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Our previous research showed that Russian children commit fewer gender-agreement errors with diminutive nouns than with their simplex counterparts. Experiment 1 replicates this finding with Russian children (N=24, mean 3;7, range 2;10–4;6). Gender agreement was recorded from adjective usage as children described animal pictures given just their names, varying in derivational status (diminutive/simplex), novelty, and gender. Experiment 2 extends the gender-agreement elicitation methodology developed for Russian to Serbian, a language with similar morphosyntactic structure but considerably fewer diminutives in child-directed speech. Serbian children (N=22, mean age 3;8, range 3;0–4;1), exhibited an advantage for diminutive nouns of almost the same magnitude as the Russian children. The fact that the diminutive advantage was found in a language with a low frequency of diminutives in the input suggests that morphophonological homogeneity of word clusters and membership in dense neighbourhoods are important factors that contribute to the reduction of inflectional errors during language development.

RUNNING HEAD: Cross--linguistic analyses of stress assignment 2 Cross-linguistic evidence for probabilistic orthographic cues to lexical stressMost of what we know about the process of converting orthography to phonology during reading aloud is based on data from monosyllabic words. Moreover, much of the research in this area is based on reading aloud in English. There has been increasing interest in the mechanisms underpinning the reading aloud of polysyllables. In many languages monosyllabic words represent a small proportion of the whole vocabulary, and so restriction to these items may mean that the model is not representative of the reading system -monosyllabic words may be a special case. For instance, in English though single syllable words account for 70.9% of tokens in the CELEX corpus (Baayen, Pipenbrock, & Gulikers, 1993) they only account for 15.5% of the word types. In other languages, the imbalance is even greater, for the Dutch CELEX database, monosyllables account for 63.3% and 7.9% of tokens and types, respectively, but for the German CELEX database, monosyllables account for 50.8% of tokens but only 3.8% of types.However, if models of reading can apply to bisyllabic and trisyllabic words as well, then this increases the coverage of the whole language in English up to 96.8% of tokens and 82.4% of types. For German and Dutch, the coverage is 91.9% and 94.4% for tokens, and 55.8% and 61.1% for types, respectively.A comprehensive understanding of word naming must thus include knowledge of how both monosyllabic and polysyllabic words are read aloud -and knowledge of how this process operates in distinct languages, otherwise, as in the case of German, models of reading based on monosyllables apply effectively to only 1 in 26 words. There are substantial challenges that are introduced when one considers naming of polysyllables.

Two experiments used an elicited speech-production paradigm to explore children's acquisition of noun case-marking inflections. Russian ( N = 24, 2;10— 4;6 years) and Serbian children ( N = 24, 2;10—4;11) were asked to produce prepositional phrases requiring genitive or dative inflections of masculine and feminine, familiar and novel, simplex ( vaza [Ru/Se: vase]) and diminutive (Ru: vazochka, Se: vazica) nouns. Across languages, children produced fewer case-marking errors with familiar compared to novel nouns, and diminutive compared to simplex nouns. The diminutive advantage occurred despite a markedly lower frequency of diminutive usage in Serbian than Russian child-directed speech. This suggests that in acquiring richly inflected languages, children most readily construct low-level generalizations of inflectional changes applying to morpho-phonologically homogeneous clusters of words like diminutives.

In the present study we explored the core factor structure originally proposed by the developer of the Parent Reading Belief Inventory (PRBI) DeBaryshe (DeBaryshe & Binder, 1994; DeBaryshe, 1995). The PRBI was developed to assess and explore parents’ beliefs about reading aloud to their children, measuring parents’ attitudes and perceptions about how children learn, the content of their learning and parental efficacy in the process. The PRBI is supposed to have 7 underlying subscales and a total score. Using a sample of 227 parents in Serbia our analyses showed internal consistency estimates were not in line with those reported by the authors of the PRBI. Using confirmatory factor analysis the subscale models showed substantial variance in how well they fit. Better fit was found for the overall models for the entire PRBI scale. Among them, the correlated factors model exhibited the best fit indices. Limitations and future research are discussed. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179034: From encouraging initiative, cooperation and creativity in education to new roles and identities in society i br. 47008: Improving the quality and accessibility of education in modernization processes in Serbia

In this study, through an in-depth analysis of teachers? reflections, we examined how personal and professional beliefs influenced school-based professional learning during teachers? experimentation with the Question Formulation Technique - QFT1. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two primary school teachers taught Mathematics and Geography. Two meta-themes emerged from the interpretative phenomenological analysis: Traditional Teachers That Focus on the Atmosphere and Quality of Motivation and Engagement During Question Formulation Technique Implementation. Teachers? condensed experiences were shaped by their personal and professional beliefs and values. This determined the quality and type of motivation and behaviour during school-based professional learning. Teachers emphasized that students were more behaviourally, cognitively, and socio-emotionally engaged. The functions of the QFT in Mathematics and Geography classes were considerably fulfilled, mostly in creating a classroom atmosphere where asking questions was valued.

Numerous research projects underline the importance of illustrations in improving cognitive part of learning, pointing out that positive influence is exerted only when illustrations are directly connected with the content of ? text and when this connection is further strengthened by the interaction between teachers and pupils. This paper analyses the relation between text and illustration in primers as first textbooks used by first graders. Applied taxonomy identifies 46 types of relations between illustration and text (Marsh & White, 2003), divided into three groups according to degrees of relations between illustration and text (group ? - codes expressing little relation between text and illustration; group B - codes expressing close relation between text and illustration; group C - codes expressing situations in which illustrations build up and give more information compared to the content of texts). A sample of 145 pairs of authors? text and illustration, selected from five primers, was divided into 4 groups by using hierarchical cluster analysis (Ward method). The largest number of illustrations had only a decorative function. A smaller number of illustrations were allocated to a cluster with evaluations expressing a close relation between illustration and text. They clearly define location of the plot (locate), connect characters of the story, such as plants and animals, with pupils by giving them human qualities (humanise), concretise described objects or concepts, introduce pupils to actual relationships presented in the content of the story (induce perspective) and give visual representation of abstract and material processes (model). Findings from this paper point out once again that it is necessary to define production standards for primers independently of general quality standards for textbooks, taking into account specific features of these textbooks and their importance to first graders. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 179034: From encouraging initiative, cooperation andcreativity in education to new roles and identities in society and Grant no. 47008: Improving the quality and accessibility of education in modernization processes in Serbia]