Introduction. According to the lexical restructuring model, the development of vocabulary initiates the development of phonological representations. Therefore, it can be predicted that children with ...developed vocabulary will possess very specific phonological representations of words. Aim. The aim of this research was to determine the significance of phonological awareness, verbal working memory, and rapid automatic naming as indicators of the development of expressive and receptive vocabulary in preschool children. Method. The research included 86 children of typical development. For the assessment of phonological awareness, verbal working memory, rapid automatic naming, expressive and receptive vocabulary, the subtests of Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals -Fourth Edition battery were used. Results. The results showed that the model containing age, phonological awareness, verbal working memory, and rapid automatic naming predicted 51% of the achievement variance on expressive vocabulary tasks (F = 7.73, df1 = 2, df2 = 75, p < .001) and 38% of the achievement variance on receptive vocabulary tasks (F = 4.65, df1 = 2, df2 = 75, p < .001). In the final model, only the tasks of phoneme identification, phoneme substitution, and rapid automatic naming (p < .05) stood out as statistically significant indicators of expressive vocabulary. On the other hand, statistically significant indicators of receptive vocabulary included analysis and synthesis of phonemes, verbal working memory, and rapid automatic naming (p < .05). Conclusion. The results showed that age, phonological awareness, verbal working memory, and rapid automatic naming significantly contributed to vocabulary development in children before reading acquisition.
The aim of this study was to analyze the characteristics of reading and the orthographic level of handwriting in children with dysgraphic handwriting and children with typical development in the ...early grades of primary school. The research sample consisted of 94 children in the 3rd and 4th grades of primary school. The Handwriting Dysgraphia Assessment Test was used to assess the level of handwriting dysgraphia, while the analysis of the orhographic level of handwriting involved the assessment of the frequency and type of orthographic errors. The Three-Dimensional Reading Test was used in the second stage of research. Findings show the overall prevalence of handwriting dysgraphia in 13.8% of children, and a greater prevalence in boys (69.1%) relative to girls (30.9%). In the group of children with dysgraphic handwriting, 53.8% were categorized as having "graphomotor dysgraphia", while 46.2% were categorized as having "language dysgraphia". The study results suggest that there are no statistically significant differences between 3rd and 4th grade students in the application of orthographic rules to all writing tasks (t=1,33; df=11; p=0,17). Children with dysgraphic handwriting achieved poorer results on all writing tasks relative to children with typical development. A comparison of results of children with dysgraphic handwriting and children with typical development did not reveal statistically significant differences in reading speed tasks (t=1,10; df=18; p=0,32), number of mistakes (t=0,73; df=21; p=0,46), and reading comprehension (t=0,66; df=14; p=0,51). Increasing awareness of aspects of writing and reading where difficulties may occur, but also of aspects that represent children's developmental strengths, along with an effective assessment of language and cognitive abilities, would significantly improve the quality of the teaching process.
Cilj istraživanja je utvrđivanje nivoa razvijenosti elemenata fono-loške svesnosti i uzajamnog odnosa tih elemenata kod dece tipi-čnog razvoja. Istraživanjem je obuhvaćeno 60-oro dece, oba pola ...(51.6% dečaka i 48.4% devojčica), uzrasta od šest (33.3%), sedam (38.3%) i osam (28.3%) godina. Za procenu fonološke svesnosti primenjen je revidirani FONT test, koji obuhvata osam tipova za-dataka. Rezultati pokazuju generalno visoko postignuće dece na svim tipovima zadataka za procenu fonološke svesnosti (u rasponu od 73.3% do 90.8% uspešnosti). Međutim, moguće je diferencira-ti relativno lakše zadatke (spajanje slogova, prepoznavanje rime, slogovna segmentacija i identifikovanje početnog fonema) od re-lativno težih zadataka (identifikovanje završnog fonema, fonemska segmentacija, fonemska supstitucija početnog fonema i eliminacija početnog fonema). Teži tipovi zadataka su pokazali i međusobno snažniji intenzitet korelacije, dok su lakši tipovi zadataka slabije povezani sa ostalim zadacima u okviru testa (zbog suženog opse-ga raspona vrednosti, odnosno vrlo visokih prosečnih postignuća dece). Uzrasne razlike među decom su utvrđene samo na težim tipovima zadataka, dok su na lakšim zadacima već i šestogodiš-njaci ostvarili postignuće kao i deca uzrasta sedam i osam godina. Rezultati su pokazali da se fonološke sposobnosti razvijaju i stiču do uzrasta od sedam godina. Pol, kao i interakcija pola i uzrasta, nisu predstavljali značajan izvor razlika u postignuću dece na za-dacima fonološke svesnosti. Dobijeni nalazi sugerišu da je prilikom ispitivanja fonološke svesnosti kod dece tipičnog razvoja, već na uzrastu od šest godina dovoljno meriti samo postignuće na četiri tipa zadataka, koji su u istraživanju identifikovani kao teži.
The aim of this research is to determine the characteristics of storytelling in preschool children. The study included 60 children, aged four, five and six years. The characteristics of the narration ...of a story on the macrolinguistic and microlinguistic plane were assessed by applying the Comic story task (Kostić, Vladisavljević & Popović, 1983). The results of the macrolinguistic structure of storytelling showed that focus in four and five-year-olds is in describing the introductory event and the activities leading to a goal. In contrast, with six-year-old children story patterns exist at a cognitive level, since the elements of the comic story are consistently described in just slightly less than half of the them. The results of the microlinguistic structure of storytelling showed that the four-year-olds stories predominantly contain simple sentences, while simple-extended and dependent-complex syntactic constructions dominate in the stories of five-year-olds. In contrast, there is a tendency in six-year-olds to use complex (consecutive, dependent) sentences. Storytelling in children develops gradually over the preschool period, so instructions for storytelling is important for all children, especially for those at risk for or with language learning impairments.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Background/Aim. There is a small body of literature on the influence of perinatal hypoxia (PH) on language outcomes at a later age. Correspondingly, there are no studies on the influence of PH on the ...extent and severity of language deficits in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). The aim of this study was to examine the differences in lexical-semantic (LS) abilities in DLD children with the presence of PH (DLDph) and DLD children without any neurological risk factors (DLDwnrf). Methods. The study sample consisted of 96 children aged 5 to 8 years, divided into three groups: 25 children in the DLDph group, 30 children in the DLDwnrf group, and 41 typically developing (TD) peers. To compare age-related differences, an additional categorical variable was formed with two age groups ? preschool and school-age children (5?6 and 7?8 years, respectively). LS abilities were investigated with specific measures for assessing the expressive vocabulary (EV) size, semantic processing (SP) skills, and lexical productivity (LPr). To assess LPr, measure for calculating lexical diversity from speech sample was applied. Results. Significant differences were observed between DLDph and DLDwnrf children on the SP assessment (p < 0.05) but not on the EV (p = 0.350) and LPr (p = 0.118) assessment. However, a detailed analysis of developmental tendencies between preschool and early school-age children showed that DLDph children progressed significantly only in the domain of EV (p < 0.01), while DLDwnrf children progressed significantly in the domain of EV and SP skils (p < 0.001). Regarding LPr developmental tendencies, no significant progress was observed in either of the DLD groups. Conclusion. In DLDph children, a more severe extent of LS deficit in the area of SP abilities can be related to PH. Similarly, PH can contribute to slower progress in a wider spectrum of LS abilities.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The development of the child's speech sound articulation ability and phonological awareness goes through different stages during the child's preschool years. The aim of our research was to determine ...the articulation abilities and phonological awareness level in children with typical development. Our sample comprised 195 children aged five to seven. Speech sound articulation abilities and phonological awareness were assessed by means of the Global Test of Articulation and the FONT Phonological Awareness Test. The research results indicate that, depending on age, 42% to 78.3% of children are able to articulate clearly all 30 sounds of the Serbian language. An analysis of the Phonological Awareness Test results shows children performed best in the following tasks: syllable blending (99.1%), syllable segmentation (85%) and initial phoneme identification (86.1%), while they were least successful in the task of initial phoneme deletion (48.8%). Results have shown that children's success in most tasks within the framework of the elements of phonological awareness assessed - such as initial phoneme identification, rhyme recognition, phoneme segmentation, final phoneme identification, initial phoneme deletion and phoneme substitution (initial phoneme) - increases with children's age. The development of final phoneme identification, initial phoneme deletion and phoneme substitution (initial phoneme) abilities continues after children start school, as shown by data on the success rate among seven-year-olds. In view of the fact that phonological awareness plays an important role in the development and acquisition of reading ability, when working with preschool-age children particular attention should be devoted to tasks that stimulate the development of phonological awareness.
The aim of the research is to identify phonological abilities – voice analysis and word synthesis – and elements of phonological awareness in preschool children. The sample consisted of 85 children ...(42 boys and 43 girls), ages 6-7. The Test of the Speech Sound Analysis and Word Synthesis (Radičević & Marinković, 1993) was used to assess the ability of the speech sound analysis and synthesis, while the Test for Assessing Phonological Awareness – FONT Test (Subotić, 2011) was used to assess the respondents’ phonological awareness. The results of the research showed that, in six out of eight tasks assessing the elements of phonological awareness, the children demonstrated an average and above average development of phonological abilities: syllable merging, syllabic segmentation, identifying the initial phoneme, identifying rhyme, phonemic segmentation, and identifying the final phoneme, while the lowest achievement was observed in the tasks of eliminating the initial phoneme and phonemic substitution of the initial phoneme. No statistically significant differences were found between boys and girls in their achievement on the FONT test tasks (p> 0.05). By further analyzing the results, and based on the results of average achievement, we found that the children constituting the research sample were more successful in the tasks of synthesizing monosyllabic and two-syllable words, than in the analysis of monosyllabic and two-syllable words. Differences in achievement between boys and girls regarding the speech sound analysis and synthesis tasks were identified in the tasks involving the speech sound synthesis (p <0.05).
The research goal was to identify the characteristics of grammar comprehension abilities in preschool children and to investigate whether certain factors impact the level of acquisition of grammar ...knowledge among these children. The research was conducted on a sample of 102 children (56 boys and 46 girls), age 4-6. For the purpose of this research, the children were grouped in four groups, with a five-month age interval among them. The Test for the Reception of Grammar (TROG) was used for assessing the acquisition of grammar knowledge. The research results indicate that there are statistically significant differences in the level of acquisition of grammatical abilities relative to children’s age (F (3.98)=5.48; p=0.002; η2=0.14). By analysing the obtained data, we identified statistically significant differences in the achievement on applied tasks between the youngest group of children and other groups, where older children had higher scores (p<0.05). On the other hand, no statistically significant differences were identified between boys and girls in terms of achievement (t (100)=-0.968; p=0.335; d=0.22). Contrary to our expectations, no statistically significant differences were observed in the summary score on TROG test relative to mothers’ level of education. The research results show that statistically significant differences are present only in the level of achievement of the children whose mothers have high school or college education, to the advantage of mothers with college education (p=0.009). More significant results were obtained in the same variable, where fathers’ education is viewed as an impact (F(3.98)=2.90, p=0.039, η2=0.081).
Predškolski uzrast predstavlja period suštinskih promena u sposobnostima dece da eksplicitno rasuđuju o mentalnim stanjima drugih. Cilj istraživanja je bio da se utvrdi odnos između teorije uma, ...radne memorije i jezičkih sposobnosti kod dece tipičnog razvoja, uzrasta od četiri do osam godina. Za procenu navedenih sposobnosti korišćeni su merni instrumenti: Zadatak lažnog verovanja „Sanja i Ana”, Raspon brojeva unazad, Test verbalnog pamćenja, Test brzine odlučivanja, Gramatika mališana i FONT test. Rezultati istraživanja su ukazali na statistički značajne korelacije između teorije uma, verbalnog pamćenja, kao i nekih aspekata jezičkih sposobnosti. Ipak, kao statistički značajan pokazatelj postignuća na zadacima teorije uma izdvaja se samo verbalno pamćenje (p < .05) koje zajedno sa verbalnom radnom memorijom predviđa 26% varijanse postignuća u usvojenosti teorije uma prvog reda (F = 9.40; df = 2; p = .00) i 15% varijanse postignuća u ukupnom skoru na zadacima procene teorije uma (F = 4.55; df = 2; p = .01). Rezultati istraživanja sugerišu blizak ali intrigantan odnos između teorije uma, egzekutivnih funkcija i jezičkih sposobnosti.
Objectives. Taking into account the positive association observed between lexical abilities and academic performance in children, this research aims to compare the expressive vocabulary skills and ...the organization of the lexical-semantic network in early school-aged children diagnosed with developmental language disorder (DLD) and their typically developing (TD) peers.
Method. The sample included 57 participants (aged 7 and 8 years), 27 children diagnosed with DLD and 30 TD children. The Boston Naming Test and Word Association Task were employed to assess lexical abilities.
Results. The findings revealed that children with DLD produced significantly fewer correct answers and a higher number of errors during the naming task when compared to their typically developing peers. Moreover, children with DLD provided significantly fewer developmentally mature types of associations and significantly more developmentally immature ones.
Conclusion. The study results indicate that children with DLD continue to display significant lexical deficits during school-age, encompassing both vocabulary breadth and depth. These findings highlight the importance of implementing additional intervention approaches that focus on semantic aspects to prevent further language deterioration and mitigate the potential negative impact of lexical impairments on the academic achievements of these children.