TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hilton, Matt
A1  - Twomey, Katherine Elizabeth
A1  - Westermann, Gert
T1  - Taking their eye off the ball
BT  - how shyness affects children’s attention during word learning
JF  - Journal of experimental child psychology
N2  - The current study tests the hypothesis that shy children’s reduced word learning is partly due to an effect of shyness on attention during object labeling. A sample of 20- and 26-month-old children (N = 32) took part in a looking-while-listening task in which they saw sets of familiar and novel objects while hearing familiar or novel labels. Overall, children increased attention to familiar objects when hearing their labels, and they divided their attention equally between the target and competitors when hearing novel labels. Critically, shyness reduced attention to the target object regardless of whether the heard label was novel or familiar. When children’s retention of the novel word–object mappings was tested after a delay, it was found that children who showed increased attention to novel objects during labeling showed better retention. Taken together, these findings suggest that shyer children perform less well than their less shy peers on measures of word learning because their attention to the target object is dampened. Thus, this work presents evidence that shyness modulates the low-level processes of visual attention that unfold during word learning.
KW  - Word learning
KW  - Shyness
KW  - Language development
KW  - Temperament
KW  - Individual differences
KW  - Referent Selection
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2019.01.023
SN  - 0022-0965
SN  - 1096-0457
VL  - 183
SP  - 134
EP  - 145
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - New York
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bartha-Doering, Lisa
A1  - Alexopoulos, Johanna
A1  - Giordano, Vito
A1  - Stelzer, Lisa
A1  - Kainz, Theresa
A1  - Benavides-Varela, Silvia
A1  - Wartenburger, Isabell
A1  - Klebermass-Schrehof, Katrin
A1  - Olischar, Monika
A1  - Seidl, Rainer Otis
A1  - Berger, Angelika
T1  - Absence of neural speech discrimination in preterm infants at term-equivalent age
JF  - Developmental cognitive neuroscience : a journal for cognitive, affective and social developmental neuroscience
N2  - Children born preterm are at higher risk to develop language deficits. Auditory speech discrimination deficits may be early signs for language developmental problems. The present study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to investigate neural speech discrimination in 15 preterm infants at term-equivalent age compared to 15 full term neonates. The full term group revealed a significantly greater hemodynamic response to forward compared to backward speech within the left hemisphere extending from superior temporal to inferior parietal and middle and inferior frontal areas. In contrast, the preterm group did not show differences in their hemodynamic responses during forward versus backward speech, thus, they did not discriminate speech from nonspeech. Groups differed significantly in their responses to forward speech, whereas they did not differ in their responses to backward speech. The significant differences between groups point to an altered development of the functional network underlying language acquisition in preterm infants as early as in term-equivalent age.
KW  - Near-infrared spectroscopy
KW  - Preterm birth
KW  - Newborn infants
KW  - Language development
KW  - Speech discrimination
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2019.100679
SN  - 1878-9293
SN  - 1878-9307
VL  - 39
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Obrig, Hellmuth
A1  - Mock, Julia
A1  - Stephan, Franziska
A1  - Richter, Maria
A1  - Vignotto, Micol
A1  - Rossi, Sonja
T1  - Impact of associative word learning on phonotactic processing in 6-month-old infants: A combined EEG and fNIRS study
JF  - Developmental cognitive neuroscience : a journal for cognitive, affective and social developmental neuroscience
KW  - fNIRS
KW  - Phonotactics
KW  - Associative training
KW  - Language development
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2016.09.001
SN  - 1878-9293
SN  - 1878-9307
VL  - 25
SP  - 185
EP  - 197
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  -