Rights statement: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, First Language, 37 (2), 2017, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2017 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the First Language page: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/fla on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/
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Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Understanding the semantic functions of but in middle childhood
T2 - the role of text- and sentence-level comprehension abilities
AU - Florit, Elena
AU - Cain, Kate
AU - Levorato, Maria Chiara
N1 - The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, First Language, 37 (2), 2017, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2017 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the First Language page: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/fla on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/
PY - 2017/4/1
Y1 - 2017/4/1
N2 - We examined Italian 7- to 9-year-olds’ understanding of the connective but when used to relate two events in sentences embedded in short stories. Performance was largely accounted for by the cognitive complexity of the sentence that included the connective and the salience of its meaning (confirmed in a second study with adults). Additional influences on children’s performance were the category of the story in which the critical sentence was embedded and the child’s text comprehension abilities. Further, by 9 years of age, performance resembled that of adults. These findings make an advance in explaining the role of information presented in a text at different levels and an individual’s linguistic abilities in children’s understanding of the connective but in stories and its development.
AB - We examined Italian 7- to 9-year-olds’ understanding of the connective but when used to relate two events in sentences embedded in short stories. Performance was largely accounted for by the cognitive complexity of the sentence that included the connective and the salience of its meaning (confirmed in a second study with adults). Additional influences on children’s performance were the category of the story in which the critical sentence was embedded and the child’s text comprehension abilities. Further, by 9 years of age, performance resembled that of adults. These findings make an advance in explaining the role of information presented in a text at different levels and an individual’s linguistic abilities in children’s understanding of the connective but in stories and its development.
KW - Connectives
KW - reading comprehension
KW - sentence comprehension
KW - story grammar
U2 - 10.1177/0142723716678383
DO - 10.1177/0142723716678383
M3 - Journal article
VL - 37
SP - 109
EP - 129
JO - First Language
JF - First Language
SN - 0142-7237
IS - 2
ER -