This study develops a single elicitation method to test the acquisition of third-person pronominal objects in 5-year-olds for 16 languages. This methodology allows us to compare the acquisition of pronominals in languages that lack object clitics ("pronoun languages") with languages that employ clitics in the relevant context ("clitic languages"), thus establishing a robust cross-linguistic baseline in the domain of clitic and pronoun production for 5-year-olds. High rates of pronominal production are found in our results, indicating that children have the relevant pragmatic knowledge required to select a pronominal in the discourse setting involved in the experiment as well as the relevant morphosyntactic knowledge involved in the production of pronominals. It is legitimate to conclude from our data that a child who at age 5 is not able to produce any or few pronominals is a child at risk for language impairment. In this way, pronominal production can be taken as a developmental marker, provided that one takes into account certain crosslinguistic differences discussed in the article.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a technique that has been used since 1938 to treat several psychiatric disorders as a replacement for chemically induced seizures. Despite its history of stigma, controversy and low accessibility, ECT is found to be beneficial and efficient in severe cases of depression where medication fails to bring results. Titration tables developed over time, based on evidenced-based medicine, have made this treatment technique safe and, in some cases, the first choice of treatment. The aim of the review was to summarize the research conducted on the efficacy of ECT on major depressive disorder and variables studied such as technique, comorbidities and medication as well as the effects and outcomes of this procedure. At the same time, the application and correlations with other psychiatric and neurological disorders, including catatonia, agitation and aggression in individuals with dementia, schizophrenia, and epilepsy were assessed. There are no statistically demonstrated effects due to the fact that a small number of moderate-quality studies have been published; however, the combination of ECT technique with standard medication and care, can improve patient outcome. Furthermore, with regard to ECT, widespread and robust volume changes in both cortical and subcortical regions have been shown. Antidepressant response and volumetric increases appear to be limited by the specific neuroplasticity threshold of each patient.
The comprehension of constituent questions is an important topic for language acquisition research and for applications in the diagnosis of language impairment. This article presents the results of a study investigating the comprehension of different types of questions by 5-year-old, typically developing children across 19 European countries, 18 different languages, and 7 language (sub-)families. The study investigated the effects of two factors on question formation: (a) whether the question contains a simple interrogative word like 'who' or a complex one like 'which princess', and (b) whether the question word was related to the sentential subject or object position of the verb. The findings show that there is considerable variation among languages, but the two factors mentioned consistently affect children's performance. The cross-linguistic variation shows that three linguistic factors facilitate children's understanding of questions: having overt case morphology, having a single lexical item for both 'who' and 'which', and the use of synthetic verbal forms.
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