Comprehension of <i>before</i> and <i>after</i> in logical and arbitrary sequences

French, Lucia; Brown, Ann L.

doi:10.1017/s0305000900001641

Cited by 59 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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Mentioning

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Order By: Relevance

“…, the taking off of the hat happens after the taking off of the coat but is mentioned first. A number of studies have suggested that three-to four-year-olds tend to use an order-of-mention strategy to understand sentences involving 'before' and 'after' , meaning that they will typically have difficulty with sentences in which order of mention does not match event order (Blything et al, 2015;French & Brown, 1977;McCormack & Hanley, 2011;Trosborg, 1982). One possibility is that children's ability to understand such non-chronological sentences is primarily constrained by their working memory skills (Blything et al, 2015), because of the need to mentally manipulate the sentence content.…”

Section: Stage (C): Linear Event-independent Time (4-5 Years)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of Temporal Concepts: Learning to Locate Events in Time

McCormack¹,

Hoerl

2017

Timing &Amp; Time Perception

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A new model of the development of temporal concepts is described that assumes that there are substantial changes in how children think about time in the early years. It is argued that there is a shift from understanding time in an event-dependent way to an event-independent understanding of time. Early in development, very young children are unable to think about locations in time independently of the events that occur at those locations. It is only with development that children begin to have a proper grasp of the distinction between past, present, and future, and represent time as linear and unidirectional. The model assumes that although children aged two to three years may categorize events differently depending on whether they lie in the past or the future, they may not be able to understand that whether an event is in the future or in the past is something that changes as time passes and varies with temporal perspective. Around four to five years, children understand how causality operates in time, and can grasp the systematic relations that obtain between different locations in time, which provides the basis for acquiring the conventional clock and calendar system.

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Section: Stage (C): Linear Event-independent Time (4-5 Years)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of Temporal Concepts: Learning to Locate Events in Time

McCormack¹,

Hoerl

2017

Timing &Amp; Time Perception

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“…But some sentences connected by means of the temporal conjunctions are easier than others, in that the sequential order between the two events/states might be arbitrary as in (9) Before Soren cleaned his boots, he polished his shoes, (Before 2) (10) Mette drank the milk, after she ate the cake, (After 2) or there is a logical order of sequences, as in (11) Before Mette went out, she put on her coat (Before 2) (12) Soren went to bed, after he brushed his teeth (After 2) in which sentences the reversed order would be odd. In sentences in which the order of the two clauses has to be reversed to correspond to event order, comprehension is greatly facilitated if there is a logical connection between the two clauses (French & Brown 1977, Kavanaugh 1979, Trosborg 1980.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Clark 1970, Ferreiro & Sinclair 1971, Coker & Legum 1975, French & Brown 1977. Children tend to rely on an order of mention strategy interpreting the sentence as if what is mentioned first is also what happens first.…”

Section: Temporally Related Sentencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reversibility and the acquisition of complex syntactic structures in 3- to 7-year-old children

Trosborg

1982

First Language

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In recent years the role of general cognitive development in language acquisition has been stressed (e.g. Piaget, Sinclair). However, most often this relationship is implied, rather than empirically verified. This paper provides data for both linguistic and cognitive functioning in the same children. It is concerned with the acquisition of active/passive sentences (synonymy judgement) and temporally, causally, and conditionally related sequences in relation to 'reversal skills'.Ability to relate active and passive sentences in order to judge meaning equivalence and the ability to reverse clause order to correspond with event order and/or cause-effect is dependent on the child's ability to perform reversible operations as involved in conservation tasks. The concept of time is supposed to be spatial in origin (seriation tasks), and an understanding of relational time is dependent on the ability to decentre and coordinate (picture arrangement task). Also conditionals require reversible transformations and coordination of several internal structures.Only at the age from 5 to 7 and onwards can children comprehend the complex structures in question, if they have to rely on syntactic information alone for their interpretation, but if the child can rely on his knowledge of the world, he can begin to interpret/produce these structures already at the age of 3, that is before he has achieved reversible operations.

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“…It was clear from our informal observations of subordinators that the semantic content of what was talked about (temporal or causal) had a much stronger impact on adverbial clause placement than the child's age. Previous findings indicate that young children have a better understanding of temporal adverbial clauses (using connectives such as before and after) in which the order of mention is the same as the order of events (Clark, 1971;French & Brown, 1977;Trosborg, 1982). However, recent findings by Blything and colleagues (2015) using an animation task indicate that while the order of mention effect was evident for the connective before it was not evident for sentences containing after.…”

Section: Clause Typesmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…In addition, in relation to adverbial clauses research shows that young children have greater difficulty, processing those in which the order of presentation is different from the order in which the events occurred (Clark, 1971;French & Brown, 1977;Trosborg, 1982). For these reasons, we might anticipate that we will see some variability in the age at which particular clause constructions are observed in narrative samples.…”

Section: Measures Of Syntactic Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Growth in syntactic complexity between 4 years and adulthood: evidence from a narrative task

Frizelle¹,

Thompson²,

McDonald³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Studies examining productive syntax have used varying elicitation methods and have tended to focus on either young children or adolescents/adults, so we lack an account of syntactic development throughout middle childhood. We describe here the results of an analysis of clause complexity in narratives produced by 354 speakers aged from 4 years to adulthood using the Expressive, Receptive and Recall of Narrative Instrument (ERRNI). We show that the number of clauses per utterance increased steadily through this age range. However the distribution of clause types depended on which of two stories was narrated, even though both stories were designed to have a similar story structure. In addition, clausal complexity was remarkably similar regardless of whether the speaker described a narrative from pictures, or whether the same narrative was recalled from memory. Finally, our findings with the youngest children showed that the task of generating a narrative from pictures may underestimate syntactic competence in those aged below 5 years.

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Comprehension of before and after in logical and arbitrary sequences

Cited by 59 publications

References 6 publications

The Development of Temporal Concepts: Learning to Locate Events in Time

The Development of Temporal Concepts: Learning to Locate Events in Time

Reversibility and the acquisition of complex syntactic structures in 3- to 7-year-old children

Growth in syntactic complexity between 4 years and adulthood: evidence from a narrative task

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