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1. Pictorial depth cues in young children’s drawings of layouts and objects.

   Morfoisse, Théo ; Gureckis, Todd ; Dillon, Moira ( January 2020 , Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society)

   null (Ed.)

   Humans have been faced with the challenges of pictorial production since at least the Paleolithic. Curiously, while the capacity to navigate layouts and recognize objects in everyday life comes almost effortlessly, inherited from our evolutionary past, the capacity to draw layouts and objects is more effortful, often needing time to improve over the course of an individual’s development and with the technological innovations acquired through culture. The present study examines whether young children might nevertheless rely on phylogenetically ancient spatial capacities for navigation and object recognition when creating uniquely human pictorial art. We apply a novel digital coding technique to a publicly available dataset of young children’s drawings of layouts and objects to explore children’s use of classic pictorial depth cues including size, position, and overlap. To convey pictorial depth, children appear to adopt several cues, without a preference among them, younger than had been suggested by previous studies that used other, less rich, analytic techniques. Moreover, children use more cues to pictorial depth in drawings of layouts versus objects. Children’s creation of uniquely human pictorial symbols may thus reflect their heightened use of depth for navigating layouts compared to recognizing objects, both cognitive capacities that humans share with other animals. 

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2. Drawings as a window into developmental changes in object representations

   Long, B. ; Fan, J. E. ; Frank, M. C. ( July 2018 , Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.)

   How do children’s representations of object categories change as they grow older? As they learn about the world around them, they also express what they know in the drawings they make. Here, we examine drawings as a window into how children represent familiar object categories, and how this changes across childhood. We asked children (age 3-10 years) to draw familiar object categories on an iPad. First, we analyzed their semantic content, finding large and consistent gains in how well children could produce drawings that are recognizable to adults. Second, we quantified their perceptual similarity to adult drawings using a pre-trained deep convolutional neural network, allowing us to visualize the representational layout of object categories across age groups using a common feature basis. We found that the organization of object categories in older children’s drawings were more similar to that of adults than younger children’s drawings. This correspondence was strong in the final layers of the neural network, showing that older children’s drawings tend to capture the perceptual features critical for adult recognition. We hypothesize that this improvement reflects increasing convergence between children’s representations of object categories and that of adults; future work will examine how these age-related changes relate to children’s developing perceptual and motor capacities. Broadly, these findings point to drawing as a rich source of insight into how children represent object concepts. 

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3. Developmental changes in the ability to draw distinctive features of object categories

   Long, B. ; Fan, J. ; Chai, Z. ; & Frank, M. C. ( July 2019 , Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.)

   How do children’s visual concepts change across childhood, and how might these changes be reflected in their drawings? Here we investigate developmental changes in children’s ability to emphasize the relevant visual distinctions between object categories in their drawings. We collected over 13K drawings from children aged 2-10 years via a free-standing drawing station in a children’s museum. We hypothesized that older children would produce more recognizable drawings, and that this gain in recognizability would not be entirely explained by concurrent development in visuomotor control. To measure recognizability, we applied a pretrained deep convolutional neural network model to extract a high-level feature representation of all drawings, and then trained a multi-way linear classifier on these features. To measure visuomotor control, we developed an automated procedure to measure their ability to accurately trace complex shapes. We found consistent gains in the recognizability of drawings across ages that were not fully explained by children’s ability to accurately trace complex shapes. Furthermore, these gains were accompanied by an increase in how distinct different object categories were in feature space. Overall, these results demonstrate that children’s drawings include more distinctive visual features as they grow older. 

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4. Teaching little kids big sentences: A randomized controlled trial showing that children with DLD respond to complex syntax intervention embedded within the context of preschool/kindergarten science instruction

   https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.12882  

   Owen Van Horne, Amanda J. ; Curran, Maura ; Cook, Susan Wagner ; Cole, Renée ; McGregor, Karla K. ( May 2023 , International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders)

   The language of the science curriculum is complex, even in the early grades. To communicate their scientific observations, children must produce complex syntax, particularly complement clauses (e.g.,I think it will float;We noticed that it vibrates). Complex syntax is often challenging for children with developmental language disorder (DLD), and thus their learning and communication of science may be compromised.

   We asked whether recast therapy delivered in the context of a science curriculum led to gains in complement clause use and scientific content knowledge. To understand the efficacy of recast therapy, we compared changes in science and language knowledge in children who received treatment for complement clauses embedded in a first‐grade science curriculum to two active control conditions (vocabulary + science, phonological awareness + science).

   This 2‐year single‐site three‐arm parallel randomized controlled trial was conducted in Delaware, USA. Children with DLD, not yet in first grade and with low accuracy on complement clauses, were eligible. Thirty‐three 4–7‐year‐old children participated in the summers of 2018 and 2019 (2020 was cancelled due to COVID‐19). We assigned participants to arms using 1:1:1 pseudo‐random allocation (avoiding placing siblings together). The intervention consisted of 39 small‐group sessions of recast therapy, robust vocabulary instruction or phonological awareness intervention during eight science units over 4 weeks, followed by two science units (1 week) taught without language intervention. Pre‐/post‐measures were collected 3 weeks before and after camp by unmasked assessors.

   Primary outcome measures were accuracy on a 20‐item probe of complement clause production and performance on ten 10‐item unit tests (eight science + language, two science only). Complete data were available for 31 children (10 grammar, 21 active control); two others were lost to follow‐up. Both groups made similar gains on science unit tests for science + language content (pre versus post,d= 2.9,p< 0.0001; group,p= 0.24). The grammar group performed significantly better at post‐test than the active control group (d= 2.5,p= 0.049) on complement clause probes and marginally better on science‐only unit tests (d= 2.5,p= 0.051).

   Children with DLD can benefit from language intervention embedded in curricular content and learn both language and science targets taught simultaneously. Tentative findings suggest that treatment for grammar targets may improve academic outcomes.

   We know that recast therapy focused on morphology is effective but very time consuming. Treatment for complex syntax in young children has preliminary efficacy data available. Prior research provides mixed evidence as to children’s ability to learn language targets in conjunction with other information.

   This study provides additional data supporting the efficacy of intensive complex syntax recast therapy for children ages 4–7 with Developmental Language Disorder. It also provides data that children can learn language targets and science curricular content simultaneously.

   As SLPs, we have to talk about something to deliver language therapy; we should consider talking about curricular content. Recast therapy focused on syntactic frames is effective with young children.

    

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5. Evaluating “Meaningful Differences” in Learning and Communication Across SES Backgrounds

   https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-030521-045816  

   Huang, Yi Ting ; Byrd, Arynn S. ; Asmah, Rhosean ; Domanski, Sophie ( January 2023 , Annual Review of Linguistics)

   Socioeconomic status (SES) differences in language development are ubiquitous, but existing research has yet to wrestle with how language gaps reflect ( a) differences in relevant concepts for communication, ( b) comprehension strategies to access meanings, and ( c) production practices that express social identity. In child-directed input, parents use verbs to describe similar concepts across SES, and the largest gaps emerge when frequent meanings are being conveyed. During comprehension, children acquire infrequent aspects of grammar across SES but differ in context-specific strategies for interpreting likely meanings. In production, children are sensitive to sociolinguistic implications and adopt context-specific strategies to signal social identity. This suggests that language is a flexible medium for communicating thoughts and that SES effects signal latent differences in meanings and identities across social classes. Whether language gaps contribute to achievement gaps may depend on the extent to which learning and communication draw on these meanings and value these identities. 

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