Abstract

Successful mastery of a language should reveal itself in both comprehension and production and they are closely linked in language development. On the one hand, speech perception is a common phenomenon during the language comprehension and the efficiency of the speech processing in comprehension is a big puzzle in speech perception. On the other hand, in the context of production there are a number of possibilities for arriving at a comprehensible output and productive efficiency also affects children’s syntactic development. So the aim of the present study is to investigate the effects of the receptive sensitivity and the productive efficiency on the development of syntax among 3-6 years old children. A total of 160 participants divided into 8 groups (Chinese-speaking children in G1-G4/English-speaking children in G5-G8) were tested with between-participants variables: Receptive language age (3-year-olds/4-year-olds/5-year-olds/6-year-olds) in two experiments to investigate the effects of receptive sensitivity and productive efficiency on their syntactic development. 

Keywords: receptive sensitivity; productive efficiency; receptive language age; syntactic development

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature review-1

2.1 Receptive Sensitivity-1

2.2 Productive Efficiency-2

2.2.1 Abstract Structural Priming Effect-4

2.2.2 Lexical Boost-5

3. Method-6

3.1 Participants-6

3.2 Procedures-7

3.2.1 Experiment 1 Effects of Receptive Sensitivity on the Development of Syntax among 3-6 Years Old Children-7

3.2.1.1 Experiment 1a Syntactic Awareness-7

3.2.1.2 Experiment 1b Receptive Language Skills-8

3.2.1.3 Results & Discussion-9

3.2.2 Experiment 2 Effects of Productive Efficiency on the Development of Syntax among 3-6 Years Old Children-9

3.2.2.1 Experiment 2a Abstract Structural Priming Effect-10

3.2.2.2 Experiment 2b Lexical Boost-11

3.2.2.3 Results & Discussion-14

3.3 Discussion-14

4. Appendix-15

4.1 Appendix 1-15

4.2 Appendix 2-15

References-16