Edy Veneziano | Université Paris Descartes (original) (raw)

Papers by Edy Veneziano

Colloque International RRR 200

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2006

no abstrac

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2009

Autistic children with moderate mental retardation and relatively preserved language development ... more Autistic children with moderate mental retardation and relatively preserved language development encounter specific difficulties relating to diagnostic and evaluation a) they are often diagnosed later than more severely affected children; b) even when autism is suspected or recognized by trained clinicians, the social environment of these children may have difficulties in identifying the nature of their communicative failures. Testing these children's language and social knowledge in experimental settings does not reveal clearly where the problems are situated. Indeed, current tests of language and social understanding abilities do not capture specifically the pragmatic dimension of autistic children's communicative behavior. The aim of this study was to conduct a precise evaluation of these children's use of verbal and nonverbal behaviors in socially-meaningful ways, when engaged in ecologically-valid interactions. We studied particular kinds of interactional events –Oppositional Episodes - because they are a) clearly identifiable b) occur naturally in everyday interactions c) are particularly demanding from the viewpoint of socio-pragmatic adaptation d) can be analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively and e) are suitable to highlight both typical and atypical interactional functioning. Participants were 6 autistic children (diagnosed by experienced clinicians with DSMI-IV and ADI-R), 6 typically developing children matched on verbal age (VA levels: 3-4 and 6-7 years) and 3 additional 2 year-olds providing the "floor" level functioning on the behaviors studied. All the children were videorecorded at home during meals and play contexts. All naturally occurring oppositional episodes were systematically coded according to well defined criteria (inter-rater reliability: .85), including justifications and manners of insistence or acceptance. Verbally less advanced autistic children (VA: 3-4yrs) produce less justifications then verbal age matched controls (the rate is similar to that of 2yr olds) but the persuasive effectiveness of their justifications is similar. Verbally more advanced autistic children (VA: 6-7yrs) produce the same proportion of justifications then typically-developing controls but their justifications are less effective in persuading their partners who tend to counter-argument what are considered unclear reasons. Furthermore, these children do not seem to be immediately convinced by the justifications offered by their partners, who justify as much as controls their oppositional moves. Conclusions: In this approach, a relatively small sample of mother-child naturally occurring interaction is able to show areas of pragmatic functioning and dysfunctioning and to establish, for each dyad, a differential assessment of their communicative interactions in everyday life. Specific difficulties seem to reside in the partners' interpretation of each other's communicative intentions (implicit theory of mind).

Remediation programs aiming at improving children's reading comprehension most often focus on... more Remediation programs aiming at improving children's reading comprehension most often focus on low-level units (letters, phonological awareness and local decoding) as if mastery at this level were sufficient for the comprehension of texts. Several studies show that this is not so straightforward. Indeed, children may very well master low-level decoding without understanding what they are reading. We believe that promoting narrative skills is a more useful and efficient approach. In this study we present the progression of children's oral and written discourse as they relate to writing and reading skills. 20 children with language difficulties (SLI??) were seen at the beginning and at the end of the first year of schooling (when they were respectively, around 6 and 7 years of age). At each time, two measures of structured oral narratives (recall of a story and construction of a story from a set of images) and measures of emergent reading and writing were gathered. At the end of the year two additional measures concerned reading comprehension (recall and inferential questions) and the writing up of a story. In between these two time periods children participated in "pedagogical interventions" centered on the causal links among events of narratives, through oral and written productions. Results show a progression in the structure and in the morphosyntactic extension (T-units) of oral narratives, a progression that correlates with the reading and writing capacities at the end of the school year. Results are discussed in relation to the pedagogical and interactional model implemented.

Studying when children start to make use of language in a more informative way is important for c... more Studying when children start to make use of language in a more informative way is important for comprehending how they practice the pragmatic competence. Thus, the objective is to verify the uses of informative language in utterances of explanation/justification. To accomplish this objective, the explanation phenomenon is theoretically delimited and some examples with French children are presented. The examples are based on data of their pragamatic development obtained in interactional situation.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Jun 27, 2021

symposium organisé par R. Mitchel

Introduction Les explications de type "pourquoi", celles qui fournissent la cause, la raison ou l... more Introduction Les explications de type "pourquoi", celles qui fournissent la cause, la raison ou la motivation d'un événement ou d'un acte sont, en théorie de la conversation, "une caractéristique normative d'actions inattendues" (Heritage, 1990), c'est à dire , d'actions qui, comme telles, peuvent poser problème au partenaire. On souligne que "... l'absence d'explications ("accounts", au sens de ce qui explique ou justifie) stimule chez l'interlocuteur la demande d'explication ..." (ibidem, p.35, traduction de l'auteur). Fournir une explication ou une justification, et tirer les conséquences de l'explication ou de la justification apportée par son propre interlocuteur, sont donc, dans notre culture, des savoir-faire linguistiques essentiels aux rôles de locuteurs/interlocuteurs compétents de la langue. Comme souligné précédemment (par exemple, Veneziano & Sinclair, 1995; Veneziano, 1999; Veneziano & Hudelot, 2002), la conduite explicative à laquelle nous nous intéressons est une conduite interlocutoire qui se déploie dans l'interaction et dont la visée est, comme le dit Grize (1996, p. 8), d'amener son interlocuteur "à croire, à faire, à vouloir quelque chose" mais aussi à excuser ou à faire comprendre, sinon, accepter, le point de vue du locuteur. Ainsi, ce qui caractérise cette famille de conduites explicatives (appelées CEJs-pour conduites explicatives/justificatives-par Veneziano & Hudelot, 2002, et distinguées d'autres figures comme l'argumentation, l'explicitation et l'explication causale; voir aussi Hudelot, ce volume) est de s'occuper des relations interpersonnelles. L'aspect interpersonnel des CEJs est inhérent à la nature même de ces actes. En effet, l'explication est à la base un acte communicatif à deux mouvements dont le premier est celui de considérer qu'une action ou un événement peut constituer un explanandum pour l'interlocuteur, et le deuxième est d'apporter alors ce que le locuteur considère sa cause ou sa raison (l'explanans) pour résoudre ou alléger le problème interlocutoire ainsi créé. Dans ces épisodes, comme dans tant d'autres expériences interactionnelles de la vie quotidienne, il y a de la socialisation en actes. Ce qui est intéressant pour notre propos n'est pas tellement de relever comment le langage est fortement impliqué dans le processus de socialisation des enfants en leur apprenant, de manière souvent explicite, les règles et les desiderata de la culture et de la société dans laquelle ils évoluent (voir, par exemple, Gleason, Ely, Perlman & Narashiman, 1996 ; Preneron & Vasseur, ce volume). Ainsi, dans cet article, nous ne nous intéressons pas à la socialisation de l'enfant à travers les explications. Notre intérêt principal est dans la composante psycholinguistique, de ce que Gleason et al. appellent la socialisation linguistique : comment les enfants apprennent à utiliser le langage de manière socialement et culturellement appropriée. Plus particulièrement, on s'intéressera à l'émergence et au développement de la

Ce programme de recherche concerne la comprehension de la langue ecrite et la maitrise de la narr... more Ce programme de recherche concerne la comprehension de la langue ecrite et la maitrise de la narration orale, deux competences correlees entre elles et a la reussite scolaire. La ou la plupart des etudes et des programmes d'intervention sur la comprehension en lecture s'appuient sur une intervention axee sur de petites unites (la connaissance des lettres, la conscience phonologique, le decodage), plusieurs etudes montrent que les enfants en difficulte peuvent tres bien maitriser ces elements de decodage, sans toutefois comprendre ce qu'ils lisent (Dewitz & Dewitz, 2003). Le partenariat CFQCU, en permettant d'allier les expertises specifiques des equipes francaise et quebecoise, a donne une impulsion decisive a un programme qui vise l'amelioration des competences en lecture par un travail sur les competences narratives des enfants en intervenant, des le prescolaire, au niveau du sens et de la structuration des discours. Il est en effet amplement demontre que les echanges verbaux en cours d'activite permettent aux enfants de mieux construire les objets de savoir complexe comme celui de la langue, autant a l'oral qu'a l'ecrit. Des methodes d'intervention, principalement dialogiques, viseront la production de narrations coherentes a travers la construction de sens quant aux causes des evenements ainsi qu'aux buts et aux motivations des personnages (Makdissi & Boisclair, 2006, 2008; Veneziano, 2002; Trabasso & Wiley, 2005). Specifiquement, dans un cadre de formation des etudiants et des enseignants, deux etudes principales seront effectuees : 1. une etude mixte, transversale et mini-longitudinale, visant principalement a evaluer l'effet de differentes methodes d'intervention sur les capacites narratives des enfants et sur leur capacite de lecture ; 2. une etude longitudinale de terrain visant a implementer des interventions pedagogiques en matiere de recit et d'evaluer a differents moments les capacites de lecture des eleves, en les comparant avec la progression observee dans un groupe controle n'ayant pas participe aux interventions pedagogiques pendant l'annee.

Verbs and nouns may differ in many ways - semantic, syntactic, morphological and phonological - a... more Verbs and nouns may differ in many ways - semantic, syntactic, morphological and phonological - all of them relevant in their identification, acquisition and use. This paper focuses on French and on the syntactic distinction by which French nouns and verbs occur in their immediate constituents: nouns are usually preceded by determiners while verbs are preceded by pronouns, auxiliaries or prepositions, or appear "bear" in the imperative form. When do children start to manifest some understanding of this formal difference among words? Studies of early production suggest that in the second year children use fillers (vocalic segments added to child-produced words, e.g. Peters & Menn, 1993) to primitively mark this distinction between nouns and verbs (e.g., Veneziano & Sinclair, 2000). How about comprehension? Can children infer the meaning of a word uniquely on the basis of its preceding linguistic context? To answer this question, 90 French children of 2, 3 and 4 years (30 at each age level) were confronted with pairs of images, one representing an object and the other an action, projected concomitantly on a television screen. For each pair, children were asked to show where they "saw X", where X was a word - an homophone - that could function as a noun or a verb, the only distinguishing mark being whether it was preceded by the determinate article or by the subject pronoun. 12 stimuli were French homophones (like /pus/ meaning thumb when preceded by "le" and push when preceded by "il") and 3 were nonce words (e.g., le chime / il chime), for which strange objects and unfamiliar actions were used. Requests with noun and verb functions, and the position of the requested item on the screen, were controlled. Children were administered one of four lists of randomly generated order of items. All lists were presented to an equal number of subjects. Children were considered to "pass" the task if they succeeded a number of items greater then expected on the basis of chance alone (at least 10 of the total 15 with p<.05). Results show (see Table 1) that at 2 years already 50% of the children can identify the image as a function of the word's linguistic environment, showing an early sensitivity to specific linguistic properties of the language even in the absence of other supporting evidence. This proportion increases with age reaching more then 90% at 4 years. No difference between items requesting nouns or verbs was found.

Colloque International RRR 200

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2006

no abstrac

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2009

Autistic children with moderate mental retardation and relatively preserved language development ... more Autistic children with moderate mental retardation and relatively preserved language development encounter specific difficulties relating to diagnostic and evaluation a) they are often diagnosed later than more severely affected children; b) even when autism is suspected or recognized by trained clinicians, the social environment of these children may have difficulties in identifying the nature of their communicative failures. Testing these children's language and social knowledge in experimental settings does not reveal clearly where the problems are situated. Indeed, current tests of language and social understanding abilities do not capture specifically the pragmatic dimension of autistic children's communicative behavior. The aim of this study was to conduct a precise evaluation of these children's use of verbal and nonverbal behaviors in socially-meaningful ways, when engaged in ecologically-valid interactions. We studied particular kinds of interactional events –Oppositional Episodes - because they are a) clearly identifiable b) occur naturally in everyday interactions c) are particularly demanding from the viewpoint of socio-pragmatic adaptation d) can be analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively and e) are suitable to highlight both typical and atypical interactional functioning. Participants were 6 autistic children (diagnosed by experienced clinicians with DSMI-IV and ADI-R), 6 typically developing children matched on verbal age (VA levels: 3-4 and 6-7 years) and 3 additional 2 year-olds providing the "floor" level functioning on the behaviors studied. All the children were videorecorded at home during meals and play contexts. All naturally occurring oppositional episodes were systematically coded according to well defined criteria (inter-rater reliability: .85), including justifications and manners of insistence or acceptance. Verbally less advanced autistic children (VA: 3-4yrs) produce less justifications then verbal age matched controls (the rate is similar to that of 2yr olds) but the persuasive effectiveness of their justifications is similar. Verbally more advanced autistic children (VA: 6-7yrs) produce the same proportion of justifications then typically-developing controls but their justifications are less effective in persuading their partners who tend to counter-argument what are considered unclear reasons. Furthermore, these children do not seem to be immediately convinced by the justifications offered by their partners, who justify as much as controls their oppositional moves. Conclusions: In this approach, a relatively small sample of mother-child naturally occurring interaction is able to show areas of pragmatic functioning and dysfunctioning and to establish, for each dyad, a differential assessment of their communicative interactions in everyday life. Specific difficulties seem to reside in the partners' interpretation of each other's communicative intentions (implicit theory of mind).

Remediation programs aiming at improving children's reading comprehension most often focus on... more Remediation programs aiming at improving children's reading comprehension most often focus on low-level units (letters, phonological awareness and local decoding) as if mastery at this level were sufficient for the comprehension of texts. Several studies show that this is not so straightforward. Indeed, children may very well master low-level decoding without understanding what they are reading. We believe that promoting narrative skills is a more useful and efficient approach. In this study we present the progression of children's oral and written discourse as they relate to writing and reading skills. 20 children with language difficulties (SLI??) were seen at the beginning and at the end of the first year of schooling (when they were respectively, around 6 and 7 years of age). At each time, two measures of structured oral narratives (recall of a story and construction of a story from a set of images) and measures of emergent reading and writing were gathered. At the end of the year two additional measures concerned reading comprehension (recall and inferential questions) and the writing up of a story. In between these two time periods children participated in "pedagogical interventions" centered on the causal links among events of narratives, through oral and written productions. Results show a progression in the structure and in the morphosyntactic extension (T-units) of oral narratives, a progression that correlates with the reading and writing capacities at the end of the school year. Results are discussed in relation to the pedagogical and interactional model implemented.

Studying when children start to make use of language in a more informative way is important for c... more Studying when children start to make use of language in a more informative way is important for comprehending how they practice the pragmatic competence. Thus, the objective is to verify the uses of informative language in utterances of explanation/justification. To accomplish this objective, the explanation phenomenon is theoretically delimited and some examples with French children are presented. The examples are based on data of their pragamatic development obtained in interactional situation.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Jun 27, 2021

symposium organisé par R. Mitchel

Introduction Les explications de type "pourquoi", celles qui fournissent la cause, la raison ou l... more Introduction Les explications de type "pourquoi", celles qui fournissent la cause, la raison ou la motivation d'un événement ou d'un acte sont, en théorie de la conversation, "une caractéristique normative d'actions inattendues" (Heritage, 1990), c'est à dire , d'actions qui, comme telles, peuvent poser problème au partenaire. On souligne que "... l'absence d'explications ("accounts", au sens de ce qui explique ou justifie) stimule chez l'interlocuteur la demande d'explication ..." (ibidem, p.35, traduction de l'auteur). Fournir une explication ou une justification, et tirer les conséquences de l'explication ou de la justification apportée par son propre interlocuteur, sont donc, dans notre culture, des savoir-faire linguistiques essentiels aux rôles de locuteurs/interlocuteurs compétents de la langue. Comme souligné précédemment (par exemple, Veneziano & Sinclair, 1995; Veneziano, 1999; Veneziano & Hudelot, 2002), la conduite explicative à laquelle nous nous intéressons est une conduite interlocutoire qui se déploie dans l'interaction et dont la visée est, comme le dit Grize (1996, p. 8), d'amener son interlocuteur "à croire, à faire, à vouloir quelque chose" mais aussi à excuser ou à faire comprendre, sinon, accepter, le point de vue du locuteur. Ainsi, ce qui caractérise cette famille de conduites explicatives (appelées CEJs-pour conduites explicatives/justificatives-par Veneziano & Hudelot, 2002, et distinguées d'autres figures comme l'argumentation, l'explicitation et l'explication causale; voir aussi Hudelot, ce volume) est de s'occuper des relations interpersonnelles. L'aspect interpersonnel des CEJs est inhérent à la nature même de ces actes. En effet, l'explication est à la base un acte communicatif à deux mouvements dont le premier est celui de considérer qu'une action ou un événement peut constituer un explanandum pour l'interlocuteur, et le deuxième est d'apporter alors ce que le locuteur considère sa cause ou sa raison (l'explanans) pour résoudre ou alléger le problème interlocutoire ainsi créé. Dans ces épisodes, comme dans tant d'autres expériences interactionnelles de la vie quotidienne, il y a de la socialisation en actes. Ce qui est intéressant pour notre propos n'est pas tellement de relever comment le langage est fortement impliqué dans le processus de socialisation des enfants en leur apprenant, de manière souvent explicite, les règles et les desiderata de la culture et de la société dans laquelle ils évoluent (voir, par exemple, Gleason, Ely, Perlman & Narashiman, 1996 ; Preneron & Vasseur, ce volume). Ainsi, dans cet article, nous ne nous intéressons pas à la socialisation de l'enfant à travers les explications. Notre intérêt principal est dans la composante psycholinguistique, de ce que Gleason et al. appellent la socialisation linguistique : comment les enfants apprennent à utiliser le langage de manière socialement et culturellement appropriée. Plus particulièrement, on s'intéressera à l'émergence et au développement de la

Ce programme de recherche concerne la comprehension de la langue ecrite et la maitrise de la narr... more Ce programme de recherche concerne la comprehension de la langue ecrite et la maitrise de la narration orale, deux competences correlees entre elles et a la reussite scolaire. La ou la plupart des etudes et des programmes d'intervention sur la comprehension en lecture s'appuient sur une intervention axee sur de petites unites (la connaissance des lettres, la conscience phonologique, le decodage), plusieurs etudes montrent que les enfants en difficulte peuvent tres bien maitriser ces elements de decodage, sans toutefois comprendre ce qu'ils lisent (Dewitz & Dewitz, 2003). Le partenariat CFQCU, en permettant d'allier les expertises specifiques des equipes francaise et quebecoise, a donne une impulsion decisive a un programme qui vise l'amelioration des competences en lecture par un travail sur les competences narratives des enfants en intervenant, des le prescolaire, au niveau du sens et de la structuration des discours. Il est en effet amplement demontre que les echanges verbaux en cours d'activite permettent aux enfants de mieux construire les objets de savoir complexe comme celui de la langue, autant a l'oral qu'a l'ecrit. Des methodes d'intervention, principalement dialogiques, viseront la production de narrations coherentes a travers la construction de sens quant aux causes des evenements ainsi qu'aux buts et aux motivations des personnages (Makdissi & Boisclair, 2006, 2008; Veneziano, 2002; Trabasso & Wiley, 2005). Specifiquement, dans un cadre de formation des etudiants et des enseignants, deux etudes principales seront effectuees : 1. une etude mixte, transversale et mini-longitudinale, visant principalement a evaluer l'effet de differentes methodes d'intervention sur les capacites narratives des enfants et sur leur capacite de lecture ; 2. une etude longitudinale de terrain visant a implementer des interventions pedagogiques en matiere de recit et d'evaluer a differents moments les capacites de lecture des eleves, en les comparant avec la progression observee dans un groupe controle n'ayant pas participe aux interventions pedagogiques pendant l'annee.

Verbs and nouns may differ in many ways - semantic, syntactic, morphological and phonological - a... more Verbs and nouns may differ in many ways - semantic, syntactic, morphological and phonological - all of them relevant in their identification, acquisition and use. This paper focuses on French and on the syntactic distinction by which French nouns and verbs occur in their immediate constituents: nouns are usually preceded by determiners while verbs are preceded by pronouns, auxiliaries or prepositions, or appear "bear" in the imperative form. When do children start to manifest some understanding of this formal difference among words? Studies of early production suggest that in the second year children use fillers (vocalic segments added to child-produced words, e.g. Peters & Menn, 1993) to primitively mark this distinction between nouns and verbs (e.g., Veneziano & Sinclair, 2000). How about comprehension? Can children infer the meaning of a word uniquely on the basis of its preceding linguistic context? To answer this question, 90 French children of 2, 3 and 4 years (30 at each age level) were confronted with pairs of images, one representing an object and the other an action, projected concomitantly on a television screen. For each pair, children were asked to show where they "saw X", where X was a word - an homophone - that could function as a noun or a verb, the only distinguishing mark being whether it was preceded by the determinate article or by the subject pronoun. 12 stimuli were French homophones (like /pus/ meaning thumb when preceded by "le" and push when preceded by "il") and 3 were nonce words (e.g., le chime / il chime), for which strange objects and unfamiliar actions were used. Requests with noun and verb functions, and the position of the requested item on the screen, were controlled. Children were administered one of four lists of randomly generated order of items. All lists were presented to an equal number of subjects. Children were considered to "pass" the task if they succeeded a number of items greater then expected on the basis of chance alone (at least 10 of the total 15 with p<.05). Results show (see Table 1) that at 2 years already 50% of the children can identify the image as a function of the word's linguistic environment, showing an early sensitivity to specific linguistic properties of the language even in the absence of other supporting evidence. This proportion increases with age reaching more then 90% at 4 years. No difference between items requesting nouns or verbs was found.

This chapter describes a short conversational intervention (SCI) procedure aiming to promote narr... more This chapter describes a short conversational intervention (SCI) procedure aiming to promote narrative skills in young children. The SCI solicits children's thinking and talk about the causes of the events in a story of a misunderstanding between two characters, The Stone story. We first report results obtained in several previous studies of typically-developing (TD) children in the 4-to 10-year age range, showing the positive immediate, as well as delayed, effect of the procedure from 6 years of age onwards. We then present a new study investigating whether the SCI could also help children with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to narrate stories containing more causal and mental content. Results show that after the SCI these children, like the TD matched controls, provided more explanations and attributed more internal states to the characters, although the latter to a lesser degree than TD controls. The socio-cognitive processes underlying these changes, as well as the implications of using this intervention procedure, are discussed.

Ninety French-speaking children aged 2-to 4 years were asked to retrieve the meaning of homophono... more Ninety French-speaking children aged 2-to 4 years were asked to retrieve the meaning of homophonous or nonce words presented in noun and verb grammatical contexts and whose object or action meaning is identifiable on the sole basis of the preceding grammatical morpheme. Items with these words in noun and verb contexts are presented to the same children in order to assess their ability to provide appropriate contrastive interpretations. Results show that, at all ages, items were correctly identified beyond chance, with 4-year-olds outperforming the 2-and 3year-olds. On an individual subject basis, however, only part of the children, even in the 4-years old group, performed beyond chance level, suggesting substantial interindividual variability and that, at these ages, children's grammatical knowledge

Producing narratives where events are explained and the behaviors of the characters are considere... more Producing narratives where events are explained and the behaviors of the characters are considered through their psychological and epistemic states, requires not only linguistic and pragmatic competences, but also cognitive skills.

TILAR, Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 2018

Ninety French-speaking children aged 2 to 4 years were presented with short utterances containing... more Ninety French-speaking children aged 2 to 4 years were presented with short utterances
containing homophonous or nonce words whose object or action meaning
was identifiable on the sole basis of the preceding grammatical morpheme.
Items in noun and verb contexts were presented to the same children in order
to assess their ability to provide appropriate contrastive interpretations. Results
show that, at all ages, items were correctly identified beyond chance, with 4-yearolds
outperforming the 2- and 3-year-olds. Individually, however, only part of
the children, even in the older group, performed beyond chance level, suggesting
substantial interindividual variability and difficulties, still present at these ages, to
tackle situations offering minimal information. A case study of the developmental
relation between production and comprehension is also presented.

Lexical Polycategoriality. Cross-linguistic, cross-theoretical and language acquisition approaches, 2017