How children process over-regularizations: Evidence from event-related brain potentials

Abstract

A B S T R A C TThis study examines the mental processes involved in children's on-line recognition of inflected word forms using event-related potentials (ERPs). Sixty children in three age groups (20 six-to seven-year-olds, 20 eight-to nine-year-olds, 20 eleven-to twelve-year-olds) and 23 adults (tested in a previous study) listened to sentences containing correct or incorrect German noun plural forms. In the two older child groups, as well as in the adult group, over-regularized plural forms elicited brain responses that are characteristic of combinatorial (grammatical) violations. We also found that ERP components associated with language processing change from child to adult with respect to their onsets and their topography. The ERP violation effects obtained for over-regularizations suggest that children (aged eight years and above) and adults employ morphological computation for processing purposes, consistent with dual-mechanism models of inflection. The observed differences between children's and adults' ERP responses are argued to result from children's smaller lexicons and from slower and less efficient processing.

Producing morphologically complex words: An ERP study with children and adults

“…This is unlikely, however, firstly because the experimenter encouraged participants not to change their initial response and secondly because the same pattern obtained in the current study, viz. adult-like offline performance paired with distinct ERP responses for children, has been reported in ERP comprehension studies testing morpho-syntactic and morphological phenomena (Hahne et al, 2004;Clahsen et al, 2007). The latter results have been taken to indicate that despite similar offline performance adult-like comprehension mechanisms take time to develop.…”

What changes in neural oscillations can reveal about developmental cognitive neuroscience: Language development as a case in point

“…Also, LAN was reported for plural violations (i.e. the three dog walked) in 8–12 year olds but not 6–7 year olds (Clahsen et al, 2007). This is unexpected considering that children as young as 3-years demonstrate understanding of plural markers (Kouider et al, 2006) although production of plural markers is still inconsistent (Clark & Nikitina, 2009).…”

“…A P600-like effect is more consistently found for certain morphosyntactic subtypes in children (Atchley et al, 2006; Clahsen et al, 2007; Courteau et al, 2012; Schipke et al, 2011; Silva-Pereyra, Rivera-Gaxiola, et al, 2005). This finding is unexpected given that P600 following morphosyntactic violations is not regularly reported in the adult literature.…”

“…Like adults, LAN indexes morphosyntactic violations in children (Clahsen et al, 2007; Schipke et al, 2011). LAN is not present for all morphosyntax subtypes and for all ages, however.…”

Individual differences and streams of processing

“…Taken together with the longitudinal studies, this suggests that proficiency-related processing changes do not reflect only strengthening and automatizing a single processing routine, as O'Grady's proposal suggests. Instead, L2 morphosyntactic learning in some individuals entails a qualitative change in how the information is processed: there is a shift from memory-based to combinatorial processing (see Clahsen, Lück, & Hahne, 2007 for similar cross-sectional results from child L1 learners).…”