There is a wealth of evidence demonstrating that executive function (EF) abilities are positively associated with language development during the preschool years, such that children with good executive functions also have larger vocabularies. However, why this is the case remains to be discovered. In this study, we focused on the hypothesis that sentence processing abilities mediate the association between EF skills and receptive vocabulary knowledge, in that the speed of language acquisition is at least partially dependent on a child's processing ability, which is itself dependent on executive control. We tested this hypothesis in longitudinal data from a cohort of 3- and 4-year-old children at three age points (37, 43, and 49 months). We found evidence, consistent with previous research, for a significant association between three EF skills (cognitive flexibility, working memory [as measured by the Backward Digit Span], and inhibition) and receptive vocabulary knowledge across this age range. However, only one of the tested sentence processing abilities (the ability to maintain multiple possible referents in mind) significantly mediated this relationship and only for one of the tested EFs (inhibition). The results suggest that children who are better able to inhibit incorrect responses are also better able to maintain multiple possible referents in mind while a sentence unfolds, a sophisticated sentence processing ability that may facilitate vocabulary learning from complex input.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105693 | DOI Listing |
J Child Lang
January 2025
Philosophy and Social Science Laboratory of Reading and Development in Children and Adolescents (South China Normal University), Ministry of Education, Guangzhou, China.
Using the syntactic priming paradigm, this study investigated abstract syntactic knowledge of Chinese transitive structures (i.e., subject-verb-object [SVO], BA, and BEI) in deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs).
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January 2025
Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC-CNR), Via Nomentana 56, 00161, Rome, Italy.
Face masks can impact processing a narrative in sign language, affecting several metacognitive dimensions of understanding (i.e., perceived effort, confidence and feeling of understanding).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRandomized controlled trials (RCTs) can produce valid estimates of the benefits and harms of therapeutic interventions. However, incomplete reporting can undermine the validity of their conclusions. Reporting guidelines, such as SPIRIT for protocols and CONSORT for results, have been developed to improve transparency in RCT publications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBrain Lang
January 2025
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871 China; Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health and Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing 100871 China. Electronic address:
An ERP experiment was conducted to investigate the common and distinct neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the on-line processing of two types of politeness maxims (self-depreciation and other-elevation) and the individual differences during sentence reading. Electroencephalograms were recorded while participants read sentences containing pragmatically appropriate or inappropriate honorific or humble terms. When collapsing all participants' data, inappropriate humble and honorific terms elicited N400 and P600 effects, respectively, which could reflect semantic processing costs and rechecking processes, respectively.
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January 2025
Humane Technology Lab, Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy; Applied Technology for Neuro-Psychology Lab., Istituto Auxologico Italiano IRCCS, Milan, Italy. Electronic address:
Psychedelic drugs offer valuable insights into consciousness, but disentangling their causal effects on perceptual and high-level cognition is nontrivial. Technological advances in virtual reality (VR) and machine learning have enabled the immersive simulation of visual hallucinations. However, comprehensive experimental data on how these simulated hallucinations affects high-level human cognition is lacking.
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