The acquisition of temporal reference cross-linguistically using two acting-out comprehension tasks

Area of Science:

• Developmental psycholinguistics
• Cross-linguistic studies of language acquisition

Background:

• Temporal connectives are crucial for understanding event sequences.
• Acquisition of temporal language varies across languages and tasks.
• Previous studies show disparities in the order of acquiring temporal relations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the acquisition of temporal event referencing in English, Thai, and Lisu.
• To examine the role of task complexity in understanding temporal connectives.
• To identify language-general and language-specific patterns in temporal language acquisition.

Main Methods:

• Utilized two acting-out comprehension tasks (Marble and Toy) with varying cognitive loads.
• Assessed 40 children aged 3.6-7.6 years in each language (English, Thai, Lisu).
• Analyzed performance based on temporal connectives (then, before, after, when, while, together, until, since).

Main Results:

• Language-general effects: 'then' and 'together' acquired early; 'since' acquired late.
• Task manipulation affected performance significantly in Lisu children.
• Language-specific acquisition patterns observed in Thai and Lisu children.

Conclusions:

• Task characteristics and test sentence complexity influence children's comprehension of temporal relations.
• Findings help explain variations in temporal language acquisition order across studies.
• Cross-linguistic research is vital for understanding universal and specific aspects of language development.