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Parental high elaborative reminiscing style has been linked to both children’s autobiographical memory and preschoolers’ socio-emotional functioning (Laible, 2011; Leyva et al., 2014; Wu & Jobson, 2019). Recently, indirect pathways between parental reminiscing and child social functioning via child autobiographical memory have been established in a cross-sectional investigation (Wu et al., 2022). A related possibility, namely that child socio-emotional functioning may moderate the effect of high elaborative reminiscing on child memory, has not been investigated. Theories of vantage sensitivity and differential susceptibility suggest that some child dispositional characteristics may mitigate or enhance the beneficial effects of positive parental input on child outcomes (Belsky, 2015; Pluess & Belsky, 2013). Thus, depending on the child socio-emotional characteristics, some children may benefit more, while others less, from high elaborative reminiscing. To fill the empirical gap, we investigate whether child social- and emotional functioning moderates the effect of high elaborative reminiscing style on child autobiographical memory over time. We hypothesize a direct positive longitudinal effect of parental high elaborative reminiscing style on children’s autobiographical memory (Wu & Jobson, 2019). Building on the vantage sensitivity and differential susceptibility theory, two contradictory hypotheses were tested: (a) children with lower social- and emotional functioning benefit less from high elaborative reminiscing style leading to less positive memory outcomes and (b) children with lower social- and emotional functioning benefit more from high elaborative reminiscing style leading to more positive memory outcomes over time. Method: Parent-child dyads reminisced about shared past events during two home visits carried out two years apart. N = 178 Danish-speaking parent (75% mothers) and child (Mage = 4.28, SD = 0.18) dyads participated in the first session; of these families, N = 130 parents (75% mothers) and their children (Mage = 6.25, SD = 0.45) participated in the second session. Parent reminiscing style was coded using an utterance-by-utterance coding system with elaborative questions and statements, and positive confirmations making up the high elaborative style at both time points (Leyva et al., 2020). Child autobiographical memory was coded as unique pieces of memory information/utterance at both time points (Farrant & Reese, 2000). Children’s social- and emotional functioning was coded using the prosocial behavior and emotional symptoms subscales of the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (Obel et al., 2003). Data analysis plan: Parent elaborative reminiscing style at time 1 will be used as a predictor of child autobiographical memory at time 2 (see Fig 1). Children’s social- and emotional functioning at time 1 will be included as moderators of the relation between parent elaborative style at time 1 and child autobiographical memory at time 2. Parents’ education, gender, and age will be included as covariates of parent elaborative style at time 1. Child gender, age, and expressive vocabulary will be included as covariates of child autobiographical memory. Contribution: Knowledge of how child characteristics may influence parental reminiscing style is valuable, as this knowledge can be used in planning, e.g., parenting programs.

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-pss-10.1177_09567976221146537 for Cross-Cultural Sex/Gender Differences in Produced Word Content Before the Age of 3 Years by Mikkel Wallentin and Fabio Trecca in Psychological Science

Additional Table 4. Adjusted Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for sex and age specific Vocabulary and Complexity scores below the 15th percentile when early postnatal PFAS exposure are doubled, in 999 children from Odense Child Cohort without adjustment for duration of breastfeeding.

Additional Table 1. Distribution of characteristics in 2,448 active participants, presented in the current study sample (n = 999) and the remaining participants in the Odense Child Cohort (n = 1,449), Denmark.

Additional Table 3. Crude and adjusted odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for sex and age specific Vocabulary and Complexity scores below the 15th percentile when prenatal and early postnatal PFAS exposure are doubled, in 999 children from Odense Child Cohort.

Additional Table 2. Median maternal and child PFAS concentrations (ng/mL) according to maternal and child characteristics in 999 mother-child pairs from the Odense Child Cohort, Odense, Denmark.

Research has shown that contoids (i.e., phonetically-defined consonants) may provide more robust and reliable cues to syllable and word boundaries than vocoids (i.e., phonetically-defined vowels). Recent studies of Danish — a language characterized by frequent long sequences of vocoids in speech — have suggested that the frequent lack reduced occurrence of consonantal sounds contoids may make speech intrinsically harder to segment than in closely related languages, such as Norwegian. In this study, we addressed this hypothesis empirically in an artificial language learning experiment with native speakers of Danish, Norwegian, and English. We tested whether artificial speech consisting of concatenated contoid-vocoid syllables is easier to segment than speech consisting of vocoid-vocoid syllables (where the first segment is a semivowel and the second a full vowel). Contrary to what was expected, we found no effect of the phonetic makeup of the syllables on speech segmentability. Possible interpretations and implications of this result are discussed.

Language learning requires successfully integrating syntactic, semantic, and other cues to the meaning of an utterance. We present a new experimental paradigm that combines artificial language learning with sentence-picture matching, to investigate active statistical learning via multiple-cue integration. English-speaking participants were presented auditorily with sequences of nonsense words that followed non-English dative patterns: prepositional-dative (S-O1-prep-O2-V, e.g., kav jux ma-rus sook) or double-object (S-O2-O1-V, e.g., kav rus jux sook). For each sequence, participants were shown four images of three characters in different who-gave-what-to-whom scenes and instructed to click the picture matching the sentence. The language contained 9 nouns (depicted with images of human or animal characters) and 3 verbs (depicted as arrows of different colors). Feedback was provided for correct guesses by repeating the auditory sequence along with the correct picture.

Does sex/gender matter for language acquisition? Small female advantages in vocabulary size are well-documented. In this study, however, we show that children’s early vocabulary composition is a significantly better predictor of sex/gender than size. We conducted classification analysis on word production data from children (12-36 months, n =39,553) acquiring 26 different languages. Children’s sex/gender was classified above chance level in 22 out of 26 languages. Classification accuracy was significantly higher than for models based on vocabulary size and increased as a function of sample size. Boys produced words for vehicles and outdoor scenes, while girls produced words for clothing and body parts. Classification accuracy also increased as a function of age and peaked at 30 months, reaching accuracy levels observed in studies of adult word use. We thus reveal robust patterns across virtually all sampled languages, suggesting that some sex/gender differences in word production may be nearly universal and detectable before the age of two. These differences in vocabulary are indicative of biocultural differences in the lifeworld of children and may themselves cause further differences in development.

De fleste har nok hørt, at vi danskere er blevet mere og mere "sjuskede" i vores udtale, når vi snakker med hinanden. Og mange har nok også læst, at det er svært for udlændinge at lære dansk. Men nu viser ny forskning, at vores sjuskede sprog faktisk også gør det svært for vores børn at lære dansk.

Supplemental material, SupplementalMaterialpdf for When Too Many Vowels Impede Language Processing: An Eye-Tracking Study of Danish-Learning Children by Fabio Trecca, Dorthe Bleses, Anders Højen, Thomas O Madsen and Morten H Christiansen in Language and Speech

Language learning requires successfully integrating syntactic, semantic, and other cues to the meaning of an utterance. We present a new experimental paradigm that combines artificial language learning with sentence-picture matching, to investigate active statistical learning via multiple-cue integration. English-speaking participants were presented auditorily with sequences of nonsense words that followed non-English dative patterns: prepositional-dative (S-O1-prep-O2-V, e.g., kav jux ma-rus sook) or double-object (S-O2-O1-V, e.g., kav rus jux sook). For each sequence, participants were shown four images of three characters in different who-gave-what-to-whom scenes and instructed to click the picture matching the sentence. The language contained 9 nouns (depicted with images of human or animal characters) and 3 verbs (depicted as arrows of different colors). Feedback was provided for correct guesses by repeating the auditory sequence along with the correct picture. Performance was high (M = .76, SD = 1.8) and increased across trials (β = .16, p < .001), but less so for the syntactically more complex double-object sentences (β = -.17, p = .024). The robustness of learning was tested by introducing implausible referents (animal character as agents) and/or Brownian noise in the last 40 trials. Neither manipulation decreased learning. Thus, active statistical learning can support robust learning of distributional structure.

Research has shown that contoids (phonetically defined consonants) may provide more robust and reliable cues to syllable and word boundaries than vocoids (phonetically defined vowels). Recent studies of Danish, a language characterized by frequent long sequences of vocoids in speech, have suggested that the reduced occurrence of contoids may make speech in it intrinsically harder to segment than in closely related languages such as Norwegian. We addressed this hypothesis empirically in an artificial language learning experiment with native speakers of Danish, Norwegian, and English. We tested whether artificial speech consisting of concatenated contoid–vocoid syllables is easier to segment than speech consisting of vocoid–vocoid syllables where the first segment is a semivowel and the second a full vowel. Contrary to what was expected, we found no effect of the phonetic makeup of the syllables on speech segmentability. Possible interpretations and implications of this result are discussed. Open Practices: This article has been awarded Open Materials and Open Data badges. All materials and data are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/rmjtg. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.

Language processing depends on the integration of bottom-up information with top-down cues from several different sources—primarily our knowledge of the real world, of discourse contexts, and of how language works. Previous studies have shown that factors pertaining to both the sender and the receiver of the message affect the relative weighting of such information. Here, we suggest another factor that may change our processing strategies: perceptual noise in the environment. We hypothesize that listeners weight different sources of top-down information more in situations of perceptual noise than in noise-free situations. Using a sentence-picture matching experiment with four forced-choice alternatives, we show that degrading the speech input with noise compels the listeners to rely more on top-down information in processing. We discuss our results in light of previous findings in the literature, highlighting the need for a unified model of spoken language comprehension in different ecologically valid situations, including under noisy conditions.