Tove Gerholm | Stockholm University (original) (raw)

Papers by Tove Gerholm

Glossa Psycholinguistics, Sep 13, 2023

A language user must rely on several different abilities to carry out a conversation, e.g. the ab... more A language user must rely on several different abilities to carry out a conversation, e.g. the ability to acknowledge the conversational contributions of others, to respond appropriately, to stay on topic, etc. There are many aspects of the development of conversational conduct that are yet unknown. In this study, the longitudinal development of conversational conduct, as in acknowledging one's interlocutor's previous turn, was traced from age 5;0 to 7;2. We also investigated whether conversational conduct was predicted by core language skill, executive functions, and specific pragmatic abilities. Previous findings of productive morphosyntactic accuracy were replicated, while findings concerning longitudinal receptive vocabulary were not. We also found connections between childrens' conversational responses and executive functions, working memory, and the comprehension of conversational implicatures. The results suggest that conversational conduct is dependent on inferring communicative intentions, as well as being able to keep track of others' contributions and how they relate to previous turns.

BMC Psychology, Sep 5, 2019

Background: During the preschool years, children's development of skills like language and commun... more Background: During the preschool years, children's development of skills like language and communication, executive functions, and socioemotional comprehension undergo dramatic development. Still, our knowledge of how these skills are enhanced is limited. The preschool contexts constitute a well-suited arena for investigating these skills and hold the potential for giving children an equal opportunity preparing for the school years to come. The present study compared two pedagogical methods in the Swedish preschool context as to their effect on language and communication, executive functions, socioemotional comprehension, and early math. The study targeted children in the age span four-to-six-year-old, with an additional focus on these children's backgrounds in terms of socioeconomic status, age, gender, number of languages, time spent at preschool, and preschool start. An additional goal of the study was to add to prior research by aiming at disentangling the relationship between the investigated variables. Method: The study constitutes a randomized controlled trial including 18 preschools and 29 preschool units, with a total of 431 children, and 98 teachers. The interventions lasted for 6 weeks, preceded by pre-testing and followed by post-testing of the children. Randomization was conducted on the level of preschool unit, to either of the two interventions or to control. The interventions consisted of a socioemotional and material learning paradigm (SEMLA) and a digitally implemented attention and math training paradigm (DIL). The preschools were further evaluated with ECERS-3. The main analysis was a series of univariate mixed regression models, where the nested structure of individuals, preschool units and preschools were modeled using random variables.

Gerholm, T. (2007). Socialization of verbal and nonverbal emotive expression in young children. D... more Gerholm, T. (2007). Socialization of verbal and nonverbal emotive expression in young children. Doctoral dissertation, Stockholm University: Dept. of Linguistics. The subject matter of this dissertation is children"s use and development of emotive expressions. While prior studies have either focused on facial expressions of emotions or on emotions in the social mechanisms of in situ interactions, this thesis opts to merge two traditions by applying an interactional approach to the interpretation of child-child and child-adult encounters. This approach is further supplemented with an interpretational frame stemming from studies on child development, sociology and psychology. In order to depict the multi-leveled process of socialization, a number of subareas are investigated such as the emotive expressions per se; how and when these expressions are used in interaction with parents and siblings; the kinds of responses the children get after using an emotive expression; parental acts (verbal or nonverbal) that bear on children"s conduct and their choice of such expressions. Finally, the relation between nonverbal displays and language as expressive means for emotions is analyzed from a developmental perspective. The data consists of video-recordings of five sibling groups in the ages between 1 ½ and 5 ½ who were followed for 2 ½ years in their home environment. In all, 19 recordings (15 h) were transcribed and analyzed. The results from the study lead to several different taxonomies previously not discussed in the pertinent literature: (i) the nonverbal, vocal and verbal emotive expressions used by children; (ii) the different means these expressions were put to in child-parent encounters; (iii) the ways relations to siblings can be seen as creating and shaping certain emotive processes. Furthermore, this work demonstrates that parental responses are of vital importance for the outcome of specific child expressions. As parents reprimand, comfort, praise and mediate in their interaction with their children, they create paths later used by the child as she practices and acquires her own expressive means for handling emotions in interactional contexts. Finally, a developmental frame of language and nonverbal acts is elaborated and suggested as a tool for discovering the paths of linguistic and emotional socialization.

Letter to parents. (PDF 282 kb)

An experimental study in which Swedish children, at the age of 7;0, partake in four tests, examin... more An experimental study in which Swedish children, at the age of 7;0, partake in four tests, examining aspects of both Pragmatic Production and Pragmatic Comprehension. In a novel test, the Audience Design test, a child needs to assess the frame of reference of their interlocutor to provide sufficient descriptions. The children will also partake in tests for Executive functions and Core language. The aim of the study is to answer the following questions, (1) Are children taking the world knowledge/reference frame of the listener into account in reference production? (2) Will measurements of a child's pragmatic production and pragmatic comprehension be correlated? (3, 4) Will measurements of a child's pragmatic production and pragmatic comprehension be explained by measurements of the child's core language skill, and executive functions respectively?

Supplementary ERP data. Supplementary ERP grand average plots for all head electrodes, HEOG and V... more Supplementary ERP data. Supplementary ERP grand average plots for all head electrodes, HEOG and VEOG. 1. All pre intervention 2. All post intervention 3. Control pre 4. Control post 5. DIL pre 6. DIL post 7. SEMLA pre 8. SEMLA post. (XLSX 15 kb)

All Univariate results and all Multivariate results. All tests for univariate and multivariate re... more All Univariate results and all Multivariate results. All tests for univariate and multivariate regressions. (PDF 53 kb)

SEMLA. Observation protocols. Observation protocols featuring the seven components and the proces... more SEMLA. Observation protocols. Observation protocols featuring the seven components and the processes of the group and individual children. (DOCX 72 kb)

Background During the preschool years, children develop abilities and skills in areas crucial for... more Background During the preschool years, children develop abilities and skills in areas crucial for later success in life. These abilities include language, executive functions, attention, and socioemotional skills. The pedagogical methods used in preschools hold the potential to enhance these abilities, but our knowledge of which pedagogical practices aid which abilities, and for which children, is limited. The aim of this paper is to describe an intervention study designed to evaluate and compare two pedagogical methodologies in terms of their effect on the above-mentioned skills in Swedish preschool children. Method The study is a randomized control trial (RCT) where two pedagogical methodologies were tested to evaluate how they enhanced children's language, executive functions and attention, socioemotional skills, and early maths skills during an intensive 6-week intervention. Eighteen preschools including 28 units and 432 children were enrolled in a municipality close to Stoc...

International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 2010

To evaluate a case management (CM) model for people with mild dementia, whereby resources within ... more To evaluate a case management (CM) model for people with mild dementia, whereby resources within the family and in the community were mobilized and optimally used. Community dwelling psychiatric and geriatrics outpatients with mild dementia were randomized to receive CM by a trained occupational therapist for 4 months (CM group, N = 59) or usual care only (control group, N = 43). Primary outcome indicators included the Zarit Burden Scale (ZBI), General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), and Personal Well-Being Index for Adult (PWI-A) of the family caregivers. Secondary outcome indicators included the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI), Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia (CSDD), and Personal Well-Being Index for Intellectually Disabled (PWI-ID) of the demented subjects as measured at fourth and twelfth months. CSDDis reduced in the CM group at fourth month, but not at twelfth month. The changes in outcome variables of persons with dementia did not differ between the groups (Mann-Whitney U-test, p > 0.05). At follow-up, CM group used more day care and domestic helpers than control group (chi (2), p > 0.05). Case management for Chinese persons with mild dementia outpatients did not show significant effects in reducing caregiver burden, but encouraged family caregivers to seek external support.

Forskolan ar viktig for barns sprak- och kommunikations- utveckling, sarskilt for dem som inte ha... more Forskolan ar viktig for barns sprak- och kommunikations- utveckling, sarskilt for dem som inte har optimala forutsattningar. Den som har latt for kommunikation har en fordel i livet. Genom att stot ...

DIL. Intervention protocol. DIL. Instructions to teachers for how to implement the digital learni... more DIL. Intervention protocol. DIL. Instructions to teachers for how to implement the digital learning paradigm for Magical Garden and body-and-mind exercises. (DOCX 594 kb)

The subject matter of this dissertation is children’s use and development of emotive expressions.... more The subject matter of this dissertation is children’s use and development of emotive expressions. While prior studies have either focused on facial expressions of emotions or on emotions in the soc ...

The underlying question in most work on gestures is how the relation between gesture and speech s... more The underlying question in most work on gestures is how the relation between gesture and speech should be understood. This is also the fundamental question in this presentation, where focus is on children’s gestures in relation to language development and socialization.Gesture studies on adult interaction tend to divide gestural movements into various kinds depending on their assumed relation to spoken language. The group of gestures which have received most attention in the scientific world is the so called “co-speech gestures”, i.e. hand- and arm movements that occur simultaneously with speech and that are integrated temporally and semantically with the verbal utterance (Kendon, 1981, 2004; McNeill, 1992, 2005).In child language studies, the term co-speech gestures is not used as frequently, although the gestures actually described tend to be within that domain, e.g. the deictic pointing gesture co-occurring with “there” (Tomasello et al.,2007; Rowe et al.,2008). Other child gestu...

The Swedish MINT-project – or, the quest to pull apart and put together constituents of verbal an... more The Swedish MINT-project – or, the quest to pull apart and put together constituents of verbal and nonverbal interaction

WILD 2015 is the second Workshop on Infant Language Development, held June 10-12 2015 in Stockhol... more WILD 2015 is the second Workshop on Infant Language Development, held June 10-12 2015 in Stockholm, Sweden. WILD 2015 was organized by Stockholm Babylab and the Department of Linguistics, Stockholm ...

Modellering av foralder-barn interaktion (MINT) : Komponenter hos audio-visuella ledtradar och de... more Modellering av foralder-barn interaktion (MINT) : Komponenter hos audio-visuella ledtradar och deras konsekvenser for sprakinlarning

Conventions for annotation and transcription of the MINT-project : Modulating child language acqu... more Conventions for annotation and transcription of the MINT-project : Modulating child language acquisition through parent-child interaction, MAW:2011.007

Glossa Psycholinguistics, Sep 13, 2023

A language user must rely on several different abilities to carry out a conversation, e.g. the ab... more A language user must rely on several different abilities to carry out a conversation, e.g. the ability to acknowledge the conversational contributions of others, to respond appropriately, to stay on topic, etc. There are many aspects of the development of conversational conduct that are yet unknown. In this study, the longitudinal development of conversational conduct, as in acknowledging one's interlocutor's previous turn, was traced from age 5;0 to 7;2. We also investigated whether conversational conduct was predicted by core language skill, executive functions, and specific pragmatic abilities. Previous findings of productive morphosyntactic accuracy were replicated, while findings concerning longitudinal receptive vocabulary were not. We also found connections between childrens' conversational responses and executive functions, working memory, and the comprehension of conversational implicatures. The results suggest that conversational conduct is dependent on inferring communicative intentions, as well as being able to keep track of others' contributions and how they relate to previous turns.

BMC Psychology, Sep 5, 2019

Background: During the preschool years, children's development of skills like language and commun... more Background: During the preschool years, children's development of skills like language and communication, executive functions, and socioemotional comprehension undergo dramatic development. Still, our knowledge of how these skills are enhanced is limited. The preschool contexts constitute a well-suited arena for investigating these skills and hold the potential for giving children an equal opportunity preparing for the school years to come. The present study compared two pedagogical methods in the Swedish preschool context as to their effect on language and communication, executive functions, socioemotional comprehension, and early math. The study targeted children in the age span four-to-six-year-old, with an additional focus on these children's backgrounds in terms of socioeconomic status, age, gender, number of languages, time spent at preschool, and preschool start. An additional goal of the study was to add to prior research by aiming at disentangling the relationship between the investigated variables. Method: The study constitutes a randomized controlled trial including 18 preschools and 29 preschool units, with a total of 431 children, and 98 teachers. The interventions lasted for 6 weeks, preceded by pre-testing and followed by post-testing of the children. Randomization was conducted on the level of preschool unit, to either of the two interventions or to control. The interventions consisted of a socioemotional and material learning paradigm (SEMLA) and a digitally implemented attention and math training paradigm (DIL). The preschools were further evaluated with ECERS-3. The main analysis was a series of univariate mixed regression models, where the nested structure of individuals, preschool units and preschools were modeled using random variables.

Gerholm, T. (2007). Socialization of verbal and nonverbal emotive expression in young children. D... more Gerholm, T. (2007). Socialization of verbal and nonverbal emotive expression in young children. Doctoral dissertation, Stockholm University: Dept. of Linguistics. The subject matter of this dissertation is children"s use and development of emotive expressions. While prior studies have either focused on facial expressions of emotions or on emotions in the social mechanisms of in situ interactions, this thesis opts to merge two traditions by applying an interactional approach to the interpretation of child-child and child-adult encounters. This approach is further supplemented with an interpretational frame stemming from studies on child development, sociology and psychology. In order to depict the multi-leveled process of socialization, a number of subareas are investigated such as the emotive expressions per se; how and when these expressions are used in interaction with parents and siblings; the kinds of responses the children get after using an emotive expression; parental acts (verbal or nonverbal) that bear on children"s conduct and their choice of such expressions. Finally, the relation between nonverbal displays and language as expressive means for emotions is analyzed from a developmental perspective. The data consists of video-recordings of five sibling groups in the ages between 1 ½ and 5 ½ who were followed for 2 ½ years in their home environment. In all, 19 recordings (15 h) were transcribed and analyzed. The results from the study lead to several different taxonomies previously not discussed in the pertinent literature: (i) the nonverbal, vocal and verbal emotive expressions used by children; (ii) the different means these expressions were put to in child-parent encounters; (iii) the ways relations to siblings can be seen as creating and shaping certain emotive processes. Furthermore, this work demonstrates that parental responses are of vital importance for the outcome of specific child expressions. As parents reprimand, comfort, praise and mediate in their interaction with their children, they create paths later used by the child as she practices and acquires her own expressive means for handling emotions in interactional contexts. Finally, a developmental frame of language and nonverbal acts is elaborated and suggested as a tool for discovering the paths of linguistic and emotional socialization.

Letter to parents. (PDF 282 kb)

An experimental study in which Swedish children, at the age of 7;0, partake in four tests, examin... more An experimental study in which Swedish children, at the age of 7;0, partake in four tests, examining aspects of both Pragmatic Production and Pragmatic Comprehension. In a novel test, the Audience Design test, a child needs to assess the frame of reference of their interlocutor to provide sufficient descriptions. The children will also partake in tests for Executive functions and Core language. The aim of the study is to answer the following questions, (1) Are children taking the world knowledge/reference frame of the listener into account in reference production? (2) Will measurements of a child's pragmatic production and pragmatic comprehension be correlated? (3, 4) Will measurements of a child's pragmatic production and pragmatic comprehension be explained by measurements of the child's core language skill, and executive functions respectively?

Supplementary ERP data. Supplementary ERP grand average plots for all head electrodes, HEOG and V... more Supplementary ERP data. Supplementary ERP grand average plots for all head electrodes, HEOG and VEOG. 1. All pre intervention 2. All post intervention 3. Control pre 4. Control post 5. DIL pre 6. DIL post 7. SEMLA pre 8. SEMLA post. (XLSX 15 kb)

All Univariate results and all Multivariate results. All tests for univariate and multivariate re... more All Univariate results and all Multivariate results. All tests for univariate and multivariate regressions. (PDF 53 kb)

SEMLA. Observation protocols. Observation protocols featuring the seven components and the proces... more SEMLA. Observation protocols. Observation protocols featuring the seven components and the processes of the group and individual children. (DOCX 72 kb)

Background During the preschool years, children develop abilities and skills in areas crucial for... more Background During the preschool years, children develop abilities and skills in areas crucial for later success in life. These abilities include language, executive functions, attention, and socioemotional skills. The pedagogical methods used in preschools hold the potential to enhance these abilities, but our knowledge of which pedagogical practices aid which abilities, and for which children, is limited. The aim of this paper is to describe an intervention study designed to evaluate and compare two pedagogical methodologies in terms of their effect on the above-mentioned skills in Swedish preschool children. Method The study is a randomized control trial (RCT) where two pedagogical methodologies were tested to evaluate how they enhanced children's language, executive functions and attention, socioemotional skills, and early maths skills during an intensive 6-week intervention. Eighteen preschools including 28 units and 432 children were enrolled in a municipality close to Stoc...

International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 2010

To evaluate a case management (CM) model for people with mild dementia, whereby resources within ... more To evaluate a case management (CM) model for people with mild dementia, whereby resources within the family and in the community were mobilized and optimally used. Community dwelling psychiatric and geriatrics outpatients with mild dementia were randomized to receive CM by a trained occupational therapist for 4 months (CM group, N = 59) or usual care only (control group, N = 43). Primary outcome indicators included the Zarit Burden Scale (ZBI), General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), and Personal Well-Being Index for Adult (PWI-A) of the family caregivers. Secondary outcome indicators included the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI), Cornell Scale for Depression in Dementia (CSDD), and Personal Well-Being Index for Intellectually Disabled (PWI-ID) of the demented subjects as measured at fourth and twelfth months. CSDDis reduced in the CM group at fourth month, but not at twelfth month. The changes in outcome variables of persons with dementia did not differ between the groups (Mann-Whitney U-test, p > 0.05). At follow-up, CM group used more day care and domestic helpers than control group (chi (2), p > 0.05). Case management for Chinese persons with mild dementia outpatients did not show significant effects in reducing caregiver burden, but encouraged family caregivers to seek external support.

Forskolan ar viktig for barns sprak- och kommunikations- utveckling, sarskilt for dem som inte ha... more Forskolan ar viktig for barns sprak- och kommunikations- utveckling, sarskilt for dem som inte har optimala forutsattningar. Den som har latt for kommunikation har en fordel i livet. Genom att stot ...

DIL. Intervention protocol. DIL. Instructions to teachers for how to implement the digital learni... more DIL. Intervention protocol. DIL. Instructions to teachers for how to implement the digital learning paradigm for Magical Garden and body-and-mind exercises. (DOCX 594 kb)

The subject matter of this dissertation is children’s use and development of emotive expressions.... more The subject matter of this dissertation is children’s use and development of emotive expressions. While prior studies have either focused on facial expressions of emotions or on emotions in the soc ...

The underlying question in most work on gestures is how the relation between gesture and speech s... more The underlying question in most work on gestures is how the relation between gesture and speech should be understood. This is also the fundamental question in this presentation, where focus is on children’s gestures in relation to language development and socialization.Gesture studies on adult interaction tend to divide gestural movements into various kinds depending on their assumed relation to spoken language. The group of gestures which have received most attention in the scientific world is the so called “co-speech gestures”, i.e. hand- and arm movements that occur simultaneously with speech and that are integrated temporally and semantically with the verbal utterance (Kendon, 1981, 2004; McNeill, 1992, 2005).In child language studies, the term co-speech gestures is not used as frequently, although the gestures actually described tend to be within that domain, e.g. the deictic pointing gesture co-occurring with “there” (Tomasello et al.,2007; Rowe et al.,2008). Other child gestu...

The Swedish MINT-project – or, the quest to pull apart and put together constituents of verbal an... more The Swedish MINT-project – or, the quest to pull apart and put together constituents of verbal and nonverbal interaction

WILD 2015 is the second Workshop on Infant Language Development, held June 10-12 2015 in Stockhol... more WILD 2015 is the second Workshop on Infant Language Development, held June 10-12 2015 in Stockholm, Sweden. WILD 2015 was organized by Stockholm Babylab and the Department of Linguistics, Stockholm ...

Modellering av foralder-barn interaktion (MINT) : Komponenter hos audio-visuella ledtradar och de... more Modellering av foralder-barn interaktion (MINT) : Komponenter hos audio-visuella ledtradar och deras konsekvenser for sprakinlarning

Conventions for annotation and transcription of the MINT-project : Modulating child language acqu... more Conventions for annotation and transcription of the MINT-project : Modulating child language acquisition through parent-child interaction, MAW:2011.007