Children's Comprehension of Causal Constructions with "Because" and "So"

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.Wiley, Society for Research in Child Development are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Child Development This content downloaded from 128.163.BEBOUT, L. J.; SEGALOWITZ, S. J.; and WMTE, G. J. Children's Comprehension of Causal Constructions with "Because" and "So." CmLD DDEVELOPMENT, 1980, 51, 565-568. Complex sentences with the causal conjunction because can describe 2 events either in "real-world" causeeffect order ("Because X, Y," "X, so Y") or in reversed order ("Y because X"). Although the reversed pattern is as frequent or more frequent in spoken English, it was hypothesized that young children would have more trouble interpreting instructions given in "Y because X" form than the "Because X, Y." We found that children in grade 1 do systematically misinterpret the reversed-

Quantitative Hardware Stages That Constrain Language Development

“…For example, but appears in the 3rd year in children's spontaneous speech [Bates, 1976;Bloom et al" 1980;French and Nelson, 1985], yet experimental studies find it to be a much later acquisition: age 9 in Hutson and Shub [1975] and 11-12 in Katz and Brent [ 1968]. Similarly, because appears in the 3rd year in children's spontaneous speech [Bloom et al, 1980], yet correct per formance with because occurs much later in experimental studies, though there is consid erable variation among their norms as well: 5-6 years in Emerson [1979] and some of the performances reported by Corrigan [1975], 7-8 years in Emerson and Gekoski [1980] and Kuhn and Phelps [1976], and 9-10 years or older in Bebout et al [1980], D'Arcais [1978], and Katz and Brent [1968].…”

Because in children's discourse

“…Bamberg and Damrad-Frye (in press) found that causal connectives in 9-year-old children's narratives are mainly used to justify the speaker's perspective when an evaluative claim is produced. Some experimental studies (Bebout, Segalowitz, & White, 1980;Emerson, 1979;Flores D'Arcais, 1978) showed that children failed to understand the temporal meaning involved in the causal because even at 6 to 7 years of age. Donaldson (1986), in an attempt to differentiate the causal meaning and the temporal direction implied by because, found that the former use, but not the latter, can be understood by preschool children.…”

Language intervention for causal adverbial production and science content learning

“…However, this task just as clearly places demands on language production through the requirement for a child to produce the second clause. Results from more distinctly receptive tasks, such as actout tasks, do generally appear to align with sentence completion results, but, unfortunately, a considerable bulk of the literature in this area involves claims that children lack comprehension on the basis of errors in production during sentence completion (Bebout et al, 1980).…”

“…Other researchers in this tradition found similarly late acquisition of causal concepts. Children engaged in act-out or picture selection tasks frequently act out events in the order they are mentioned, which results in a reversed order of events for clauses joined by because (Bebout, Segalowitz, & White, 1980Emerson & Gekoski, 1980). In both spoken and written language, children may exhibit inconsistent performance when asked to complete a causal sentence by adding a clause or selecting the appropriate conjunction (French, 1988).…”

“…In addition to the gap in performance accuracy between unfamiliar and familiar content, there are other factors that may influence performance within tasks requiring comprehension or production of causal adverbial constructions. First, children exhibit superior performance when provided with predictable causal relationships (Bebout et al, 1980). Second, reducing working memory load may support accurate performance in tasks requiring comprehension or production of adverbials given evidence that tasks involving adverbials may strain working memory, though this evidence is strongest for temporal adverbials (Blything, Davies, & Cain, 2015.…”