TY - GEN A1 - Marimon Tarter, Mireia A1 - Hofmann, Andrea A1 - Veríssimo, Joao Marques A1 - Männel, Claudia A1 - Friederici, Angela Dorkas A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - Children’s Learning of Non-adjacent Dependencies Using a Web-Based Computer Game Setting T2 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Infants show impressive speech decoding abilities and detect acoustic regularities that highlight the syntactic relations of a language, often coded via non-adjacent dependencies (NADs, e.g., is singing). It has been claimed that infants learn NADs implicitly and associatively through passive listening and that there is a shift from effortless associative learning to a more controlled learning of NADs after the age of 2 years, potentially driven by the maturation of the prefrontal cortex. To investigate if older children are able to learn NADs, Lammertink et al. (2019) recently developed a word-monitoring serial reaction time (SRT) task and could show that 6–11-year-old children learned the NADs, as their reaction times (RTs) increased then they were presented with violated NADs. In the current study we adapted their experimental paradigm and tested NAD learning in a younger group of 52 children between the age of 4–8 years in a remote, web-based, game-like setting (whack-a-mole). Children were exposed to Italian phrases containing NADs and had to monitor the occurrence of a target syllable, which was the second element of the NAD. After exposure, children did a “Stem Completion” task in which they were presented with the first element of the NAD and had to choose the second element of the NAD to complete the stimuli. Our findings show that, despite large variability in the data, children aged 4–8 years are sensitive to NADs; they show the expected differences in r RTs in the SRT task and could transfer the NAD-rule in the Stem Completion task. We discuss these results with respect to the development of NAD dependency learning in childhood and the practical impact and limitations of collecting these data in a web-based setting. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 766 KW - non-adjacent dependencies KW - rule learning KW - web-based KW - implicit learning KW - serial reaction time (SRT) task KW - SRT Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-550834 SN - 1866-8364 VL - 12 SP - 1 EP - 15 PB - Universitätsverlag Potsdam CY - Potsdam ER - TY - GEN A1 - Bosch, Sina A1 - Veríssimo, Joao Marques A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Inflectional morphology in bilingual language processing BT - an age-of-acquisition study T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - This study addresses the question of how age of acquisition (AoA) affects grammatical processing, specifically with respect to inflectional morphology, in bilinguals. We examined experimental data of more than 100 participants from the Russian/German community in Berlin, all of whom acquired Russian from birth and German at different ages. Using the cross-modal lexical priming technique, we investigated stem allomorphs of German verbs that encode multiple morphosyntactic features. The results revealed a striking AoA modulation of observed priming patterns, indicating efficient access to morphosyntactic features for early AoAs and a gradual decline with increasing AoAs. In addition, we found a discontinuity in the function relating AoA to morphosyntactic feature access, suggesting a sensitive period for the development of morphosyntax. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 569 KW - critical-period KW - 2nd-language grammar KW - adjectives KW - lexicon KW - L1 KW - L2 Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-433371 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 569 SP - 339 EP - 360 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Veríssimo, Joao Marques A1 - Heyer, Vera A1 - Jacob, Gunnar A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Selective effects of age of acquisition on morphological priming BT - evidence for a sensitive period T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Is there an ideal time window for language acquisition after which nativelike representation and processing are unattainable? Although this question has been heavily debated, no consensus has been reached. Here, we present evidence for a sensitive period in language development and show that it is specific to grammar. We conducted a masked priming task with a group of Turkish-German bilinguals and examined age of acquisition (AoA) effects on the processing of complex words. We compared a subtle but meaningful linguistic contrast, that between grammatical inflection and lexical-based derivation. The results showed a highly selective AoA effect on inflectional (but not derivational) priming. In addition, the effect displayed a discontinuity indicative of a sensitive period: Priming from inflected forms was nativelike when acquisition started before the age of 5 but declined with increasing AoA. We conclude that the acquisition of morphological rules expressing morphosyntactic properties is constrained by maturational factors. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 486 KW - visual word recognition KW - 2nd-language acquisition KW - maturational constraints KW - language-acquisition KW - 2nd langauge KW - speech KW - experience KW - perception KW - english Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-412611 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 486 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Farhy, Yael A1 - Veríssimo, Joao Marques A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Universal and particular in morphological processing BT - evidence from Hebrew T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Do properties of individual languages shape the mechanisms by which they are processed? By virtue of their non-concatenative morphological structure, the recognition of complex words in Semitic languages has been argued to rely strongly on morphological information and on decomposition into root and pattern constituents. Here, we report results from a masked priming experiment in Hebrew in which we contrasted verb forms belonging to two morphological classes, Paal and Piel, which display similar properties, but crucially differ on whether they are extended to novel verbs. Verbs from the open-class Piel elicited familiar root priming effects, but verbs from the closed-class Paal did not. Our findings indicate that, similarly to other (e.g., Indo-European) languages, down-to-the-root decomposition in Hebrew does not apply to stems of non-productive verbal classes. We conclude that the Semitic word processor is less unique than previously thought: Although it operates on morphological units that are combined in a non-linear way, it engages the same universal mechanisms of storage and computation as those seen in other languages. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 468 KW - language universals KW - morphology KW - priming KW - Semitic Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-412541 EP - 468 ER -