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The early use of first and second person pronouns has been viewed as a sign of emerging social understanding. However, it may also depend on general language development: pronouns do not appear among the first words children acquire. In addition, some languages conjugate verbs for person, and the inflections may thus show similar relations to social understanding and language as pronouns. Very few studies have examined the relations between early person reference on the one hand and both social understanding and language development on the other. The present study used data on spontaneous language transcripts and language tasks from 58 Czech-speaking children aged 30 months to examine the relations between person reference, social understanding, and general language development. Social understanding was estimated from children's use of the mental state language (MSL). The results confirm that both MSL and general language development show unique relations to person reference with pronouns as well as verbs.

Purpose: This study examined two markers of language impairment (LI) in a single experiment, testing sentence imitation and grammatical morphology production using an imitation task with masked morphemes. One goal was to test predictions of the morphological richness account of LI in Czech. We also tested the independent contributions of language and memory skills to sentence imitation performance. Method: Seventeen children with LI (5;1-7;6 [years;months]) and 17 vocabulary-matched typically developing (TD) children (3;8-4;11) were administered a sentence imitation task where each sentence had one noun or verb ending replaced by a coughing sound. In addition, a receptive vocabulary and the digit span (backward and forward) tasks were administered. Results: Children with LI were significantly less accurate than TD children in sentence imitation task. Both vocabulary and digit span had unique effects on sentence imitation scores. Children with LI were less successful in imitating the target words, especially verbs. However, if they succeeded, their completions of the masked morphemes were no less accurate than in TD children. The accuracy of completions was affected by the morpheme frequency and homophony, but these effects were similar in TD and affected children. Conclusions: Sentence imitation is a measure of language skills and verbal memory. Results on morpheme completions are consistent with processing models of LI, but some predictions of the morphological richness model were not confirmed. The results suggest that children with LI might have a deficit in organizing morphosyntactic relations in sentences, rather than in morphological processing proper.

The aim of this study was to test whether the availability of internal imagery elicited by words is related to ratings of word imageability. Participants are presented with target words and, after a delay allowing for processing of the word, answer questions regarding the size or weight of the word referents. Target words differ with respect to imageability. Results show faster responses to questions for high imageability words than for low imageability words. The type of question (size/weight) modulates reaction times suggesting a dominance of the visual domain over the physical-experience domain in concept representation. Results hold across two different languages (Czech/German). These findings provide further insights into the representations underlying word meaning and the role of word imageability in language acquisition and processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The study examined the effects of imageability and phonological neighborhood density on the acquisition of word production in Czech, controlling for part-of-speech class, word length, and word frequency. Phonological neighborhood density is of interest because previous research has not examined highly inflected languages such as Czech. The effects of imageability on word acquisition are widely assumed, but only a few empirical studies examined such effects using child data directly. Method: Data from the Czech norming study of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (Smolík, Turková, Marušincová, & Malechová, 2017) adaptation were used, and all nouns and action words in the data set were examined (total 359). Based on the norming sample of 493 children, the expected age of acquisition was calculated. Results: A small but significant effect of neighborhood density (explaining 1.5% of unique variance) was found, as well as a robust effect of imageability (9% of unique variance). Imageability also accounted for the difference between nouns and verbs in the age of acquisition. Conclusion: Imageability is a robust predictor of word age of acquisition that should be taken into account in future studies. The identifiability of the referent and the memory mechanisms are likely responsible for the strong imageability effect. Words with large phonological neighborhoods are acquired earlier, even in a language with complex inflectional morphology.

Two experiments examined Czech children's comprehension of grammatical number marking in verbs. Children were presented with picture pairs involving one or multiple participants in the same action, and were asked to point to the picture described by a recorded sentence. Experiment 1 (N = 72, age 3;0-4;7) tested four types of sentences, some of which marked the number of participants on the verb only. There was a marked increase in comprehension scores with age and receptive vocabulary scores in singular, but not in plural sentences. This pattern was present regardless of how number was marked. Experiment 2 (N = 45, age 3;4-4;9) replicated the key findings of Experiment 1. The results suggest that comprehension of morphological number markers remains difficult even when children routinely produce such markers. However, when compared with results from other languages and experimental paradigms, it appears that the effect is due mainly to children's comprehension of the task and not limitations in their grammatical knowledge.

Purpose Propositional density (PD) is a measure of content richness in language production that declines in normal aging and more profoundly in dementia. The present study aimed to develop a PD scoring system for Czech and use it to compare PD in language productions of older people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and control participants matched on age, gender, and education. Method Groups of patients with aMCI and cognitively healthy control participants (N = 20 each) provided short spoken and written language samples. Two samples were elicited for each modality, 1 describing recent events and 1 describing childhood memories. Series of neuropsychological tests were administered. The groups were compared using t-tests and the relations between measures using correlation coefficients. Results PD was lower in spoken productions of patients with aMCI, compared with control participants, but only in language samples using remote memories. PD in these samples was related to verbal fluency and education but not to working memory. PD in written samples did not differ between participants with aMCI and control participants. Conclusions PD in spoken language reflects the cognitive decline in people with aMCI, but the effect is relatively mild. The results support the existing findings that PD is related to verbal fluency.

Background: Past research has shown that peer victimization by bullying is associated with peer rejection and fear of victimization, but little is known about the interplay between victimization and other characteristics in the prediction of these experiences. We assume that the associations between victimization and peer rejection/fear of victimization are moderated by multiple characteristics, including aspects of peer ecology. Aims: The study tested whether the links between victimization and peer rejection/fear of victimization are moderated by gender, peer support, and two features of classroom peer ecology: classroom victimization rate and classroom hierarchy (the variability of popularity among students). Sample: The sample included 512 early adolescents attending sixth grade retrieved from 25 elementary school classrooms. Methods: Participants completed a set of self-report and peer nomination instruments in classroom settings. Results: Multilevel linear modelling showed that higher levels of peer rejection were associated with higher victimization, male gender, and lower peer support. The association between victimization and peer rejection was attenuated for females and when the classroom victimization rate was higher. A higher fear of victimization was related to higher victimization, female gender, lower peer support, and a higher classroom victimization rate. The link between victimization and fear of victimization was strengthened by female gender and higher levels of classroom hierarchy. Conclusions: The results indicate the relevance of the interplay between victimization and gender and between victimization and classroom peer ecology in understanding peer rejection and fear of victimization.

Imageability is the ability of words to elicit mental sensory images of their referents. Recent research has suggested that imageability facilitates the processing and acquisition of inflected word forms. The present study examined whether inflected word forms are acquired earlier in highly imageable words in Czech children. Parents of 317 children (mean age 28 months) were asked whether their child used specific forms of 63 nouns and 35 verbs. For nouns, the forms were nominative singular and plural; for verbs, third person singular present, second person singular present, and the past participle. Plural nouns, and second person and past participle verbs were considered the marked, inflected forms. Analyses revealed that imageability is positively related to the use of the inflected form, even when controlling for the use of the unmarked form in each child, and the inflected form frequency. Two main explanations are suggested: facilitation of form retrieval from long-term memory, or facilitation of inflected form processing, especially by supporting the representations in working memory.

This article reports on an experiment that examined the comprehension of transitive sentences in Czech children and its relationship to case marking, word order and information structure. A total of 107 Czech children aged 2;9-4;5 were tested for comprehension of noun-verb-noun sentences in which word order and given-new status of individual nouns were manipulated. The results confirmed that noncanonical, object-initial sentences are generally more difficult to comprehend than sentences with the standard word order, but that many children can interpret noncanonical sentences before 4 years of age. Information structure did not have any clear effect on sentence comprehension. Overall, the results indicate that children have some abstract knowledge of word order and case marking when they first show evidence of transitive sentence comprehension, but initially they cannot use this knowledge when word order and case marking signal conflicting interpretations. Information structure is not a major factor in early sentence comprehension.

Some research in child language suggests that semantically general verbs appear in grammatical structures earlier than semantically complex, specific ones. The present study examines whether this was the case in nouns, using imageability as a proxy measure of semantic generality. Longitudinal corpus data from 12 children from the Manchester corpus in CHILDES were used to obtain information on the first occurrence of plurals. A total of 3,560 uninflected nouns were identified in the corpora, of which 1,202 were observed in the plural. Survival analyses indicated that the chance of observing a plural form increases with the imageability rating of the noun, even after accounting for the age of acquisition of the uninflected noun, maternal input frequency, and word length. Noun imageability thus facilitates the acquisition of plural forms. This finding contradicts the observations from verbs, and indicates that the acquisition of grammar is facilitated by high imageability rather than semantic generality.

Purpose: The authors examined sentence imitation as a potential clinical marker of specific language impairment (SLI) in Czech and its use to identify grammatical markers of SLI. Method: Children with SLI and the age-and language-matched control groups (total N = 57) were presented with a sentence imitation task, a receptive vocabulary task, and digit span and nonword repetition tasks. Sentence imitations were scored for accuracy and error types. A separate count of inaccuracies for individual part-of-speech categories was performed. Results: Children with SLI had substantially more inaccurate imitations than the control groups. The differences in the memory measures could not account for the differences between children with SLI and the control groups in imitation accuracy, even though they accounted for the differences between the language-matched and age-matched control groups. The proportion of grammatical errors was larger in children with SLI than in the control groups. The categories that were most affected in imitations of children with SLI were verbs and clitics. Conclusion: Sentence imitation is a sensitive marker of SLI. Verbs and clitics are the most vulnerable categories in Czech SLI. The pattern of errors suggests that impaired syntactic representations are the most likely source of difficulties in children with SLI.

Person-referring pronouns in the first and second person (I, your) have been viewed as signs of increasing social understanding in children due to their shifting reference properties. However, they are linguistically complex elements and might depend on general language development. We used longitudinal transcript data from Manchester corpus (12 children aged 2 to 3 years) to examine concurrent and predictive relations between pronouns, general language development (MLU), and social understanding (indexed by the use of mental state language). In the key analysis, social understanding but not general language was found to be a developmental precursor of first-, second- and third-person pronoun mastery. Results suggest that social understanding is needed for acquisition of all person reference, not only in first and second person. Results for first- and third-person pronouns were more similar than for second person, suggesting that social-cognitive demands of person reference go beyond shifting reference of first- and second-person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the acquisition of different functions of wh-words in Czech (Slavic) - a language where wh-words are highly polyfunctional. Our working hypothesis is that the acquisition proceeds in accordance with the growth of the syntactic tree (aka the growing trees hypothesis; Friedman et al. 2021), which in turn is matched by the growth of the semantic representation. More specifically, children are expected to first acquire wh-interrogatives, then conditionals, correlatives, and free relatives, and finally (light-)headed relatives. The working hypothesis is set against the background of what could be considered the null hypothesis, namely that children’s production matches the adult input. We have examined the Czech CHILDES corpus (Chromá et al. 2024; 6 children 1;07-3;09), tagging all wh-occurrences (nearly 11 thousand tokens) for the construction they appear in. Using both descriptive and inferential statistical methods, we have found evidence either supporting or being compatible with our hypothesis. At the same time, our results are not consistent with a simple input-based account. We also discuss some limitations of a corpus-based approach for addressing our research question. The most significant hurdle is the overall low frequency of non-interrogative wh-words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article details the adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MB-CDI) into Czech, focusing on communicative skills in infants aged 8 to 18 months, including vocabulary and gestures specific to the Czech language and culture. Topics include the adaptation methods, piloting with Czech caregivers and children, and the tool's potential applications in assessing communicative development and identifying areas for further assessment in children.

Goal. The paper reports on a standardization of a short parent-report screening tool for quick assessment of vocabulary in children aged 16 to 42 months. The tool should capture the early signs of a delayed or disrupted language development. The method asks for children's use and comprehension of 40 words. Participants. The tool was standardized on a group of 1047 children (535 boys) that was demographically diverse and was obtained in different regions of the Czech Republic. Analysis. Developmental norms and growth curves were calculated using generalized additive linear models. Linear regression was used to test the effects of various demographic factors on the scores. Results. The norms correspond to the expectations about the growth of vocabulary with age. Girls show statistically significant advantages in both production and comprehension. Statistically significant but weak relations were found between comprehension scores on one hand, and maternal education and population size of the hometown on the other. Limitations. The method is based on parent reports, which may result in lower reliability. This norming study has not directly assessed concurrent validity with other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. The data from Brno longitudinal study were used to examine the relations between receptive vocabulary in 50-year-olds and various cognitive and personality variables in earlier ages. Two questions were addressed in particular: 1) Is receptive vocabulary related to measures of verbal IQ in childhood, and 2) are vocabulary scores in adults related to their personality traits. Sample. The study used the sample from the Brno Longitudinal Study. This originally included about 500 participants who entered the study at birth between 1961 and 1963. In 2011, 76 of these participants were examined. Hypotheses. It was hypothesized that vocabulary performance at 50 will be related to measures of verbal IQ in childhood. With regard to the relation between vocabulary skills and personality, the general hypothesis was that such relations are possible, but no specific predictions were made. Analysis. Least squares regression analyses were used to examine the data, with the vocabulary score as the dependent variable. The analyses controlled for the relation between vocabulary and nonverbal intelligence by including nonverbal skills as one of predictors in the regression models. Results. Vocabulary scores in adulthood showed a robust relation with verbal intelligence at 12 years of age, but only marginally significant relation with verbal intelligence at 8 years. No personality measures showed robust relations with adult vocabulary, only NEO openness was weakly related to higher vocabulary. Some measures of neuroticism showed marginally significant relation with lower vocabulary. Conclusions. Even though vocabulary is an aspect of human knowledge that can change considerably during adulthood, it shows a strong relation with verbal skills in late childhood. Personality traits have rather limited effects on the change of vocabulary in adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Goals. The study aimed to collect a set of psycholinguistic norms for subjective properties of words, and describe the relations between these properties and the lexical decision times for the words. Sample and procedure. The set of words included 63 nouns and 35 verbs. Two questionnaires were created that included these words. One was an online questionnaire assessing the adult-rated age of acquisition (AoA). The main questionnaire was a paper questionnaire administered to the final-year high-school students (N=249, age 18-20). The students always rated one of the following properties: concreteness, imageability, specificity, and familiarity. In addition to these ratings, the frequencies of the words in corpora of spoken and written Czech were used, and lexical decision latencies measured. Hypotheses. One hypothesis was that the lexical decision times will be related to the word ratings: lower AoA, and higher imageability/ concreteness/specificity/familiarity, should be related to faster decision times. Statistical analyses. The data were evaluated using the Pearson correlation coefficient, the partial correlation coefficient, and linear regression. Results. The data from Czech confirmed the findings from other languages: nouns show higher imageability than verbs, imageability and concreteness are highly correlated, familiarity is related to spoken frequency more closely than to written frequency. Regression models showed that all subjective norms have statistically significant relation with the lexical decision times, above and beyond frequency and word length. Limitations. The principal limitation for further generalizations is the small sample of words for which ratings were obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]