107 secondary school teachers were surveyed to find out about their observations of children with learning disorders at schools. The respondents reported that the most commonly observed disorders involved difficulty paying attention, difficulty learning a second language, being fidgety and having difficulty sitting still, and having poor comprehension. They also indicated that whilst some children made fun of their classmates with learning disorder, others tried to assist their classmates. The most common reaction of parents was to send the child for lots of tuition, and to be very frustrated with the child. In addition, some parents neglected their children’s learning disorder, and many did not seem to realise how serious the problem was. When it came to the needs of teachers, the most common need that the teachers reported was to have the parents cooperate with them and to have support from the education authorities. The paper discusses the implications of these findings and proposes suggestions for dealing with the training needs of teachers working in the area of learning disorders.
Most prior studies of the other-race categorization advantage have been conducted in predominantly monoracial societies. This limitation has left open the question of whether tendencies to more rapidly and accurately categorize other-race faces reflect social categorization (own-race vs. other-race) or perceptual expertise (frequent exposure vs. infrequent exposure). To address this question, we tested Malay and Malaysian Chinese children (9- and 10-year-olds) and adults on (a) own-race faces (i.e., Malay faces for Malay participants and Chinese faces for Malaysian Chinese participants), (b) high-frequency other-race faces (i.e., Chinese faces for Malay participants and Malay faces for Malaysian Chinese participants), and (c) low-frequency other-race faces (i.e., Caucasian faces). Whereas the other-race categorization advantage was in evidence in the accuracy data of Malay adults, other aspects of performance were supportive of either the social categorization or perceptual expertise accounts and were dependent on the race (Malay vs. Chinese) or age (child vs. adult) of the participants. Of particular significance is the finding that Malaysian Chinese children and adults categorized own-race Chinese faces more rapidly than high-frequency other-race Malay faces. Thus, in accord with a perceptual expertise account, the other-race categorization advantage seems to be more an advantage for racial categories of lesser experience regardless of whether these face categories are own-race or other-race.
Little is known about how infants born and raised in a multiracial environment process own- and other-race faces. We investigated face recognition of 3- to 4-month-old (N = 36) and 8- to 9-month-old (N = 38) Chinese infants from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a population that is considered multiracial, using female and male faces that are of infants' own-race (Chinese), experienced other-race (Malay) and less experienced other-race (Caucasian-White). Three- to 4-month-olds recognized own-race female faces, whereas 8- to 9-month-olds also recognized experienced other-race female faces (Malay) in addition to own-race female faces (Chinese). Furthermore, infants from this population did not show recognition for male faces at any age. This contrasts with 8- to 9-month-old British-White infants (Tham, Bremner, & Hay, ), a group that is considered single-race, who recognized female and male own-race faces. It appears that for infants born and raised in a multiracial environment, there is a developmental shift from a female-based own-race recognition advantage to a female-based own- and experienced other-race advantage that may relate to infants' social and caregiving experiences.
This study compared tone sensitivity in monolingual and bilingual infants in a novel word learning task. Tone language learning infants (Experiment 1, Mandarin monolingual; Experiment 2, Mandarin-English bilingual) were tested with Mandarin (native) or Thai (non-native) lexical tone pairs which contrasted static vs. dynamic (high vs. rising) tones or dynamic vs. dynamic (rising vs. falling) tones. Non-tone language, English-learning infants (Experiment 3) were tested on English intonational contrasts or the Mandarin or Thai tone contrasts. Monolingual Mandarin language infants were able to bind tones to novel words for the Mandarin High-Rising contrast, but not for the Mandarin Rising-Falling contrast; and they were insensitive to both the High-Rising and the Rising-Falling tone contrasts in Thai. Bilingual English-Mandarin infants were similar to the Mandarin monolinguals in that they were sensitive to the Mandarin High-Rising contrast and not to the Mandarin Rising-Falling contrast. However, unlike the Mandarin monolinguals, they were also sensitive to the High Rising contrast in Thai. Monolingual English learning infants were insensitive to all three types of contrasts (Mandarin, Thai, English), although they did respond differentially to tone-bearing vs. intonation-marked words. Findings suggest that infants' sensitivity to tones in word learning contexts depends heavily on tone properties, and that this influence is, in some cases, stronger than effects of language familiarity. Moreover, bilingual infants demonstrated greater phonological flexibility in tone interpretation.
We report the findings of a multi-language and multi-lab investigation of young infants' ability to discriminate lexical tones as a function of their native language, age and language experience, as well as of tone properties. Given the high prevalence of lexical tones across human languages, understanding lexical tone acquisition is fundamental for comprehensive theories of language learning. While there are some similarities between the developmental course of lexical tone perception and that of vowels and consonants, findings for lexical tones tend to vary greatly across different laboratories. To reconcile these differences and to assess the developmental trajectory of native and non-native perception of tone contrasts, this study employed a single experimental paradigm with the same two pairs of Cantonese tone contrasts (perceptually similar vs. distinct) across 13 laboratories in Asia-Pacific, Europe and North-America testing 5-, 10- and 17-month-old monolingual (tone, pitch-accent, non-tone) and bilingual (tone/non-tone, non-tone/non-tone) infants. Across the age range and language backgrounds, infants who were not exposed to Cantonese showed robust discrimination of the two non-native lexical tone contrasts. Contrary to this overall finding, the statistical model assessing native discrimination by Cantonese-learning infants failed to yield significant effects. These findings indicate that lexical tone sensitivity is maintained from 5 to 17 months in infants acquiring tone and non-tone languages, challenging the generalisability of the existing theoretical accounts of perceptual narrowing in the first months of life. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: This is a multi-language and multi-lab investigation of young infants' ability to discriminate lexical tones. This study included data from 13 laboratories testing 5-, 10-, and 17-month-old monolingual (tone, pitch-accent, non-tone) and bilingual (tone/non-tone, non-tone/non-tone) infants. Overall, infants discriminated a perceptually similar and a distinct non-native tone contrast, although there was no evidence of a native tone-language advantage in discrimination. These results demonstrate maintenance of tone discrimination throughout development.