Creating an Attentional Bias in Children with Varying Language Abilities
Open Access
Author:
Marodi, Rachel Marie
Area of Honors:
Communication Sciences and Disorders
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Dr. Elina Mainela Arnold, Thesis Supervisor Dr. Elina Mainela Arnold, Thesis Supervisor Dr. Carol Anne Miller, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
statistical learning visual statistics lexical-semantics the Novel Bias Task
Abstract:
This study examined whether or not children were able to track visual statistics given a novel set of exemplars and phonological word forms. The participants consisted of fourteen children, differing in age (6-14 years) and language abilities. All participants were volunteers from the State College community. Half of the participants were males and half were females. To test the link between attention and statistical learning, the Novel Bias Task (NBT) was created and a supplemental set of tasks were delivered: the Conners’ ADHD DSM IV scale, the Expressive Vocabulary Test (EVT), the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI), and the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals 4 (CELF). Roughly half of the children exhibited learning during the task and results did not provide a correlation between the NBT and any of the other tasks. Thus, even though previous studies suggest that infants are able to learn statistical regularities on a similar task, not all older children did. Potential explanations for this are discussed.
