Search

Parents’ reports are accepted in practice and can be a valid and reliable source of information in research on children’s communicative development and any delays in this. Nevertheless, parents’ reports may have important limitations that need to be considered: parental positive bias; parents’ understanding of the child language comprehension; and parents’ education and limited linguistic knowledge. In this paper, we take the stance that parents are most interested in an adequate assessment, and obtaining reliable input from them is certainly important. We amplify the voice of parents by synthesizing their experiences with a parental report inventory as a method based on the usage of the adapted version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. With that aim, we conducted a qualitative inductive thematic analysis of focus group discussions and additional open-ended validation questions. Six emerging themes and sub-themes were identified and presented with illustrative quotations. Results revealed that the adaptation of original CDIs to languages with radically different morphosyntactic structures may produce items that are hard to recognize and understand without a context. We bring to light parent-specific difficulties in performing this task and provide a critical understanding of parents’ reports as a method of language development assessment. We discuss potential solutions to parents’ dilemmas that inevitably arise when reporting on their child’s communication, as well as answers to researchers’/practitioners’ dilemmas regarding the validity and reliability of parental reporting.

Although words for human body parts appear early in children’s vocabulary, relatively little is known about the conceptual and semantic development related to the body part words in preschool and early school ages. In this paper, we examine how children at ages 5, 7 and 9 use words and expressions to refer to the human body and its parts, and how these correspond to the segmentation and lexicalization of the body part terms in adults. Participants were asked to name the body parts that were depicted in the drawings showing the whole body (front or back) and the face, with a red dot marking the specific part. The results of the comparison between children and adults indicate that for the most parts of arms, legs, and face there is a gradual conceptual segmentation of body with age, reflected in a decrease in the use of holonyms and an increase in the use of meronyms in naming parts. However, such hierarchical organization could not be confirmed for other parts (trunk, shoulders, neck, head, some parts of the face), revealing different pathways in the acquisition of words. Children of all ages, especially 7– and 9-year-olds, seek alternative solutions for naming the body parts for which labels are missing in their vocabulary. In such cases, they name adjacent body parts, internal organs, and parts of the skeleton, or use prepositional phrases to refer to the surrounding areas. The results are compared with the findings of the previous studies, while the lexical-semantic change in the body parts terms and the hierarchical organization of the body part lexicon in child language are discussed.The results were compared in light of previous findings of the developmental studies, on the lexical-semantic change, and the hierarchical organization of the body part lexicon in child language., Iako se nazivi za delove ljudskog tela pojavljuju rano u dečijem rečniku, relativno malo se zna o pojmovnom i semantičkom razvoju u ovom domenu na predškolskom i ranom školskom uzrastu. Istraživali smo kako deca uzrasta 5, 7 i 9 godina koriste reči i izraze za označavanje delove ljudskog tela i koliko se oni po-klapaju sa segmentacijom tela i leksemama za delove tela kod odraslih. Ispitanici su zamoljeni da, na crtežu koji prikazuju celo telo (prednju ili zadnju stranu) ili lice, imenuju deo označen crvenom tačkom. Rezultati poređenja odgovora izme-đu dece i odraslih pokazuju da se sa uzrastom povećava upotreba meronima, a smanjuje upotreba holonima za imenovanje delova tela, što ukazuje na povećanje segmentacije tela na pojmovnom i leksičko-semantičkom planu sa uzrastom. Me-đutim, ovakva hijerarhijska organizacija nije mogla biti potvrđena za druge delove (trup, ramena, vrat, glava, pojedini delovi lica), otkrivajući različite razvojne puta-nje tokom usvajanja reči. Deca svih uzrasta, a posebno deca od 7 i 9 godina, traže alternativna rešenja za imenovanje delova tela za koje im nedostaju reči. U takvim slučajevima koriste nazive za susedne delove, unutrašnje organe i delove skeleta, ili upućuju na okolna područja koristeći predloške fraze. Rezultati su poređeni sa prethodnim nalazima razvojnih studija, a diskutovane su leksičko-semantičke promene reči za označavanje delova tela i pitanje njihove hijerarhijske organizacije u leksikonu dece.

Adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates’ CDIs for the Serbian language have provided pilot data on 126 children of 8-30 months of age. To explore the validity of data analyses were conducted on vocabulary size as well as on the items dedicated to grammatical development. The results showed a steady increase by age in receptive and expressive vocabulary size on both CDI questionnaires in all semantic domains. In contrast to early vocabularies typical for young children (up to 21 months of age) primarily composed of nouns, the elder children (from 22 months onwards) gradually made the transition to the usage of verbs, adverbials, and other close-classed function words. Steady growth was also found in older children on items dedicated to further grammatical development (the transition to the 3rd year of age). Moreover, complex morphological properties of Serbian language enabled exploration of the relationship between the vocabulary size and the growth of grammar at three different types of indications – how vocabulary growth is related with the use of functional words, the use of morphological marking, and the syntactic complexity of utterances in children’s production. The results showed that grammatical development is closely related to the increase in children's productive vocabulary size. Vocabulary size appeared to be a better predictor of early usage of morphologically marking than of syntactic complexity of utterances and the usage of functional words. Even though conducted on a limited sample, the analyzes also revealed bimodal distribution across age in the relationship between vocabulary and grammatical growth thus supporting previous findings that the dependence changes over developmental course.

The aim of the study was to investigate how Serbian native speaking preschool children comprehend perfective and imperfective aspect in comparison to adults. After watching animated movies with complete, incomplete and unstarted actions, the participants were asked questions with a perfective or imperfective verb form and responded by pointing to the event(s) that corresponded to each question. The results converged to a clear developmental trend in understanding of aspectual forms. The data indicate that the acquisition of perfective precedes the acquisition of imperfective: 3-year-olds typically understand only the meaning of perfective; most 5-year-olds have almost adult-like understanding of both aspectual forms, while 4-year-olds are a transitional group. Our results support the viewpoint that children’s and adults’ representations of this language category differ qualitatively, and we argue that mastering of aspect semantics is a longterm process that presupposes a certain level of cognitive and pragmatic development, and lasts throughout the preschool period., Cilj ovog istraživanja bio je da se ispita kako deca predškolskog uzrasta kojima je srpski maternji jezik razumeju dve forme glagolskog aspekta: imperfektiv i perfektiv, u poređenju sa odraslima. Nakon gledanja animiranih filmova u kojima su prikazane situacije sa završenim, nezavršenim i nezapočetim akcijama, ispitanicima su postavljena pitanja sa perfektivnim i imperfektivnim glagoskim formama na koja je trebalo da odgovore pokazivanjem događaja koji odgovara(ju) svakom pitanju. Rezultati ukazuju na jasan razvojni trend u razumevanju aspekatskih formi. Podaci pokazuju da usvajanje perfektiva prethodi usvajanju imperfektiva: trogodišnjaci uglavnom razumeju samo značenje perfektiva; većina petogodišnjaka razume obe aspekatske forme slično odraslima, dok su četvorodišnjaci prelazna grupa. Naši rezultati govore u prilog stanovištu da se reprezentacije ove jezičke kategorije kvalitativno razlikuju kod dece i odraslih. Istraživanje navodi na zaključak da je ovladavanje semantikom glagolskog aspekta dugotrajan proces koji podrazumeva određeni nivo kognitivnog i pragmatskog razvoja i koji traje tokom čitavog predškolskog perioda.

One of the main questions in the research of specific language impairment (SLI) is whether the language characteristics of children with SLI are similar to those of younger typically developing (TD) children (quantitative difference), or do they differ entirely and are never observed in typical development (qualitative difference). The aim of this study was to investigate this question in the phonological domain, by comparing the repetitions of SLI children with those of younger TD children, obtained with a nonword repetition task (NRT) in Serbian. The study included 75 TD children aged 3 to 7 (15 per one-year age group) and 50 children with SLI aged 4 to 8 (8-11 per one-year age group). The used NRT consisted of 48 nonwords with varying prosodic complexity, constructed according to the characteristics of the Serbian language. The prerecorded nonwords were presented to the children in two randomized orders, and their task was to repeat each nonword after hearing it. The repetitions were recorded, transcribed, and coded for accuracy and 16 types of errors on the word, syllable and phoneme level. Four one-way MANOVAs were performed for SLI children of different ages and younger TD children (SLI 5 – TD 3, SLI 6 – TD 3, SLI 7 – TD 4, SLI 8 – TD 5), from whom they did not differ significantly on the overall accuracy on the task (number of incorrect repetitions). These analyses, performed on the number of repetitions containing each of the 16 errors, showed no significant main effect of group for any of the compared ages. There were, however, significant group differences for some errors at different ages (F(1,24)>4.45, p<.05, for 8 errors), e.g., SLI children age 7 had significantly more syllable omissions and consonant metatheses than TD children age 4; SLI age 8 had significantly more coda consonant additions than TD age 5. We may conclude that Serbian children with SLI generally make the same types and number of errors in repetitions as younger TD children, indicating

The aim of the study was to systematically assess the occurrence and age-related increase of functional words and specific grammatical parameters in the early language of Serbian children between 8 and 30 months of age based on the adapted version of MacArthur-Bates’ Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs). The sample included 126 mothers assessing their child’s language by means of the CDI-1 for ages 8-18 months, and CDI-2 for ages 16-30 months. The first questionnaire registers the occurrence of early grammatical words (pronouns, interrogatives, prepositions). The second is intended to evaluate the acquisition of the complex grammatical system: pronouns, prepositional constructions, noun morphology, modal and auxiliary verbs, conjugation, tense, negation, indicators of length and complexity of utterances. The results of the CDI-1 reveal the occurrence of early grammatical words at the age of 13 to 15 months: pronouns to 'this', moj/moja/moje ‘my’, and mene/me ‘me’, and the preposition o ‘on, about’. The first Wh-questions gde ‘where’ and kada ‘when’ appear at the same age. A larger variety of grammatical words in the sample was recorded at the age of 16 to 18 months: 9 pronouns out of 14 from the list are recorded, 11 prepositions (out of 12 from the list), as well as the first occurrence of the Wh-questions šta ’what’ and zašto ‘why’. Significant increase was recorded in CDI-2 for the following morpho-syntactic categories (five age groups in the range of 16-30 months, p<0.05): diminutive, possessive adjective, verb person, regular and irregular plural of nouns, preposition-case construction, negative verb forms, present and past tense, while the future tense is not mastered even at the older age levels. The longest utterance increases with age and reaches a length of 5.3 words at 25-27 months of age. The evidence of utterance complexity is recorded in the use of modal verbs, possessive pronouns, possessive adjectives, Wh-questions, dependent clause, direct v

Research question. Currently, there are no standardized tests for language development assessment for the Serbian language. The nonword repetition task (NWR) is shown to be a promising assessment tool and clinical marker for Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in numerous languages. The aim of this research is to develop two versions of the NWR for the Serbian language: the language-specific (LS-NWR) and the cross-linguistic (CL-NWR), for language development assessment of mono- and bi/multilingual preschool children. Methods. The LS-NWR consists of 48 two to four-syllable nonwords, with systematically varied stress position (1st/2nd syllable) and syllable structure (CV, CCV, CVC, CCVC), constructed according to the characteristics of the Serbian language (Savić et al., 2010; Popović, 2017). The task was administered to 75 3- to 7-year-old typically developing (TD) monolingual Serbian children and 50 4- to 8-year-old monolingual Serbian children with SLI. The CL-NWR was constructed within the COST Action IS0804 framework, and consists of 16 two to five-syllable nonwords with a simple CV syllable structure. Two versions of the task (CLs-NWR – nonwords with even stress on each syllable, and CLp-NWR - nonwords with Serbian prosody) were administered (test-retest) to 46 3- to 6-year-old TD monolingual Serbian children. For all tasks, pre-recorded non-words were presented in two randomized orders. The participants’ repetitions were audio recorded, transcribed and coded for total accuracy and types of errors on the word, syllable and phoneme level. Results. The LS-NWR showed high age and group discrimination, with SLI children performing significantly less successfully on the task compared to their TD peers. While both groups performed less accurately with increasing nonword length and syllable structure complexity, children with SLI had more difficulty with this. The CL-NWR showed poor age discrimination, with only the CLp differing three-year-olds from the older children

Typical phonological error patterns observed on the word, syllable, and phoneme level in children’s language production are sensitive to and vary across (supra)segmental contexts. A valid procedure for investigating the effect of different contexts on errors is the non-word repetition task with varied phonological structures. Continuing on our previous findings (Popović et al., 2017), which show a significant effect of non-word length on total repetition accuracy, the aim of this study was to examine this effect on specific types of errors in repetitions. The study included 75 monolingual typically developing (TD) Serbian children, aged 3 to 7. The used non-word repetition task consisted of 48 non-words constructed by systematically varying the number of syllables (two, three, and four), and three other phonological parameters: the position of syllable stress, onset and coda. The children’s task was to repeat each prerecorded non-word after hearing it. The repetitions were audio recorded, transcribed, and coded for 16 types of errors on the word, syllable and phoneme level. Two-way factorial ANOVAs, with factors age and number of syllables (N Syll.), were performed for the six most frequent errors in the repetitions. The following significant effects and interactions are shown for the different errors: Stress shifting: age (F(4, 70) = 8.124, p < .001), N Syll. (F(2, 140) = 118.5, p < .001), interaction (F(8, 140) = 2.576, p = .012); Onset consonant cluster reduction: age (F(4, 70) = 13.35, p < .001), N Syll. (F(2, 140) = 26.92, p < .001); Coda consonant omission: age (F(4, 70) = 8.645, p < .001), N Syll. (F(2, 140) = 15.84, p < .001); Coda consonant addition: age (F(4, 70) = 7.474, p < .001), N Syll. (F(2, 140) = 16.89, p < .001), interaction (F(8, 140) = 3.34, p = .002); Consonant metathesis: age (F(4, 70) = 11.01, p < .001), N Syll. (F(2, 140) = 86.05, p < .001), interaction F(8, 140) = 5.650, p < .001); Phoneme substitution: age (F(4, 70) = 30.97, p < .001), N Sy

The present study aims to explore the change of the vocabulary size and composition in the receptive and expressive language of Serbian speaking children between 8 and 30 months of age. It is a part of a broader project in relation to the adaptation of MacArthur-Bates’ Communicative Development Inventories for the Serbian language (CDIs; Fenson, Marchman, Thal, Dale, Reznick, & Bates, 2007). Two parental report inventories were applied: CDI-I for children 8-18 months, and CDI-II for children 16-30 months of age. The pilot study included 124 mothers from Belgrade (Serbia) and Banja Luka (Republic of Srpska, BiH) who filled in the inventories about their children's language and communicative status. The children’s gender was equally distributed in the sample. Over 70% of mothers had secondary high school education or lower, while the rest had a university degree. For the purpose of preliminary exploration of the vocabulary data obtained by the Serbian adaptation of CDIs scales, we: a) assessed the overall vocabulary growth, b) compared different lexical categories of words classified on the basis of communicational and/or morpho-syntactic functions - parts of speech like verbs and nouns, grammatical words (pronouns, prepositions), as well as early communicational expressions (pa-pa ‘bye-bye’); c. recorded the growth of different semantic categories of nouns relevant for the development of concepts (animals, toys, body parts, etc). The analysis revealed the trajectories of stable growth in children’s vocabulary size. The data show that development of receptive language in Serbian children is recorded early (already at 8 months) and is prevailing until the age of 18 months, while the expressive language starts around the first birthday. Nouns appear earlier than other categories of words and are followed by communicational expressions and verbs. Early comprehension of descriptive verbs and adverbials was recorded at 13-15 months, while their active usage was reported at

In this paper, we present some initial results of a large scale experiment designed to explore symmetrical judgments from a cross-linguistic perspective. Our experiment was conducted with 4-6-year-old children and adults using the same methodology in 12 languages: Catalan (Romance), Cypriot Greek (Greek), Danish, Dutch, and German (Germanic), Croatian, Polish, Russian, Serbian and Slovak (Slavic), Lithuanian (Baltic), and Maltese (Semitic). Our results show that although children’s performance with universal statements is remarkably uniform across languages, there is evidence that children find distributive universal quantification in some languages more difficult than in others.

The two new heterometallic Ru(II)-tpy/ferrocene complexes [Ru(tpy)Cl2(mtefc)] (1) and [Ru(tpy)Cl2(mtpfc)] (2) (where tpy = 2,2′:6′,2′′-terpyridine, mtefc = (2-(methylthio)ethyl)ferrocene, and mtpfc = (3-(methylthio)propyl)ferrocene) have been synthesized and then characterized through elemental analysis, followed by various spectroscopic (IR, UV-vis, 1D and 2D NMR) and mass spectrometric techniques (MALDI TOF and ESI Q-TOF MS). UV-vis and fluorescence spectroscopy and viscometry were employed to study the interactions of the complexes 1 and 2 with calf thymus DNA. Both 1 and 2 expelled ethidium bromide (EB) from the EB/DNA complex (Ksv = (1.5-1.8) × 104 M-1), which suggested that the complexes intercalated into the double helix of DNA. Both complexes strongly quenched the fluorescence of tryptophan residues in serum albumin through both static and dynamic quenching. Molecular docking confirmed the intercalative mode of complex interaction with DNA. The docking results implied that 1 and 2 interacted with hydrophobic residues of albumin, particularly with those lying in the proximity of Tyr 160. We here demonstrate the high cytotoxic potential of complexes 1 and 2 against the breast cancer cells that originated either from humans (MDA-MB-231) or from mice (4T1), with apoptosis being the main mechanism of complex-induced cell death. It is worth noting that both complexes promoted activation of innate and acquired antitumor immunity, which contributed to the reduced growth and progression of mammary carcinoma in vivo. Copyright © 2018 American Chemical Society.

The aim of this study was to validate the preliminary Serbian adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI-I and CDI-II; Fenson et al., 2007). The preliminary Serbian adaptation was based on two sources of data. The first source was the Serbian Corpus of Early Child Language (the CHILDES database) which we used to select and modify the items according to the local language and cultural context. The second source was focus groups with experts and parents/caregivers organized in order to qualitatively evaluate the pre-preliminary versions of the inventories. The findings from the focus groups were used to improve the parents’ understanding of the general instructions and individual grammar-related items, thus ensuring more valid reports on morphological and syntactic properties of their child’s language. As a result of these analyses, the preliminary Serbian version contains a larger number of items than the original version, and some structural changes in the grammar sections. The preliminary adapted version of the Serbian CDIs was used in the pilot study with a convenience sample of 123 mothers of children aged 8-18 months (N=62) and 16-30 months (N=61). The sample was equally distributed across different age groups (CDI-I: 8-9, 10-12, 13-15, 16-18 and CDI-II: 16-18, 19-21, 22-24, 25-27, 28-30) and gender (59 girls and 62 boys). The majority of mothers had secondary level education (high school) and the rest had higher level education or university. All the parents were from urban areas. The results revealed that older children perform better on all CDI scales, which was also followed by expectedly increased variability. We observed a continuous increase in the mean performance levels on Actions and gestures CDI-I (F/3,54/=52.47, p<0.01), Early communicational gestures CDI-I (F/3,54/=32.61, p<0.01), Later communicational gestures CDI-I (F/3,54/=53.53, p<0.01), and Receptive lexicon CDI-I (F/3,54/=27.14, p<0.01). Additionally, the overal

The nonword repetition task (NRT), which consists of the presentation and instantaneous repetition of nonsense words, is widely used to gain insight into the phonological, lexical, and overall language development in typically developing (TD) children and vulnerable language populations. It is shown to be a promising assessment tool for specific language impairment (SLI) in numerous languages, because children with SLI consistently demonstrate poorer performance on this task compared to their TD peers. The aim of this study was to examine the ability of phonological repetition of TD and SLI children who are acquiring Serbian, by using the NRT constructed in accordance with the characteristics of the Serbian language. The study included 60 TD children aged 4 to 7 (n=15 per age group) and 42 children with SLI of the same ages (n=9-11 per age group). Forty eight prerecorded nonwords of varying prosodic complexity, with two systematically varied parameters of syllable structure (onset and coda) and two parameters of metrical structure (number of syllables and position of syllable stress), were presented in two randomized orders. Audio-recorded nonword repetitions were transcribed, and coded for accuracy and type of errors, which occurred on the word, syllable and phoneme level in the repetitions. The results show a significant effect of age (F(3,94)=18.64, p<0.001), and a significant effect of group (F(1,94)=155.1, p<0.001) on nonword repetition accuracy in TD and SLI Serbian children. There is no significant interaction between these two factors. Further analyses show a significant effect of the number of syllables on repetition accuracy (F(2,200)=275.3, p<0.001), as well as a significant interaction of group and the number of syllables (F(2,200)=5.335, p=0.006). The effect of the syllable structure is also significant (F(3,300)=122.9, p<0.001), as well as the interaction of group and syllable structure (F(3,300)=15.61, p<0.001). The analysis of errors reveals a signif

Previous studies have shown that an early usage of verbal aspect in children's spontaneous production is regularly observed in Slavic languages. However, this leads to the question whether the bare presence of aspect in early utterances is firm evidence that a child has acquired it. In order to show that the acquisition of aspect in Serbian is a process that lasts for several years, elicited production was inspected in children that had already achieved an apparent progress in language (3-5 year-olds). The comparisons with adults were made and several indicators of development were observed: a) the distribution of aspectual forms in children's and adults' language, b) the ability of functional usage of aspect in narrative, and c) the mastery of contrasting aspectual pairs. The findings provided the ground to propose three developmental stages assumed for the acquisition of Serbian aspect, and possible underlying mechanisms of development are discussed.

The study is aimed at providing empirical basis for the adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates' Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) for Serbian language, a parent report instrument for the language development assessment. Two sources of data were used in order to provide the basis for selection of items and evaluation of their linguistic, cultural and developmental validity: a. Serbian Corpus of Early Child Language (SCECL), and b. focus groups with experts and parents/caregivers. Exploration of the frequency of words/forms in Serbian child language and the qualitative analysis of focus groups discussions provided criteria for selection/adjustment of items in the course of inventory adaptation. The results also revealed that parents are naturally more focused on semantic and communicational aspects of utterances, and insufficiently aware of formal properties of their children's production. The paper presents significant changes and modifications of the instrument in the course of its adaptation for Serbian, which is a step closer to the final aim - providing a standardized instrument for the assessment of language development in Serbian.

(1) Background: Marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and (sic)-linolenic acid (GLA) are well-known anti-inflammatory agents that may help in the treatment of inflammatory disorders. Their effects were examined in patients with rheumatoid arthritis; (2) Methods: Sixty patients with active rheumatoid arthritis were involved in a prospective, randomized trial of a 12 week supplementation with fish oil (group I), fish oil with primrose evening oil (group II), or with no supplementation (group III). Clinical and laboratory evaluations were done at the beginning and at the end of the study; (3) Results: The Disease Activity Score 28 (DAS 28 score), number of tender joints and visual analogue scale (VAS) score decreased notably after supplementation in groups I and II (p lt 0.001). In plasma phospholipids the n-6/n-3 fatty acids ratio declined from 15.47 +/- 5.51 to 10.62 +/- 5.07 (p = 0.005), and from 18.15 +/- 5.04 to 13.50 +/- 4.81 (p = 0.005) in groups I and II respectively. The combination of n-3 PUFA and GLA (group II) increased.-linolenic acid (0.00 +/- 0.00 to 0.13 +/- 0.11, p lt 0.001), which was undetectable in all groups before the treatments; (4) Conclusion: Daily supplementation with n-3 fatty acids alone or in combination with GLA exerted significant clinical benefits and certain changes in disease activity.

Experimental paradigms impose certain pragmatic demands on the participants in a way that they have to understand and follow the experimenter’s instructions and behave accordingly. During the experiment participants’ mistakes are expected and treated either as random and excluded from further analysis, or as revealing of the phenomenon that is investigated. Although prepared for the former, experimenters working with pre-schoolers are also often faced with mistakes of different nature. Because of their intensive cognitive and language development, pre-schoolers are a very interesting population for psycholinguistic researchers, but also require careful preparation of the experimental procedure. It includes taking into account the children’s comprehension of the instructions and the situation in a way that is different from that of adults, in a way that is communicatively and pragmatically more relevant to them. As long as the experimenter is capable of predicting preschoolers’ understanding of the task and adapting it accordingly, the experimental procedure will work. However, sometimes their different perception of the task and its pragmatic characteristics becomes obvious only during, or even after the experiment, when the responses are analysed. If left undetected, these mistakes may influence the results and lead to wrong conclusions about the investigated phenomenon. We will illustrate the influence of pre-schoolers understanding of the pragmatics of a task on their performance through the “mistakes” they made in three different experimental procedures we have used: the non-word repetition task in estimation of phonological abilities, the naming task in the human body parts vocabulary assessment, and the choice task in testing verbal aspect comprehension. In the non-word repetition and naming task, the original instructions created for adults were partly adapted for pre-schoolers, but nevertheless some children understood the task in an unexpected way. In the c

The nonword repetition task (NRT), which consists of instantaneous repetition of presented nonsense words, enables the investigation of the ability which closely resembles that of learning a new word. It is widely used for gaining insight into the phonological, lexical and overall language development in typically developing (TD) children, as well as in vulnerable language populations. The aim of this study was to investigate the ability of phonological repetition of TD Serbian preschool children by using a NRT constructed according to the characteristics of the Serbian language. The NRT consists of 48 nonwords of varying prosodic complexity, constructed by systematically varying phonological parameters on four simple two-syllable nonwords: two parameters of syllable structure (onset: consonant/consonant cluster, and coda: null/consonant) and two of metrical structure (number of syllables: two/three/four, and position of syllable stress: first/second syllable). Seventyfive TD children aged 3 to 7 (n = 15 per age group) and 20 adults participated in the study. Prerecorded nonwords were presented in two randomized orders. The participants’ repetitions were audio recorded, transcribed and coded for accuracy and types of errors. The results show that nonword repetition accuracy significantly increases with age in Serbian TD children (F(5,89) = 55.50, p < .001) and that 7-year-olds do not differ significantly from adults on the overall performance on the task. Further, the analyses show a significant effect of the number of syllables on repetition accuracy (F(2,178) = 243.09, p < .001), as well as a significant interaction of age and number of syllables (F(10,178) = 10.21, p < .001). The effect of the syllable structure on repetition accuracy is also significant (F(3,267) = 79.61, p < .001), as well as the interaction of age and syllable structure (F(15,267) = 6.13, p < .001). The analysis of the errors in repetitions reveals a significant effect of age (F(80,390) = 2.33

In Serbia, the primary language impairment is usually called developmental dysphasia, but the term specific language impairment (SLI) is also becoming more common. Services for children with language impairment are provided in Serbia at three levels: public health system, public education, and the private sector. Public preschools and schools are involved in initial recognition of children with LI. Suspected children are sent to the pediatrician at the local public health centers where an initial inspection is made and if LI is suspected, the child is sent further to specialized institutions where more detailed diagnostics is provided. It usually involves speech therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, pediatrician, neurologist, and audiologist. Treatment is individually organized in the institution, twice a week, and usually lasts about two or three years. It is provided exclusively by speech therapists who try to involve the parents in the process. All children in Serbia have public health insurance that covers all the expenses of diagnostics and treatment in public service. Private service is developing intensively, but it is not integrated into the public system yet, so the costs are covered by parents or private insurance. Two main problems in the system are the lack of professional standardized instruments for language development assessment and the geographical distribution of institutions that provide service - since located in the large cities, they are remote from children in need in many parts of the country.

(1) Background: Marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and (sic)-linolenic acid (GLA) are well-known anti-inflammatory agents that may help in the treatment of inflammatory disorders. Their effects were examined in patients with rheumatoid arthritis; (2) Methods: Sixty patients with active rheumatoid arthritis were involved in a prospective, randomized trial of a 12 week supplementation with fish oil (group I), fish oil with primrose evening oil (group II), or with no supplementation (group III). Clinical and laboratory evaluations were done at the beginning and at the end of the study; (3) Results: The Disease Activity Score 28 (DAS 28 score), number of tender joints and visual analogue scale (VAS) score decreased notably after supplementation in groups I and II (p lt 0.001). In plasma phospholipids the n-6/n-3 fatty acids ratio declined from 15.47 +/- 5.51 to 10.62 +/- 5.07 (p = 0.005), and from 18.15 +/- 5.04 to 13.50 +/- 4.81 (p = 0.005) in groups I and II respectively. The combination of n-3 PUFA and GLA (group II) increased.-linolenic acid (0.00 +/- 0.00 to 0.13 +/- 0.11, p lt 0.001), which was undetectable in all groups before the treatments; (4) Conclusion: Daily supplementation with n-3 fatty acids alone or in combination with GLA exerted significant clinical benefits and certain changes in disease activity.

The comprehension of constituent questions is an important topic for language acquisition research and for applications in the diagnosis of language impairment. This article presents the results of a study investigating the comprehension of different types of questions by 5-year-old, typically developing children across 19 European countries, 18 different languages, and 7 language (sub-)families. The study investigated the effects of two factors on question formation: (a) whether the question contains a simple interrogative word like 'who' or a complex one like 'which princess', and (b) whether the question word was related to the sentential subject or object position of the verb. The findings show that there is considerable variation among languages, but the two factors mentioned consistently affect children's performance. The cross-linguistic variation shows that three linguistic factors facilitate children's understanding of questions: having overt case morphology, having a single lexical item for both 'who' and 'which', and the use of synthetic verbal forms.

Procena ranog komunikacijskog i govorno-jezičkog razvoja dece je vrlo značajan deo sistematskog praćenja psihičkog razvoja za koji se u svetu koriste standardizovani testovi i instrumenti. Jedan od najpoznatijih je Mekartur-Bejts inventar komunikacijskog razvoja (MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories – CDI), originalno konstruisan na engleskom jeziku, a kasnije široko prevođen i adaptiran za više desetina jezika u svetu. Reč je o instrumentu specifičnom po tome što koristi izveštaj roditelja kao izvor podataka o ranom razvoju komunikacije i govora dece. Adaptacija ovog instrumenta za srpsko govorno područje podrazumevala je da se pitanja validnosti i pouzdanosti testa sagledavaju u svetlu specifičnih strukturalnih svojstava jezika, kao i kulturnih obeležja ove sredine. U radu prikazujemo postupke adaptacije instrumenta, izbora rečnika, releventnih gramatičkih struktura, i kulturno speci- fičnih komunikacijskih obeležja koji su morali biti obuhvaćeni inventarom. Pilot istraživanje za procenu validnosti sprovedeno je sa dva inventara koja čine ovaj test: Reči i gestovi (CDI I) za uzraste od 8-18 meseci, i Reči i rečenice (CDI II) za uzraste 16-30 meseci. Adaptacija oba inventara (CDI I i CDI II) urađena je u dve verzije srpskog jezika, ekavskoj i ijekavskoj. Prezentujemo prve rezultate pilot istraživanja sprovedenog na uzorku majki iz Beograda i Banja Luke. Između ostalog rezultati ukazuju i na problem roditeljskog izveštavanja o pojedinim aspektima gramatičkog razvoja. Roditelji su u komunikaciji sa detetom fokusirani na značenje, i teže prepoznaju i pamte formalne karakteristike dečijih iskaza kao što morfološka i sintaksička obeležja, pa su dalji postupci u adaptaciji instrumenta bili usmereni na povećanje validnosti roditeljskog izveštavanja i o ovim aspektima razvoja.

The comprehension of constituent questions is an important topic for language acquisition research and for applications in the diagnosis of language impairment. This article presents the results of a study investigating the comprehension of different types of questions by 5-year-old, typically developing children across 19 European countries, 18 different languages, and 7 language (sub-)families. The study investigated the effects of two factors on question formation: (a) whether the question contains a simple interrogative word like ‘who’ or a complex one like ‘which princess’, and (b) whether the question word was related to the sentential subject or object position of the verb. The findings show that there is considerable variation among languages, but the two factors mentioned consistently affect children’s performance. The cross-linguistic variation shows that three linguistic factors facilitate children’s understanding of questions: having overt case morphology, having a single lexical item for both ‘who’ and ‘which’, and the use of synthetic verbal forms.

The human body is an object and a medium of the earliest perceptual, physical and social experience of human beings. The question addressed here was how the semantic differentiation in language unfolds in the course of language acquisition: what are the commonalities and differences between children and adults in categorization and naming of body parts. The participants were given 90 drawings of body parts to name (material developed by Jordan et al., 2009). The frequency and variety of responses were statistically compared across age levels (5‐, 7-, 9-year‐olds and adults). In addition, the usage of conventional lexemes, and the usage of holonyms/meronyms for particular body parts were explored. The analysis revealed that the average number of different responses increased with age (F/3,86/=13.477; p<0.01), as well as the average number of lexicalized responses per participant (F/3,86/=31.615; p<0.01), indicating a developmental trajectory in the conventional usage of lexicon. Since the stimuli were susceptible to multiple naming, most of the stimuli triggered more than one correct response (e.g. 'arm'/'upper‐arm'/'above the elbow' for the marked upper‐arm). Hence, the stimuli were sorted into four groups according to the number of triggered responses (1, 2, 3-6 and 7-12 responses), which revealed significantly different distributions across the age levels (X2/9/=17,11; N=360, p=0.047). The findings reveal that Serbian children and adults differ in the naming of body parts – children production is less differentiated. Adults are rather specific and tend to use meronymic term, while young children use holonyms for the same reference (e.g. 'knee' vs. 'leg', 'fingers' vs. 'hand'). Before the target meronymic lexicalization is fully accomplished, the children opt for descriptive prepositional responses that are semantically correct but not fully conventional. These findings suggest that development in this semantic domain is laid in two processes: differentiation in th