4. Results and Discussion
4.6 Perseverative Naming in Experiment 2
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naming, only „target‟ should be a significant factor to influence children‟s naming (for the frequency of high target naming: F(1, 43)=27.76, p<0.0001; for the frequency of low target naming: F(1,43)=9.37, p=0.0038<0.05). This is consistent with Gershkoff-Stowe et al‟s (2006) finding. But, age did not reach significance again in Mandarin Chinese children. In fact, this result reflected the same phenomenon that we had found in the previous discussion. That is, different way of processing or word retrieval from English may be the key point to lead to different results. The different morphology between Mandarin Chinese and English should make the networks of the mental lexicon become different so that Mandarin Chinese children and English children may have different way of processing.
4.6 Perseverative Naming in Experiment 2
In the experiment 2, because every object shown to children was novel object which did not have a name, children sometimes perseverated the naming that they had produced in the previous trials. For example, they may produce mao4zi5 „hat‟ in the trial 2, but still used this labeling to label other objects in other trials despite the fact that there were no shape similarity between the two novel objects at all. And the frequency of perseverative naming in 2- and 4-year-old children is shown in the figure 5.
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Fig 5. The Frequency of Perseverative Naming in 2- and 4-year-old Children In this figure, we could find that both younger and older children present the similar pattern for the perseverative naming. That is, both of them produced perseverative naming most frequently in the unrelated condition (age 2: 14.29%; age 4: 10.26%).
And the next more frequent one is high similarity condition (age 2: 11.59%; age 4:
3.13%), and then finally the least frequent one is low similarity condition (age 2:
5.36%; age 4: 1.56%). This suggests that both recent activation and shape similarity have influences on children‟s word access. In the high similarity condition, the strengths of word‟s retrieval should be the strongest one because each word has the strengths from shape similarity and recent activation at the same time. Thus, it is harder for children to resist the influence from a more powerful word especially for younger children. Younger children have more immature mental lexicon so that they will be affected by previously retrieved words even easier than older ones.
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Accordingly, the frequency of perseverative naming was higher in high similarity condition than low similarity one. With regard to the perseverative naming in the unrelated condition, it happened most frequently in both two age groups. This may be because words only have strengths from recent activation in the unrelated condition.
There was no other cue for children to name the novel objects. The strengths of recent activation may become more powerful in this kind of situation. With the lack of cues from shape similarity but with the strengths from recent activation, it is most likely for children to perseverate their naming from previously retrieved words. As a whole, from figure 5, we also could observe that younger children always had a higher probability to make perseverative naming than the older children. This implies that older children indeed are less susceptible to the previously retrieved words because of their more mature mental lexicon.
Although there was some differences from observing the frequency of perseverative naming between children in the two age groups, the (2) age × (3) similarity condition ANOVA test seems to show that neither age (SS=2.10, MS=2.10, F(1, 43)=1.32, p=0.2570>0.05) nor condition (SS=4.33, MS=2.16, F(2, 43)=1.36,
p=0.2677>0.05) reached significance as shown in table 10. And there was no
interaction effect.
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Table 10. The Effects of Age and Condition on Children‟s Perseverative Naming
Source DF Type I SS Mean Square F Value Pr > F differences may be from different morphology between Mandarin Chinese and English. As mentioned before, Chinese words/compounds should carry stronger power than English words naturally. This may cause children to make perseverative naming in a very low frequency both for younger and older children because each word should have stronger strength so that it will not be interfered that easy as English‟s word is.
4.7 Summary
In this chapter, we compared children‟s performances of comprehension and production and displayed the results of their object naming and novel object naming.
Besides, the priming effects in the two experiments were examined. And finally, the perseverative naming in Mandarin Chinese children were shown and discussed.
And the results in experiment 1 showed that children had better comprehension than their production. Incorrect naming does not necessarily reflect that they have
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problems in their comprehension. In the object naming task, we found that children‟s erroneous naming happened more often in the unfamiliar condition than in the familiar one. This may suggest that unfamiliar words have weaker linking to concept, word, and object since children have fewer practices for them. The priming effect in experiment 1 showed that there are something different between English and Chinese.
That is, familiarity seems to be a main effect on children‟s target error naming. This should be attributed to the activation strengths or different morphology between English and Chinese. But, despite of this fact, the spreading activation mechanism still could be used to explain children‟s three types of errors. We do not deny the existence of it because even in the familiar condition, the strengths of perceptually similar target prime pictures are still stronger than perceptually unrelated pictures for children.
In the experiment 2, regarding to children‟s novel object naming, only similarity would affect children‟s target and extraneous naming while age did not have this kind of effect. And, in addition, it was still the same case when it comes to the priming effects in this experiment. Age is not a main effect in Mandarin Chinese children should be attributed to the fact that due to the different morphology between English and Chinese, the way of processing and word retrieval should be different as well.
Finally, the perseverative naming showed that recent activation and shape similarity should both play an important role on children‟s naming.
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Chapter 5 Conclusion
In this study, we conducted the same experiment with Gershkoff-Stowe et al‟s (2006) study to Mandarin Chinese children to examine whether the assumption in their study is still right when it applies to another language. According to our data, we have the following findings and conclusions. First, the fact that children have better comprehension than their production seems to be a universal phenomenon. Second, fewer practices would indeed affect children‟s naming. Children will make more errors when labeling an unknown or unfamiliar object. Third, familiarity should affect Mandarin children on their frequency of correct object labeling while this should not affect English children. This may be due to different morphology between these two different languages. Despite of this fact, we are not going to deny that the underlying mechanisms of three types of errors should be the same. We just can say that familiar words for Mandarin children have more powerful strengths than familiar words for English children. Fourth, shape similarity is an important factor to influence children‟s naming. High similarity will fortify the word‟s strengths more than low similarity or unrelated objects. Fifth, older Mandarin children seem not to have significantly different performances when compared with younger children. The reason for this may be because the networks of mental lexicon in Mandarin are different from in
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English. Different way of word processing and word retrieval may result in different priming effects. Finally, besides shape similarity, recent activation also plays an important role on children‟s word retrievals.
Taken together, spreading activation mechanism should be applied to a variety of languages. Word retrieval is a process of competition. Shape similarity and recent activation will fortify the strengths of concepts both in English and Chinese speakers.
However, different morphology in different languages may cause different way of priming effects. Thus, we still could observe some differences between English and Chinese. In Chinese children, more mature lexicon seems to make the priming effects become even stronger when they are primed by some highly conceptual related concepts while in English, more mature mental lexicon seems to make the priming effects weaker. Nevertheless, evidence still shows that older Mandarin children are less susceptible to previously retrieved words. We can observe this from the data where older children was not affected by low similarity or unrelated targets that much as younger children and where they have lower frequency of making perseverative naming than younger children. Although different morphology may lead to different way of priming effects on children, the fact that more mature mental lexicon would make children be less vulnerable to previously retrieved words should be universal.
Further research could be aimed at the characteristics of Chinese morphology to
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examine the phenomena of children‟s overextension. Especially, issue involving whether “those transparent compounds have stronger strengths than those opaque compounds so that children will make less overextension errors among those transparent words” would be another related topic that deserves investigating.
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Appendix
Twelve Fillers in the Experiment 1
湯匙 “spoon” 掃把”broom” 叉子 “fork” 瓶子“bottle”
香蕉 “banana” 卡車 “truck” 狗 “dog” 飛機 “plane”
水龍頭 “faucet” 遙 控 器 “remote control”
眼鏡 “glasses” 襪子 “socks”
The Stimuli in the Experiment 1
Test objects Prime
Familiar Unfamiliar Set A Set B
蛋糕 “Cake”
削 鉛 筆 機 “Pencil sharpener”
盒子 “box” 鼓 “Drum”
籃 子 “basket” 元 寶 “odd-shaped 木瓜 “papaya” 船 “Boat”
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gold”
鈴鐺 “bell
”
掛 飾 “hanging
ornament”
球 “Ball” 蘋果 “apple”
甜甜圈 “donut” 髮帶(hair band) 飛盤 “Frisbee” 輪子 “wheel”
芭樂 “guava” 量角器 “protractor” 扇子 “fan” 月亮”moon”
棒棒糖”lollipop” 魚網 “fish net” 球拍 “racket” 鏡子 “mirror”
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The Items Used in Word Comprehension Test 1
2
3
4
5
6
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Target Names of Novel Objects in Experiment 2 Target names
High similarity Low similarity unrelated Novel object 1 花 “flower” 貝殼 “shell” 鑰匙 “key”
2 帽子 “cap” 裙子 “skirt” 車“car”
3 愛心 “love” 葉子 “leaves” 蠟筆 “crayon”
4 盤子 “plate” 鉛 筆 盒 “pencil box”
鳥 “bird”
5 燈 “lamp” 柱子 “pillar” 筷子 “chopsticks”
6 蝙蝠 “bat” 閃電 “lightning” 畚箕“dusk basket”
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7 鯨魚 “whale” 沙發 “couch” 娃娃 “doll”
8 領帶 “tie” 老虎鉗 “vise” 枕頭 “pillow”
8 領帶 “tie” 老虎鉗 “vise” 枕頭 “pillow”