Journal article
Effects of frequency and morphosyntactic structure on error detection, correction, and repetition in Swedish-speaking children
Applied psycholinguistics, Vol.39(6), pp.1189-1220
01/11/2018
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Abstract
Grammatical error detection and correction are often used to test explicit language knowledge. This study investigated effects of token frequency and error type in error detection, correction, and repetition, and performance on the three tasks were compared and related to models of metalinguistic awareness and development. Thirty Swedish-speaking 10-year-olds with typical language development participated in the study, which focused on four morphosyntactic errors: the infinitive instead of past tense for regular and irregular verbs, and the omission of the obligatory indefinite article in common and neuter gender noun phrases. Target verbs and nouns were of high or low frequency. Results showed significant effects of verb frequency in all tasks, and effects of noun gender for error detection, but not for correction and repetition. Children detected significantly more past-tense errors than they accurately corrected, but the opposite result was seen for noun phrase errors. The patterns of results both within and across tasks imply that implicit language knowledge affects performance, and that lexical frequency, even of familiar words, needs to be controlled when designing tasks for measuring grammatical knowledge. The particular challenge of the Swedish neuter noun phrase in language development and language processing needs to be further investigated.
Details
- Title
- Effects of frequency and morphosyntactic structure on error detection, correction, and repetition in Swedish-speaking children
- Creators
- Anna Eva Hallin - Karolinska InstitutetChristina Reuterskiold - New York University
- Publication Details
- Applied psycholinguistics, Vol.39(6), pp.1189-1220
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Number of pages
- 32
- Grant note
- Supported by an NYU Steinhardt School of Culture Education and Human Development Challenge Grant.
- Identifiers
- 991013296652902368
- Copyright
- © Cambridge University Press 2018
- Academic Unit
- Faculty of Health
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article