Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-25wd4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T19:56:26.428Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Comprehension of before and after in logical and arbitrary sequences*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Lucia A. French  and
Ann L. Brown
Lucia A. French
Affiliation:
Institute for Child Behavior and Development, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Ann L. Brown
Affiliation:
Institute for Child Behavior and Development, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Pre-school children were required to act out a series of two-event sequences conjoined by either before or after. The sentences to be acted out consisted of either a meaningfully or an arbitrarily ordered sequence of events. Performance was markedly superior for meaningfully ordered sequences. It is suggested that the meanings of before and after must be acquired in situations which provide contextual support, and only then can be applied in situations which do not provide such support.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , June 1977 , pp. 247 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This paper is based upon a thesis submitted by the first author to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in psychology. The research was supported by Grants HD 06864, HD 05951, and HD 00244 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The authors would like to express thanks to Drs. J. McV. Hunt and Joseph C. Campione for their advice and criticism, and to Anne Hogan and Sallie Lawton for their help with the collection and analysis of the data. Special gratitude is extended to the parents, stagg, and children of the following Champaign-Urbana preschools: La Petite Academy; First United Methodist Church; Kiddie Kountry; and the Institute for Child Behavior and Development.

References

REFERENCES

Amidon, A. & Carey, P. (1973). Why five-year-olds cannot understand before and after. JVLVB 11. 417–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrie-Blackley, S. (1973). Six-year-old children's understanding of sentences adjoined with time adverbs. JPsycholingRes 2. 153–65.Google ScholarPubMed
Beilin, H. & Spontak, G. (1969). Active-passive transformations and operational reversibility. Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development,Santa Monica, California.Google Scholar
Bever, T. G. (1970). The cognitive basis for linguistic structures. In Hayes, J. R. (ed.), Cognition and the development of language. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Bransford, J. G., Nitsch, K. E. & Franks, J. J. (1977). Schooling and the facilitation of knowing. In Anderson, R. C., Spiro, R. J. & Montague, W. E. (eds), Schooling and the acquisition of knowledge. Hillsdale, N. J.: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Brown, A. L. (1976). The construction of temporal succession by pre-operational children. In Pick, A. D. (ed.), Minnesota symposia on child psychology, Vol. 10. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Bruner, J. (1975). The ontogenesis of speech acts. JChLang 2. 1–19.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1971). On the acquisition of the meaning of before and after. JVLVB 10. 266–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, M. C. & Bower, G. H. (1969). Narrative stories as mediators for serial learning. Psychonomic Science 14. 181–2.Google Scholar
Feagans, L. (1974). Children's comprehension of some temporal and spatial structures. Papers from the Tenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 139–50.Google Scholar
Ferreiro, E. & Sinclair, H. (1971). Temporal relationships in language. IntJPsych 6. 39–47.Google Scholar
Johnson, H. (1975). The meaning of before and after for preschool children. JExpChPsych, 19. 88–99.Google ScholarPubMed
Keller-Cohen, D. (1974). Cognition and the acquisition of temporal reference. Papers from the Tenth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 310–20.Google Scholar
Levin, J. R. & Rohwer, W. D. Jr. (1968). Verbal organization and the facilitation of serial learning. JEdPsych 59. 186–90.Google ScholarPubMed
Macnamara, J. (1972). Cognitive basis of language learning in infants. PsychRev 79. 1–13.Google ScholarPubMed
Nelson, K. (1974). Concept, word, and sentence: interrelations in acquisition and development. PsychRev 81. 267–85.Google Scholar
Olson, D. R. & Nickerson, N. (1977). The contexts of comprehension: on children's understanding of the relations between active and passive sentences. JExpChPsych, in press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinclair-de-Zwart, H. (1969). Developmentel psycholinguistics. In Elkind, D. & Flavell, J. H. (eds), Studies in cognitive development. New York: O.U.P.Google Scholar