 years, 50% female, 80% White). Children were randomly assigned to one of three maximally comparable training conditions, and in a four-week eight-session program, all children participated in the same training activities with mental-state contrasts. Depending on condition, activities were mediated linguistically with either simple clauses, first-person complements or third-person complements. The study addressed critical confounds in previous training studies by avoiding the use of complement clauses in false-belief tests and controlling individual differences in memory, executive functioning, general language and pretest proficiency with complement clauses. The results yielded strong support for the hypothesis of a causal influence of complement-clause exposure on false-belief progression, as children trained with first-person complements advanced significantly more in false-belief reasoning from pretest to posttest than children trained with simple clauses. Examining the roles of first- and third-person complements, a direct comparison between progression in the two complement-clause conditions showed no significant difference, but only children trained with first-person complements progressed significantly more than children in the control condition trained with simple clauses. Follow-up analyses suggested that first- and third-person complements each support false-belief progression at different stages of development.

This study investigates the impact of evidentiality on source monitoring and the impact of source monitoring on false belief understanding (FBU), while controlling for short-term memory, age, gender, and receptive vocabulary. One hundred (50 girls) monolingual 3- and 4-year-olds from Turkey and the UK participated in the study in 2019. In Turkish, children's use of direct evidentiality predicted their source monitoring skills, which, in turn, predicted their FBU. In English, FBU was not related to source monitoring. Combined results from both languages revealed that Turkish-speaking children had better FBU than English-speaking children, and only for Turkish-speaking children, better source monitoring skills predicted better FBU. This suggests an indirect impact of evidentiality on FBU by means of source monitoring in Turkish.

Cerebellar mutism syndrome (CMS) has received increasing attention over the last decades as a complication of posterior fossa tumour surgery in children. Risk factors, aetiological aspects, and treatment measures of the syndrome have been investigated, yet the incidence of CMS remains unchanged. Overall, we are currently able to identify patients at risk, but we are unable to prevent it from occurring. Once CMS sets in, several symptomatic pharmacological treatments have been suggested, but only in smaller case series and not in randomized controlled trials, and it is not clear whether the treatment or time itself had a helpful effect. Within weeks to months, most patients regain their ability to speak after a phase with mutism or severely reduced speech; however, many patients continue to have speech and language deficits. At this point, anti-cancer treatment with chemotherapy and radiotherapy may be of focus more than the prognosis of CMS; however, many patients continue to have speech and language problems for months and years to come, and they are at high risk of other neurocognitive sequelae as well. Without reliable measures to prevent or treat the syndrome, we may look towards improving the prognosis of speech and neurocognitive functioning in these patients. As speech and language impairment is the cardinal symptom and late effect of CMS, the effect of intense and early-onset speech and language therapy as a standard of care in these patients should be investigated in relation to its effect on regaining speech capacity.

Didaktiske eksperimenter på natur- og sundhedsvidenskab har vist at læringsaktiviteter der giver universitetsstuderende relevante sansemotoriske erfaringer, styrker forståelse og hukommelse, men betydningen af sansning og bevægelse i humanioraundervisning er underbelyst. Gennem to pilotstudier med fokus på design, deltagelse og evaluering undersøger denne artikel kropsforankret læring på Humaniora i to læringskontekster: digital undervisning på Zoom og auditorieundervisning på campus. Undersøgelsen viser at det også i humanioraundervisning er muligt at udvikle kropsforankrede læringsaktiviteter med stærk konceptuel integration, at de studerende deltog aktivt, og at de evaluerede aktiviteterne meget positivt. Sammenligningen af det fysiske og digitale læringsrum viser at kropsforankrede læringsaktiviteter fungerede godt i begge, med tilpasning til læringskonteksternes forskellige praktiske begrænsninger og muligheder. Auditoriet er en potentielt mere sårbar kontekst fordi deltagelse er synlig for alle, men samtidig åbner samværet i et fælles fysisk og socialt rum mulighed for aktiviteter hvor samspillet mellem de studerendes kroppe er grundlaget for læringsaktiviteternes konceptuelle integration.

This paper examines the acquisition of grammatical gender of the indefinite and definite Determiner Phrase (DP) in Danish. It investigates which grammatical contexts further acquisition and which slow it down, and whether distinguishing between monolinguals and bilinguals makes a difference. Danish has a two-way gender distinction (Common and Neuter), fusing gender with definiteness in the DP. In order to answer our research questions we tested monolingual and bilingual Danish-speaking children (n=72) representing different age groups with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, a Picture Description Task, and a Story Task. A generalized linear mixed effects regression analysis of the results shows that (i) that the children produced the standard Danish determiner significantly more often for Common nouns than Neuter nouns, (ii) the children produced significantly more standard Danish gender marking in simple DPs than in complex DPs, (iii) the children produced significantly more expressions with definite determiners realised as suffixes than with indefinite determiners expressed as prenominal articles in accordance with conventional norms, and (iv) bilingual children produced significantly less standard Danish gender marking than their monolingual peers, but ceiling effects in the monolingual group made it impossible to examine interactions between group and grammatical context.

To examine whether children’s acquisition of perspective-marking language supports development in their ability to reason about mental states, we conducted a longitudinal study testing whether proficiency with complement clauses around age three explained variance in false-belief reasoning six months later. 45 English-speaking 2-and-3-year-olds (23 female, Time 1 age range: 33-41 months) from middle-class families in the North-West of England took part in the study, which addresses a series of uncertainties in previous studies: We avoided the confound of using complement clauses in the false-belief tests, assessed complement-clause proficiency with a new comprehensive test designed to capture gradual development, and controlled for individual differences in executive functioning that could affect both linguistic and sociocognitive performance. Further, we aimed to disentangle the influence of two aspects of complement-clause acquisition: proficiency with the perspective-marking syntactic structure itself and understanding of the specific mental verbs used in this syntactic structure. To investigate direction of causality, we also tested whether early false-belief reasoning predicted later complement-clause proficiency. The results provide strong support for the hypothesis that complement-clause acquisition promotes development in false-belief reasoning. Proficiency with the general structure of complement-clause constructions and understanding of the specific mental verbs “think” and “know” in 3rd-person complements at Time 1 both contributed uniquely to predicting false-belief performance at Time 2. However, false-belief performance at Time 1 also contributed uniquely to predicting complement-clause proficiency at Time 2. Together, these results indicate a bidirectional relationship between linguistic and sociocognitive development.

This paper examines the acquisition of grammatical gender of indefinite and definite DPs in Danish. It investigates which grammatical contexts further acquisition and which slow it down, and whether distinguishing between monolinguals and bilinguals makes a difference. Danish has a two-way gender distinction (common and neuter), fusing gender with definiteness in the DP. In order to answer our research questions, we tested monolingual and bilingual Danish-speaking children (n=72) from different age groups using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, a Picture Description Task, and a Story Task. A generalized linear mixed effects regression analysis of the results showed that i) the children produced the Standard Danish determiner significantly more often with common than with neuter nouns; ii) the children produced significantly more Standard Danish gender marking in simple DPs than in complex DPs; iii) the children produced significantly more expressions with definite determiners realized as suffixes than with indefinite determiners expressed as prenominal articles in accordance with conventional norms; and iv) bilingual children produced significantly less Standard Danish gender marking than their monolingual peers, but ceiling effects in the monolingual group made it impossible to examine interactions between group and grammatical context.

Børns sprogtilegnelse er en forskningsbaseret grundbog i sproglig udvikling hos børn i alderen 0-6 år. Med grundlag i sprogvidenskab, psykologi og pædagogik giver bogen en samlet indføring i børns sprogtilegnelse der præsenterer børns sproglige udvikling som en integreret del af deres kognitive og sociale udvikling. Bogen giver en nuanceret forståelse af processer og faktorer i både typiske og atypiske udviklingsforløb og viser hvordan indsigterne fra den nyeste danske og internationale forskning kan anvendes i den daglige pædagogiske praksis. Bogen behandler emnerne tilegnelse af sproglyde, ord og grammatik, sprog og begrebsdannelse, sprog i hjernen, pragmatik og social kommunikation, flersproget sprogtilegnelse, stammen, hørenedsættelse, udviklingsmæssige sprogforstyrrelser, autisme, sprogtestning, sprogmiljø og sprogstimulering. Børns sprogtilegnelse kan anvendes som grundbog på pædagoguddannelsen og de pædagogiske diplomuddannelser Logopædi (talepædagog), Børns sprog og Dansk som andetsprog og som indføring i sprogtilegnelsesforskningen for studerende på Audiologopædi, Lingvistik, Interkulturel pædagogik og dansk som andetsprog, Audiologi, Pædagogik samt Psykologi. Bogen er desuden et nyttigt redskab for pædagoger og andre der arbejder med børn i dagpleje, vuggestue, børnehave og børnehaveklasse. Bogens forfattere og redaktører er børnesprogsforskere fra Københavns Universitet, Syddansk Universitet og Aarhus Universitet med ekspertise i dansk sprogtilegnelse.