Tanja Rinker - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Tanja Rinker
Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 2016
Stolarova, M., A. Brielmann, C. Wolf, T. Rinker, T. Burke, and R. H. Baayen This study investiga... more Stolarova, M., A. Brielmann, C. Wolf, T. Rinker, T. Burke, and R. H. Baayen
This study investigates the predictive value of child-related and environmental characteristics for early lexical development. The German productive vocabulary of 51 two-year-olds (27 girls) assessed via parental report was analyzed taking children’s gender, the type of early care they experienced, and their mono- vs. bilingual language composition into consideration. The children were from an educationally homogeneous group of families and state regulated daycare facilities with high structural quality. All investigated subgroups exhibited German vocabulary size within the expected normative range. Gender differences in vocabulary composition, but not in size, were observed. There were no general differences in vocabulary size or composition between the two care groups. An interaction between the predictors gender and care arrangement showed that girls without regular daycare experience before the age of two years had a somewhat larger vocabulary than all other investigated subgroups of children. The vocabulary size of the two-year-old children in daycare correlated positively with the duration of their daycare experience prior to testing. The small subgroup of bilingual children investigated exhibited slightly lower but still normative German expressive vocabulary size and a different vocabulary composition compared to the monolingual children. This study expands current knowledge about relevant predictors of early vocabulary. It shows that in the absence of educational disadvantages the duration of early daycare experience of high structural quality is positively associated with vocabulary size, but also points to the fact that environmental characteristics, such as type of care, might affect boys’ and girls’ early vocabulary in different ways.
by Ewa Haman, Hanne Gram Simonsen, Jovana Bjekic, Katarzyna Chyl, Anna Gavarró, Gisela Håkansson, Sari Kunnari, Chiara Levorato, Karolina Mieszkowska, Natasha Ringblom, Tanja Rinker, and Josefin Lindgren
This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly developed lexical asses... more This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly
developed lexical assessment tool Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT). LITMUS-CLT is a part the Language Impairment Testing
in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery (Armon-Lotem, de Jong & Meir,
2015). Here we analyse results on receptive and expressive word knowledge tasks for nouns and verbs across 17 languages from eight different language families: Baltic (Lithuanian), Bantu (isiXhosa), Finnic (Finnish), Germanic (Afrikaans, British English, South African English, German, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Swedish), Romance (Catalan, Italian), Semitic (Hebrew), Slavic (Polish, Serbian, Slovak) and Turkic (Turkish).
The participants were 639 monolingual children aged 3;0–6;11 living in
15 different countries. Differences in vocabulary size were small between 16 of the languages; but isiXhosa-speaking children knew
significantly fewer words than speakers of the other languages. There
was a robust effect of word class: accuracy was higher for nouns than
verbs. Furthermore, comprehension was more advanced than production.
Results are discussed in the context of cross-linguistic comparisons
of lexical development in monolingual and bilingual populations.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2014
This report has two main purposes. First, we combine well-known analytical approaches to conduct ... more This report has two main purposes. First, we combine well-known analytical approaches to conduct a comprehensive assessment of agreement and correlation of rating-pairs and to dis-entangle these often confused concepts, providing a best-practice example on concrete data and a tutorial for future reference. Second, we explore whether a screening questionnaire developed for use with parents can be reliably employed with daycare teachers when assessing early expressive vocabulary. A total of 53 vocabulary rating pairs (34 parent-teacher and 19 mother-father pairs) collected for two-year-old children (12 bilingual) are evaluated. First, inter-rater reliability both within and across subgroups is assessed using the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). Next, based on this analysis of reliability and on the test-retest reliability of the employed tool, inter-rater agreement is analyzed, magnitude and direction of rating differences are considered. Finally, Pearson correlation coefficients of standardized vocabulary scores are calculated and compared across subgroups. The results underline the necessity to distinguish between reliability measures, agreement and correlation. They also demonstrate the impact of the employed reliability on agreement evaluations. This study provides evidence that parent-teacher ratings of children's early vocabulary can achieve agreement and correlation comparable to those of mother-father ratings on the assessed vocabulary scale. Bilingualism of the evaluated child decreased the likelihood of raters' agreement. We conclude that future reports of agreement, correlation and reliability of ratings will benefit from better definition of terms and stricter methodological approaches. The methodological tutorial provided here holds the potential to increase comparability across empirical reports and can help improve research practices and knowledge transfer to educational and therapeutic settings.
Laryngo- rhino- otologie, 2010
An increasing number of children seem to have a deficiency in Central Processing as a reason for ... more An increasing number of children seem to have a deficiency in Central Processing as a reason for reading and writing difficulties (RWD) and attention deficit disorder (ADD). There is often also a delay in phonological consciousness. A test would therefore be useful to distinguish children with RWD and ADD. This study involved 75 consecutive schoolchildren from the 1 (st) to 5 (th) classes (ages 6-11), and was carried out at the Department of Phoniatric-Paediatric Audiology at the University ENT Clinic Ulm. Various tests were undertaken: hearing tests for peripheral hearing, central auditory tests, tests of phonological competence and a questionnaire completed with the parents. Statistical calculations were used to verify correlations with clinical findings and the questionnaire. BAKO 1-4 and H-LAD test phonological awareness and the T-values showed a good correlation, as expected. These are therefore reliable tests. No gender specific differences could be found. The BAKO 1-4 test wa...
Mehrsprachigkeit soziodemografischer Hintergrund Sprachleistungen Migrationshintergrund Vorschulk... more Mehrsprachigkeit soziodemografischer Hintergrund Sprachleistungen Migrationshintergrund Vorschulkinder Vorlaufkurse (Vlk) Key words bilingualism socio-demographic background migrant children language abilities preschool children
Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience
Laryngo-Rhino-Otologie, 2009
When a child comes into the world, it has - when normally developed - a brain that is perfectly e... more When a child comes into the world, it has - when normally developed - a brain that is perfectly equipped to learn language(s). Previous studies have shown that processing becomes faster and more efficient as time moves on, but in essence the basis of these processes already exists. Especially in children with language impairments, these processes may be disturbed from the early months, which may lead to a cumulative deficit in the first few years of life.
Neuroscience Letters, 2007
For several decades, the aetiology of specific language impairment (SLI) has been associated with... more For several decades, the aetiology of specific language impairment (SLI) has been associated with a central auditory processing deficit disrupting the normal language development of affected children. One important aspect for language acquisition is the discrimination of different acoustic features, such as frequency information. Concerning SLI, studies to date that examined frequency discrimination abilities have been contradictory. We hypothesized that an auditory processing deficit in children with SLI depends on the frequency range and the difference between the tones used. Using a passive mismatch negativity (MMN)-design, 13 boys with SLI and 13 age-and IQ-matched controls (7-11 years) were tested with two sine tones of different frequency (700 Hz versus 750 Hz). Reversed hemispheric activity between groups indicated abnormal processing in SLI. In a second time window, MMN2 was absent for the children with SLI. It can therefore be assumed that a frequency discrimination deficit in children with SLI becomes particularly apparent for tones below 750 Hz and for a frequency difference of 50 Hz. This finding may have important implications for future research and integration of various research approaches.
NeuroReport, 2005
The auditory processing of physical stimulus features can be measured by the mismatch negativity.... more The auditory processing of physical stimulus features can be measured by the mismatch negativity. Past studies have shown that higher-order stimulus features also elicit a mismatch negativity. In some studies, a second component, termed late mismatch negativity, has been observed; yet the functional signi¢cance of this component remains unclear. We tested two-tone-pattern stimuli following an abstract rule in healthy adults. As expected, the tone pattern elicited a signi¢cant mismatch negativity peaking at 146 ms but a signi¢cant late mismatch negativity at around 340 ms was also observed.These ¢ndings show that the violation of an abstract rule elicits an early and late mismatch negativity.The late mismatch negativity might be triggered on the basis of auditory rule extraction processes and re£ect a transfer of rules to the long-term memory.
Brain and Language, 2010
The development of native-like memory traces for foreign phonemes can be measured by using the Mi... more The development of native-like memory traces for foreign phonemes can be measured by using the Mismatch Negativity (MMN), a component of the auditory event-related potential. Previous studies have shown that the MMN is sensitive to changes in neural organization depending on language experience. Here we measured the MMN response in 5-6 year-old monolingual German and bilingual Turkish-German kindergarten children growing up in Germany. MMN was investigated to a German vowel contrast and to a vowel contrast that exists in Turkish and in German. The results show that compared to a German control group, the MMN response is less robust in Turkish-German children to the German vowel contrast. The response to the contrast that exists in both languages does not differ between groups. Overall, the results suggest that the Turkish-German children have not yet fully acquired the German phonetic inventory despite living in Germany since birth and being immersed in a German-speaking environment.
by Ewa Haman, Tanja Rinker, Kristine Jensen de López, Ciara O'Toole, Barbara Pomiechowska, Sari Kunnari, Svetlana Kapalková, MARIA KAMBANAROS, Bibi Janssen, Daniela Gatt, Anna Gavarró, and Darinka Anđelković
We present a new set of subjective Age of Acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141... more We present a new set of subjective Age of Acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in 25 languages from 5 language families (Afroasiatic: Semitic languages; Altaic: Turkic language: Indo-european: Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Slavic and Romance languages; Niger-Congo: Bantu language; Uralic: Finnic and Ugric languages). Adult native speakers reported the age at which they had learned each word. We present comparison of the AoA ratings across all languages by contrasting them in pairs. This comparison shows a consistency in the order of ratings across 25 languages. Data are then analysed (1) to ascertain how demographic characteristics of participants influence AoA estimations and (2) to assess differences caused by the exact form of target question (when did you learn vs. when do children learn this word); (3) to compare ratings obtained in our study to those of previous studies; and (4) to assess the validity of our study by comparison with quasi-objective AoA norms derived from MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs). All 299 words were judged as acquired early (mostly before the age of 6 years). AoA ratings were associated with the rater’s social or language status, but not with the rater’s age or education. Parents reported words to be learned earlier, and bilinguals later. Estimations of the age at which children learn the words revealed significantly lower ratings of AoA. Finally, comparisons with previous AoA and MB-CDI norms support the validity of the present estimations. Our AoA ratings are available for research or other purposes.
Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 2016
Stolarova, M., A. Brielmann, C. Wolf, T. Rinker, T. Burke, and R. H. Baayen This study investiga... more Stolarova, M., A. Brielmann, C. Wolf, T. Rinker, T. Burke, and R. H. Baayen
This study investigates the predictive value of child-related and environmental characteristics for early lexical development. The German productive vocabulary of 51 two-year-olds (27 girls) assessed via parental report was analyzed taking children’s gender, the type of early care they experienced, and their mono- vs. bilingual language composition into consideration. The children were from an educationally homogeneous group of families and state regulated daycare facilities with high structural quality. All investigated subgroups exhibited German vocabulary size within the expected normative range. Gender differences in vocabulary composition, but not in size, were observed. There were no general differences in vocabulary size or composition between the two care groups. An interaction between the predictors gender and care arrangement showed that girls without regular daycare experience before the age of two years had a somewhat larger vocabulary than all other investigated subgroups of children. The vocabulary size of the two-year-old children in daycare correlated positively with the duration of their daycare experience prior to testing. The small subgroup of bilingual children investigated exhibited slightly lower but still normative German expressive vocabulary size and a different vocabulary composition compared to the monolingual children. This study expands current knowledge about relevant predictors of early vocabulary. It shows that in the absence of educational disadvantages the duration of early daycare experience of high structural quality is positively associated with vocabulary size, but also points to the fact that environmental characteristics, such as type of care, might affect boys’ and girls’ early vocabulary in different ways.
by Ewa Haman, Hanne Gram Simonsen, Jovana Bjekic, Katarzyna Chyl, Anna Gavarró, Gisela Håkansson, Sari Kunnari, Chiara Levorato, Karolina Mieszkowska, Natasha Ringblom, Tanja Rinker, and Josefin Lindgren
This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly developed lexical asses... more This article investigates the cross-linguistic comparability of the newly
developed lexical assessment tool Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (LITMUS-CLT). LITMUS-CLT is a part the Language Impairment Testing
in Multilingual Settings (LITMUS) battery (Armon-Lotem, de Jong & Meir,
2015). Here we analyse results on receptive and expressive word knowledge tasks for nouns and verbs across 17 languages from eight different language families: Baltic (Lithuanian), Bantu (isiXhosa), Finnic (Finnish), Germanic (Afrikaans, British English, South African English, German, Luxembourgish, Norwegian, Swedish), Romance (Catalan, Italian), Semitic (Hebrew), Slavic (Polish, Serbian, Slovak) and Turkic (Turkish).
The participants were 639 monolingual children aged 3;0–6;11 living in
15 different countries. Differences in vocabulary size were small between 16 of the languages; but isiXhosa-speaking children knew
significantly fewer words than speakers of the other languages. There
was a robust effect of word class: accuracy was higher for nouns than
verbs. Furthermore, comprehension was more advanced than production.
Results are discussed in the context of cross-linguistic comparisons
of lexical development in monolingual and bilingual populations.
Frontiers in Psychology, 2014
This report has two main purposes. First, we combine well-known analytical approaches to conduct ... more This report has two main purposes. First, we combine well-known analytical approaches to conduct a comprehensive assessment of agreement and correlation of rating-pairs and to dis-entangle these often confused concepts, providing a best-practice example on concrete data and a tutorial for future reference. Second, we explore whether a screening questionnaire developed for use with parents can be reliably employed with daycare teachers when assessing early expressive vocabulary. A total of 53 vocabulary rating pairs (34 parent-teacher and 19 mother-father pairs) collected for two-year-old children (12 bilingual) are evaluated. First, inter-rater reliability both within and across subgroups is assessed using the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). Next, based on this analysis of reliability and on the test-retest reliability of the employed tool, inter-rater agreement is analyzed, magnitude and direction of rating differences are considered. Finally, Pearson correlation coefficients of standardized vocabulary scores are calculated and compared across subgroups. The results underline the necessity to distinguish between reliability measures, agreement and correlation. They also demonstrate the impact of the employed reliability on agreement evaluations. This study provides evidence that parent-teacher ratings of children's early vocabulary can achieve agreement and correlation comparable to those of mother-father ratings on the assessed vocabulary scale. Bilingualism of the evaluated child decreased the likelihood of raters' agreement. We conclude that future reports of agreement, correlation and reliability of ratings will benefit from better definition of terms and stricter methodological approaches. The methodological tutorial provided here holds the potential to increase comparability across empirical reports and can help improve research practices and knowledge transfer to educational and therapeutic settings.
Laryngo- rhino- otologie, 2010
An increasing number of children seem to have a deficiency in Central Processing as a reason for ... more An increasing number of children seem to have a deficiency in Central Processing as a reason for reading and writing difficulties (RWD) and attention deficit disorder (ADD). There is often also a delay in phonological consciousness. A test would therefore be useful to distinguish children with RWD and ADD. This study involved 75 consecutive schoolchildren from the 1 (st) to 5 (th) classes (ages 6-11), and was carried out at the Department of Phoniatric-Paediatric Audiology at the University ENT Clinic Ulm. Various tests were undertaken: hearing tests for peripheral hearing, central auditory tests, tests of phonological competence and a questionnaire completed with the parents. Statistical calculations were used to verify correlations with clinical findings and the questionnaire. BAKO 1-4 and H-LAD test phonological awareness and the T-values showed a good correlation, as expected. These are therefore reliable tests. No gender specific differences could be found. The BAKO 1-4 test wa...
Mehrsprachigkeit soziodemografischer Hintergrund Sprachleistungen Migrationshintergrund Vorschulk... more Mehrsprachigkeit soziodemografischer Hintergrund Sprachleistungen Migrationshintergrund Vorschulkinder Vorlaufkurse (Vlk) Key words bilingualism socio-demographic background migrant children language abilities preschool children
Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience
Laryngo-Rhino-Otologie, 2009
When a child comes into the world, it has - when normally developed - a brain that is perfectly e... more When a child comes into the world, it has - when normally developed - a brain that is perfectly equipped to learn language(s). Previous studies have shown that processing becomes faster and more efficient as time moves on, but in essence the basis of these processes already exists. Especially in children with language impairments, these processes may be disturbed from the early months, which may lead to a cumulative deficit in the first few years of life.
Neuroscience Letters, 2007
For several decades, the aetiology of specific language impairment (SLI) has been associated with... more For several decades, the aetiology of specific language impairment (SLI) has been associated with a central auditory processing deficit disrupting the normal language development of affected children. One important aspect for language acquisition is the discrimination of different acoustic features, such as frequency information. Concerning SLI, studies to date that examined frequency discrimination abilities have been contradictory. We hypothesized that an auditory processing deficit in children with SLI depends on the frequency range and the difference between the tones used. Using a passive mismatch negativity (MMN)-design, 13 boys with SLI and 13 age-and IQ-matched controls (7-11 years) were tested with two sine tones of different frequency (700 Hz versus 750 Hz). Reversed hemispheric activity between groups indicated abnormal processing in SLI. In a second time window, MMN2 was absent for the children with SLI. It can therefore be assumed that a frequency discrimination deficit in children with SLI becomes particularly apparent for tones below 750 Hz and for a frequency difference of 50 Hz. This finding may have important implications for future research and integration of various research approaches.
NeuroReport, 2005
The auditory processing of physical stimulus features can be measured by the mismatch negativity.... more The auditory processing of physical stimulus features can be measured by the mismatch negativity. Past studies have shown that higher-order stimulus features also elicit a mismatch negativity. In some studies, a second component, termed late mismatch negativity, has been observed; yet the functional signi¢cance of this component remains unclear. We tested two-tone-pattern stimuli following an abstract rule in healthy adults. As expected, the tone pattern elicited a signi¢cant mismatch negativity peaking at 146 ms but a signi¢cant late mismatch negativity at around 340 ms was also observed.These ¢ndings show that the violation of an abstract rule elicits an early and late mismatch negativity.The late mismatch negativity might be triggered on the basis of auditory rule extraction processes and re£ect a transfer of rules to the long-term memory.
Brain and Language, 2010
The development of native-like memory traces for foreign phonemes can be measured by using the Mi... more The development of native-like memory traces for foreign phonemes can be measured by using the Mismatch Negativity (MMN), a component of the auditory event-related potential. Previous studies have shown that the MMN is sensitive to changes in neural organization depending on language experience. Here we measured the MMN response in 5-6 year-old monolingual German and bilingual Turkish-German kindergarten children growing up in Germany. MMN was investigated to a German vowel contrast and to a vowel contrast that exists in Turkish and in German. The results show that compared to a German control group, the MMN response is less robust in Turkish-German children to the German vowel contrast. The response to the contrast that exists in both languages does not differ between groups. Overall, the results suggest that the Turkish-German children have not yet fully acquired the German phonetic inventory despite living in Germany since birth and being immersed in a German-speaking environment.
by Ewa Haman, Tanja Rinker, Kristine Jensen de López, Ciara O'Toole, Barbara Pomiechowska, Sari Kunnari, Svetlana Kapalková, MARIA KAMBANAROS, Bibi Janssen, Daniela Gatt, Anna Gavarró, and Darinka Anđelković
We present a new set of subjective Age of Acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141... more We present a new set of subjective Age of Acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in 25 languages from 5 language families (Afroasiatic: Semitic languages; Altaic: Turkic language: Indo-european: Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Slavic and Romance languages; Niger-Congo: Bantu language; Uralic: Finnic and Ugric languages). Adult native speakers reported the age at which they had learned each word. We present comparison of the AoA ratings across all languages by contrasting them in pairs. This comparison shows a consistency in the order of ratings across 25 languages. Data are then analysed (1) to ascertain how demographic characteristics of participants influence AoA estimations and (2) to assess differences caused by the exact form of target question (when did you learn vs. when do children learn this word); (3) to compare ratings obtained in our study to those of previous studies; and (4) to assess the validity of our study by comparison with quasi-objective AoA norms derived from MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs). All 299 words were judged as acquired early (mostly before the age of 6 years). AoA ratings were associated with the rater’s social or language status, but not with the rater’s age or education. Parents reported words to be learned earlier, and bilinguals later. Estimations of the age at which children learn the words revealed significantly lower ratings of AoA. Finally, comparisons with previous AoA and MB-CDI norms support the validity of the present estimations. Our AoA ratings are available for research or other purposes.