@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}
}
@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}
}
@phdthesis{BrandtKobele2014,
  author    = {Brandt-Kobele, Oda-Christina},
  title     = {Comprehension of verb inflection in German-speaking children},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-216-2},
  issn      = {1869-3822},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-62046},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {xx, 325},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {Previous studies on the acquisition of verb inflection in normally developing children have revealed an astonishing pattern: children use correctly inflected verbs in their own speech but fail to make use of verb inflections when comprehending sentences uttered by others. Thus, a three-year old might well be able to say something like 'The cat sleeps on the bed', but fails to understand that the same sentence, when uttered by another person, refers to only one sleeping cat but not more than one. The previous studies that have examined children's comprehension of verb inflections have employed a variant of a picture selection task in which the child was asked to explicitly indicate (via pointing) what semantic meaning she had inferred from the test sentence. Recent research on other linguistic structures, such as pronouns or focus particles, has indicated that earlier comprehension abilities can be found when methods are used that do not require an explicit reaction, like preferential looking tasks. This dissertation aimed to examine whether children are truly not able to understand the connection the the verb form and the meaning of the sentence subject until the age of five years or whether earlier comprehension can be found when a different measure, preferential looking, is used. Additionally, children's processing of subject-verb agreement violations was examined. The three experiments of this thesis that examined children's comprehension of verb inflections revealed the following: German-speaking three- to four-year old children looked more to a picture showing one actor when hearing a sentence with a singular inflected verb but only when their eye gaze was tracked and they did not have to perform a picture selection task. When they were asked to point to the matching picture, they performed at chance-level. This pattern indicates asymmetries in children's language performance even within the receptive modality. The fourth experiment examined sensitivity to subject-verb agreement violations and did not reveal evidence for sensitivity toward agreement violations in three- and four-year old children, but only found that children's looking patterns were influenced by the grammatical violations at the age of five. The results from these experiments are discussed in relation to the existence of a production-comprehension asymmetry in the use of verb inflections and children's underlying grammatical knowledge.},
  language  = {en}
}