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The Role of Information Distribution and Executive Functioning in Child Sentence Processing-Comparison Between English-learning and Korean-learning Children-

Abstract

Preschool-aged children show unique interpretation errors in processing a simple sentence unlike their adult counterparts. These errors appeared related to children's reliance on the information that occurs early in a sentence (verb in English &. case-marker in Korean). The present study examined whether such processing difficulty can be attributed to the child's executive functioning(EF) abilities. Children aged 4-5 years from the US and Korea acted out sentences that varied in the distribution of information (i.e., verb/case-marker information appearing at the beginning or the end). These children also completed an EF task to see if their EF abilities relate to their sentence interpretation error rates. The results demonstrated that both groups of children were less likely to commit to interpretation errors when the error-inducing source of information was delayed to the end of the sentence, suggesting that the child's difficulty in sentence processing relate to their EF abilities.

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Submission Date
2009-10-15
Revised Date
2009-11-16
Accepted Date
2009-11-16

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