
Judith RispensUniversity of Amsterdam | UVA · ACLC; Dutch linguistics
Judith Rispens
PhD
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77
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Publications (77)
This survey study focused on the strategies that LESLLA teachers in the Netherlands model and train in their classes. A questionnaire was developed aiming at tapping into four different strategy types: metacognitive, social, affective and cognitive strategies. Eighty two LESLLA teachers participated in the study. The study revealed remarkable diffe...
Second language proficiency may be related to first language acquisition (Ganschow & Sparks, 1991), but relatively little is known about the relation between first and second language grammatical proficiency in primary school children who are in their first stages of foreign language learning. This study aims to determine whether differences in Dut...
Introduction
Research indicates that statistical learning plays a role in word learning by enabling the learner to track the co-occurrences between words and their visual referents, a process that is named cross-situational word learning. Word learning is problematic for children with developmental language disorder (DLD), and a deficit in statisti...
Network analysis is a method used to explore the structural relationships between people or organizations, and more recently between psychological constructs. Network analysis is a novel technique that can be used to model psychological constructs that influence language learning as complex systems, with longitudinal data, or cross-sectional data....
Previous studies showed that phonological short-term and working memory spans are related to vocabulary and grammar learning in children learning a second language. Typically, short-term storage, as measured by simple span tasks such as non-word repetition, are connected to vocabulary learning. Grammar learning is generally linked to the working me...
Many studies demonstrate that detecting statistical regularities in linguistic input plays a key role in language acquisition. Yet, it is unclear to what extent statistical learning is involved in more naturalistic settings, when young children have to acquire meaningful grammatical elements. In the present study, we address these points, by invest...
Complex dynamic systems theory (CDST) is becoming an increasingly popular research paradigm to study second language (L2) development and individual differences in L2 learning. CDST researchers have explored a range of different time-intensive methodologies to describe longitudinal changes in L2 developmental trajectories. In contrast, very few res...
Categorization of sensory stimuli is a vital process in understanding the world. In this paper we show that distributional learning plays a role in learning novel object categories in school-aged children. An 11-step continuum was constructed based on two novel animate objects by morphing one object into the other in 11 equal steps. Forty-nine chil...
Since Saffran, Aslin and Newport (1996) showed that infants were sensitive to transitional probabilities between syllables after being exposed to a few minutes of fluent speech, there has been ample research on statistical learning. Word segmentation studies usually test learning by making use of “offline methods” such as forced-choice tasks. Howev...
Research consistently shows that adults engaged in tutored acquisition benefit from explicit instruction in several linguistic domains. For preschool children, it is often assumed that such explicit instruction does not make a difference. In the present study, we investigated whether explicit instruction affected young learners in acquiring a morph...
Several studies have signaled grammatical difficulties in individuals with developmental dyslexia. These difficulties may stem from a phonological deficit, but may alternatively be explained through a domain-general deficit in statistical learning. This study investigates grammar in children with and without dyslexia, and whether phonological memor...
Using an individual differences approach in children with and without dyslexia, this study investigated the hypothesized relationship between statistical learning ability and literacy (reading and spelling) skills. We examined the clinical relevance of statistical learning (serial reaction time and visual statistical learning tasks) by controlling...
The role of motivation and extramural English exposure in explaining individual differences in young English language learners' (YELLs') English performance is unclear. In this study, we hypothesized that different types of extramural English exposure predict YELLs' (Dutch, N = 262, 10 years old, grade 4) oral and written English receptive vocabula...
Many studies suggest that detecting statistical regularities in linguistic input plays a key role in language acquisition. Although statistical learning is not necessarily implicit in nature, it is often defined as learning that happens without awareness. This article investigates whether statistical learning in young children is indeed implicit, a...
Many studies demonstrate that detecting statistical regularities in the linguistic input plays a key role in language acquisition. In the present study, we investigated whether such learning is also involved in acquiring a morpho-syntactic structure that carries meaning. We exposed children to a miniature language in which children had to learn a g...
Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have difficulties acquiring the grammatical rules of their native language. It has been proposed that children’s detection of sequential statistical patterns correlates with grammatical proficiency and hence that a deficit in the detection of these regularities may underlie the difficulties with g...
Visual statistical learning (VSL) has been proposed to underlie literacy development in typically developing (TD) children. A deficit in VSL may thus contribute to the observed problems with written language in children with dyslexia. Interestingly, although many children with developmental language disorder (DLD) exhibit problems with written lang...
Visual statistical learning (VSL) was traditionally tested through offline two-alternative forced choice (2-AFC) questions. More recently, online reaction time (RT) measures and alternative offline question types have been developed to further investigate learning during exposure and more adequately assess individual differences in adults (Siegelma...
Statistical learning (SL) difficulties have been suggested to contribute to the linguistic and non-linguistic problems observed in children with dyslexia. Indeed, studies have demonstrated that children with dyslexia experience problems with SL, but the extent of the problems is unclear. We aimed to examine the performance of children with and with...
Successful language use requires the ability to process nonadjacent dependencies (NADs) that occur in linguistic input. Learning such structural regularities seems therefore crucial for children, and researchers have indeed proposed that language problems in children with developmental language disorder (DLD), especially problems with grammar, are...
While learning language, children unconsciously detect and process structural regularities that reflect (morpho)syntactic rules of language. This mechanism is referred to as statistical learning (SL). A link between SL and children’s knowledge of (morpho)syntactic rules (i.e. grammar) has been proposed. While intuitively such a link may be evident,...
The present study investigated the hypothesized relationship between statistical learning (SL) ability and literacy skills by adopting an individual differences approach in children with and without dyslexia. We analyzed both reading and spelling performance and used two SL measures that have previously been linked to literacy attainment (serial re...
A common assumption is that children learn a language implicitly and without conscious awareness of form and grammar, but this assumption has virtually never been tested experimentally. We propose a novel experimental method to examine if children’s ability to acquire linguistic regularities relates to awareness of these regularities. Traditional m...
Gifted children are described as very talented children who achieve more than their age mates in one or more domains (Steiner and Carr in Educ Psychol Rev 15(3):215–246, 2003). These children potentially share a cognitive advantage enabling them to excel in language, but also in other domains. In the present study we explored whether gifted childre...
Phonological characteristics and frequencies of stems and allomorphs have been explored as possible factors causing differences in production accuracies between allomorphic forms. However, previous findings are not consistent and the relative contributions of these factors are unclear. This study investigated target and erroneous productions of the...
Nonadjacent dependency learning is thought to be a fundamental skill for syntax acquisition and often assessed via an offline grammaticality judgment measure. Asking judgments of children is problematic, and an offline task is suboptimal as it reflects only the outcome of the learning process, disregarding information on the learning trajectory. Th...
In this poster, we compared the performance of 50 children with dyslexia (26 girls, 24 boys, aged 8;4 - 11;2) with 50 age- and gender-matched children without dyslexia on three distinct tasks that assessed their statistical learning abilities: a serial reaction time, visual statistical learning and auditory nonadjacent dependency learning task.
This book presents a current state-of-affairs regarding the study of cross-linguistic influence in bilingualism. Taking Hulk and Müller’s (2000) and Müller and Hulk’s (2001) hypotheses on cross-linguistic influence as a starting point, the book exemplifies the shift from the original focus on syntax proper to interfaces and discourse phenomena in t...
Purpose
The current meta-analysis provides a quantitative overview of published and unpublished studies on statistical learning in the auditory verbal domain in people with and without specific language impairment (SLI). The database used for the meta-analysis is accessible online and open to updates (Community-Augmented Meta-Analysis), which facil...
Background:
Literacy impairments in dyslexia have been hypothesized to be (partly) due to an implicit learning deficit. However, studies of implicit visual artificial grammar learning (AGL) have often yielded null results.
Aims:
The aim of this study is to weigh the evidence collected thus far by performing a meta-analysis of studies on implicit...
This poster describes preliminary results on novel online measures of nonadjacent dependency learning in children with and without specific language acquisition. Data collection is still ongoing.
Morphophonological processing involves the phonological analysis of morphemes. Item-specific phonological characteristics have been shown to influence morphophonological skills in children. This study investigates the relative contributions of broad phonological skills and vocabulary to production and judgement accuracies of the Dutch past tense an...
Purpose
The purpose of this research note was to validate a simplified version of the Dutch nonword repetition task (NWR; Rispens & Baker, 2012). The NWR was shortened and scoring was transformed to correct/incorrect nonwords, resulting in the shortened NWR (NWR-S).
Method
NWR-S and NWR performance were compared in the previously published data se...
Visual statistical learning (VSL) is usually tested through offline two-alternative forced choice (2-AFC) questions, which has yielded mixed results in children. We assessed children’s VSL using an online reaction time (RT) measure and two distinct offline question types to investigate whether these methods can track learning over time and outcome...
Results of our pilot with 46 Typically developing children showing that reaction times can be used as measure of online nonadjacent dependency learning
Predictors at T1 Story retelling Story generation Narrative measures Method Results Predictors EF at T1 → narratives at T2 Story retelling Story generation Story retelling Story generation
This study investigates two types of factors potentially affecting the level of complexity of processing subject–verb agreement: (i) distance between the subject and the critical verb (0, 1 or 2 constituents) and (ii) type of intervening constituent between the subject and the verb (adverb versus an NP within a PP). NPs, but not adverbs, include ad...
Correlational study investigating the link between implicit learning and spelling ability in adults
Children (5;0 – 9;0) seem to be aware of the obligatory nature of inflections, but have problems producing the related morphosyntax which often depends on morphophonology (Blom, 2003; Blom & Paradis, 2013; Marchman, Wulfeck, & Weismer, 1999; Rice, Wexler, Marquis, & Hershberger, 2000). This study investigates production of the Dutch past tense and...
The development of morphosyntactic elements, such as the past tense, depends, to a certain extent and depending on the language spoken, on the development of morphophonological knowledge (Marchman, 1997; Rice, Wexler, Marquis, & Hershberger, 2000). This study aims to gain insight into the relation between phonological and morphological development...
Narrative ability and Executive Functions in children with Specific Language Impairment
Narrative ability and Executive Functions in children with Specific Language Impairment
The aim of this study was to examine the influence of phonotactic probability (PP) and neighbourhood density (ND) on pseudoword learning in 17 Dutch-speaking typically developing children (mean age 7;2). They were familiarized with 16 one-syllable pseudowords varying in PP (high vs low) and ND (high vs low) via a storytelling procedure. The partici...
Samenvatting Het vertellen van een verhaal wordt vaak gebruikt om de taalontwikkeling van kinde-ren met specifieke taalontwikkelingsstoornissen (TOS) in kaart te brengen. Deze com-plexe taak doet een beroep op linguïstische, communicatieve en cognitieve vaardighe-den. Eerdere studies laten zien dat de verhalen verteld door kinderen met TOS minder g...
The aim of the current study was to investigate how the brain interprets subject-verb number agreement during language comprehension. Event related potentials (ERP's) where measured in order to investigate the neural correlates of syntactic disagreement processing in native language processing. High density EEG measurements were recorded while 18 n...
This study examined the production of the Dutch past tense in Dutch–Hebrew bilingual children and investigated the effect of type of past tense allomorph (de versus te) and token frequency on productions of the past tense. Seven-year-old bilingual children (n=11) were compared with monolingual children: age-matched (n=30) and younger vocabulary-mat...
This study examined the production of the Dutch past tense in Dutch–Hebrew bilingual children and investigated the effect of type of past tense allomorph (de versus te) and token frequency on productions of the past tense. Seven-year-old bilingual children (n = 11) were compared with monolingual children: age-matched (n = 30) and younger vocabulary...
The aim of this research was to evaluate whether Dutch native speakers process information at the morphological level in an automatic and unconscious way. Participants were presented with stimuli within a masked priming paradigm followed by a lexical decision task. The answer on the lexical decision task could be predicted by the preceding stimulus...
Purpose
The effects of neighborhood density (ND) and lexical frequency on word recognition and the effects of phonotactic probability (PP) on nonword repetition (NWR) were examined to gain insight into processing at the lexical and sublexical levels in typically developing (TD) children and children with developmental language problems.
Method
Tas...
Children with developmental dyslexia demonstrate profound problems with the acquisition of literacy skills. Phonological difficulties have been hypothesized to underlie those problems, but morphosyntactic weaknesses have also been demonstrated. In this study we examined the morphophonological process of inflecting regular verbs for the past tense i...
ABSTRACT This study focuses on morphophonology and frequency in past tense production. It was assessed whether Dutch five- and seven-year-old typically developing (TD) children and eight-year-old children with specific language impairment (SLI) produce the correct allomorph in regular, irregular, and novel past tense formation. Type frequency of th...
Purpose
This study investigates the relative contributions of phonological short-term memory and phonological representations to nonword repetition (NWR). This was evaluated in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and/or reading impairment (RI); it was also studied from a developmental perspective by comparing 2 groups of typically deve...
This 2-year longitudinal study examined both concurrent and longitudinal relations of a variety of reading-related cognitive tasks and Chinese word reading and word dictation among 187 Hong Kong Chinese kindergarteners aged 4–6. Homophone awareness, visual skills and syllable awareness were all uniquely associated with Chinese word reading across t...
Recently, English studies have shown a relationship between non-word repetition (NWR) and the presence of reading problems (RP). Children with specific language impairment (SLI) but without RP performed similarly to their typically developing (TD) peers, whereas children with SLI and RP performed significantly worse on an NWR task. The current stud...
Experimental Methods in Language Acquisition Research provides students and researchers interested in language acquisition with comprehensible and practical information on the most frequently used methods in language acquisition research. It includes contributions on first and child/adult second language learners, language-impaired children, and on...
This study investigated the relations of three aspects of morphological awareness to word recognition and spelling skills
of Dutch speaking children. Tasks of inflectional and derivational morphology and lexical compounding, as well as measures
of phonological awareness, vocabulary and mathematics were administered to 104 first graders (mean age 6y...
It has been proposed that poor non-word repetition is a marker of specific language impairment (SLI), and a precursor and marker of dyslexia. This study investigated whether a non-word repetition deficit underlies both disorders. A group of Dutch preschool SLI children and children at familial risk of dyslexia, as well as school-going groups of SLI...
Problems with subject-verb agreement and phonological (processing) skills have been reported to occur in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and in those with developmental dyslexia, but only a few studies have compared such problems in these two groups. Previous studies have claimed a causal relationship between phonological processin...
This study investigates the presence and latency of the P600 component in response to subject-verb agreement violations in spoken language in people with and without developmental dyslexia. The two groups performed at-ceiling level on judging the sentences on their grammaticality, but the ERP data revealed subtle differences between them. The P600...
The principle aim of this paper was to investigate sensitivity to subject–verb agreement morphology in children with developmental dyslexia. An auditory grammaticality judgement task was used to compare morphosyntactic abilities of primary school dyslexic children relative to normally developing children matched on chronological age and children ma...
Background : In this paper we present a new aphasia test for the asessment of comprehension and production of verbs and sentences, the Verb and Sentence Test (VAST). A description is given of selected theories underlying the construction of the test, the diagnostic properties, and how results from the test can be used to motivate therapy. Methods &...
It has repeatedly been shown that agrammatic Broca's aphasics have serious problems with the retrieval of verbs on action naming tests (, , , and ). Less attention has been paid to the production of verbs at the sentence level (but see , , , , and ), although it has been mentioned that in agrammatic spontaneous speech verbs are lacking ( and , but...
Negation is a concept that has hardly received attention in aphasia research. The present study describes the performance of agrammatic speakers of three different languages — English, Dutch and Norwegian — on a sentence comprehension and two sentence anagram tests. These languages have been chosen, because the structure of the negative sentence is...
In dit proefschrift is verslag gedaan van een aantal studies naar de gevoeligheid voor werkwoordsmorfologie, in het bijzonder congruentie tussen het werkwoord en het onderwerp, bij personen met ontwikkelingsdyslexie. Ontwikkelingsdyslexie refereert aan een leesstoornis die niet voortkomt uit een tekort aan intelligentie, onderwijs of neurosensorisc...