No abstract

Demonstrative words are one of the most important ways of establishing reference in conversation. This work describes Spanish-speaking children’s demonstrative production between ages 2 to 10 using data from the CHILDES corpora. Results indicate that children feature all demonstratives in their lexicon – however, the distal term is scarce throughout development. Moreover, patterns of demonstrative use are not adult-like at age 10. We compare adult and child data to conclude that children’s development of demonstrative production is largely protracted. Adult use of the distal demonstrative is higher than in young children, although both older children and adults use the medial term ese more than any other demonstratives. In contrast, younger children use proximals relatively more frequently than older children and adults. Suggestions for future research and theoretical implications for the Spanish demonstrative system are discussed.

Some of the ‘best practice’ approaches to ensuring reproducibility of research can be difficult to implement in the developmental and clinical domains, where sample sizes and session lengths are constrained by the practicalities of recruitment and testing. For this reason, an important area of improvement to target is the reliability of measurement. Here we demonstrate that best–worst scaling (BWS) provides a superior alternative to Likert ratings for measuring children’s subjective impressions. Seventy-three children aged 5–6 years rated the trustworthiness of faces using either Likert ratings or BWS over two sessions. Individual children’s ratings in the BWS condition were significantly more consistent from session 1 to session 2 than those in the Likert condition, a finding we also replicate with a large adult sample (N = 72). BWS also produced more reliable ratings at the group level than Likert ratings in the child sample. These findings indicate that BWS is a developmentally appropriate response format that can deliver substantial improvements in reliability of measurement, which can increase our confidence in the robustness of findings with children.

Existe un creciente acuerdo científico sobre el hecho de que en personas con Trastorno del Espectro Autista (TEA) se identifican alteraciones neurológicas de considerable magnitud que tienen una base genética que se expresa en el desarrollo neuronal. Como consecuencia de esto se han identificado déficits en funciones cognitivas complejas en esta población, si bien los resultados hasta el momento son inconsistentes. El objetivo de nuestro trabajo ha sido la caracterización neuropsicológica de una población con TEA. Para ello, a una muestra de 18 niños diagnosticados con TEA, le hemos administrado una batería neuropsicológica amplia destinada a la evaluación de la atención y de las funciones ejecutivas. Los resultados obtenidos por el grupo experimental fueron contrastados con los alcanzados por una muestra de 18 niños con desarrollo típico. En ellos se muestra como el grupo con TEA tiene un déficit generalizado en atención y funciones ejecutivas, excepto en fluidez verbal con claves semánticas, planificación y flexibilidad cognitiva. Se requiere más investigación para clarificar la naturaleza de estos hallazgos.