@article{BrandtKobeleHoehle2014,
  author    = {Brandt-Kobele, Oda-Christina and H{\"o}hle, Barbara},
  title     = {The detection of subject-verb agreement violations by German-speaking children: An eye-tracking study},
  series = {Lingua : international review of general linguistics},
  volume    = {144},
  journal   = {Lingua : international review of general linguistics},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
  address   = {Amsterdam},
  issn      = {0024-3841},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.lingua.2013.12.008},
  pages     = {7 -- 20},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {This study examines the processing of sentences with and without subject verb agreement violations in German-speaking children at three and five years of age. An eye-tracking experiment was conducted to measure whether children's looking behavior was influenced by the grammaticality of the test sentences. The older group of children turned their gaze faster towards a target picture and looked longer at it when the object noun referring to the target was presented in a grammatical sentence with subject verb agreement compared to when the object noun was presented in a sentence in which an agreement violation occurred. The younger group of children displayed less conclusive results, with a tendency to look longer but not faster towards the target picture in the grammatical compared to the ungrammatical condition. This is the first experimental evidence that German-speaking five-year old children are sensitive to subject verb agreement and violations thereof. Our results additionally substantiate that the eye-tracking paradigm is suitable to examine children's sensitivity to subtle grammatical violations.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{BrandtKobeleHoehle2010,
  author    = {Brandt-Kobele, Oda-Christina and H{\"o}hle, Barbara},
  title     = {What asymmetries within comprehension reveal about asymmetries between comprehension and production : the case of verb inflection in language acquisition},
  issn      = {0024-3841},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.lingua.2010.02.008},
  year      = {2010},
  abstract  = {Two recent studies (Johnson et al., 2005; Perez-Leroux, 2006) found that English- and Spanish-learning children do not show the ability to use verb inflection as a cue to subject number before the age of 5 to 6 years. These findings suggest an asymmetric development as verb inflections are usually correctly produced before this age. In the present study we investigated whether German 3- to 4-year-olds take advantage of the information provided by the verb inflection in sentence comprehension. In a first study, children's looking behavior at two pictures was measured after presentation of a sentence in which the subject number was coded only by the verb inflection. The results from this study suggest that children's looks reflect correct interpretation of the sentences and thus show their ability to make use of verb inflection. In a second experiment, preferential looking was combined with an additional task in which the children had to point to the matching picture. in this case children did not perform above chance level. Our results underline the relevance that specific task demands have on the performance of children in comprehension testing. These have to be accounted for when interpreting findings on production and comprehension asymmetries in language acquisition.},
  language  = {en}
}