Browsing by Author "Uzundag, Berna A."

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9

Citation Count: 0
The acquisition and use of relative clauses in Turkish-learning children's conversational interactions: a cross-linguistic approach (vol 46, pg 1142, 2019)
(Cambridge Univ Press, 2022) Uzundag, Berna A.; Kuntay, Aylin C.
[Abstract Not Available]
Citation Count: 0
Analogy is Indispensable but Rule is a Must: Insights From Turkish
(Cambridge Univ Press, 2022) Nakipoglu, Mine; Uzundag, Berna A.; Ketrez, F. Nihan
Inflectional morphology provides a unique platform for a discussion of whether morphological productivity is rule-based or analogy-based. The present study testing 140 children (range = 29 to 97 months; M(SD) = 64.1(18.8)) on an elicited production task investigated the acquisition of the irregular distribution in the Turkish aorist. Results suggested that to discover the allomorphs of the Turkish aorist, children initially carried out similarity comparisons between analogous exemplars, which helped them tap into phonological features to induce generalizations for regulars and irregulars. Thereafter to tackle the irregularity, children entertained competing hypotheses yielding overregularizations and irregularizations. While the trajectory of overregularizations implicated the gradual formulation of an abstraction based on type-frequency, irregularizations suggested both intrusion of analogous exemplars and children's attempts to default to an erroneous micro-generalization. Our findings supported a model of morphological learning that is driven by analogy at the outset and that invokes rule-induction in later stages.
Citation Count: 0
Background TV and infant-family interactions: Insights from home observations
(Wiley, 2024) Uzundag, Berna A.; Koskulu-Sancar, Suemeyye; Kuntay, Aylin C.
Background television has been found to negatively impact children's language development and self-regulatory skills, possibly due to decreased parent-child interactions. Most of the research on the relationship between background TV and caregiver-child interactions has been conducted in laboratory settings. In the current study, we conducted home observations and investigated whether infants engage in fewer interactions with family members in homes where background TV is more prevalent. We observed 32 infants at the ages of 8, 10, and 18 months in their home environments, coding for dyadic interactions (e.g., parent talking to and/or engaging with the child), triadic interactions (e.g., parent and infant play with a toy together), and infants' individual activities. Our findings revealed that background TV was negatively associated with the time infants spent in triadic interactions, positively associated with time spent engaging in individual activities, and not significantly related to the time spent in dyadic interactions. Apart from the relationship between background TV and individual activity time at 8 months, these associations remained significant even after accounting for families' socioeconomic status. These findings imply a correlation between background TV exposure and caregiver-infant-object interactions, warranting a longitudinal analysis with larger sample sizes.
Citation Count: 0
Immediate and delayed effects of fantastical content on children's executive functions and mental transformation
(Elsevier Science inc, 2024) Kessafoglu, Dilara; Kuntay, Aylin; Uzundag, Berna A.
Watching fantastical content has been shown to negatively affect young children's executive function (EF) skills. No study has investigated how long these negative effects persist and whether they extend to other cognitive skills. The current experimental study aimed to (1) detect how long fantastical content affects children's EF performance and (2) examine whether watching fantastical content negatively affects children's other (non-EF) cognitive task performance, namely mental transformation. A total of 120 5- and 6year-old children (M = 66 months, SD = 5.52) were randomly assigned to one of the four following conditions: (a) immediate testing after watching an 8-min non-fantastical cartoon, (b) immediate testing after watching an 8-min fantastical cartoon, (c) 10min delayed testing after watching a fantastical cartoon, and (d) immediate testing after an 8-min free play (control condition). After exposure to each condition, children were tested on EF and mental transformation measures. Results showed that children watching a fantastical cartoon performed worse on working memory and inhibitory control tasks than children watching a nonfantastical cartoon or playing. However, the 10-min delay between the watching and testing sessions eliminated the negative impact observed on inhibitory control. Groups did not differ on cognitive flexibility and mental transformation. As in previous studies, watching fantastical content negatively affected children's EFs, but this negative impact disappeared in a few minutes and seems unique to EFs. These results suggest that fantastical content may
Citation Count: 0
Mothers' descriptions of referents are related to children' communicative competence
(Elsevier Science Inc, 2022) Yildiz, Ezgi; Uzundag, Berna A.
Describing an entity in a way that leads to its correct identification among similar others is required for successful referential communication. Although many studies investigated children's language development in relation to the caregiver input, whether children's referential communication skills are related to their caregivers' referential input remains understudied. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between mothers' referential descriptions and preschool-aged children's success in describing pictures among competitors. In two separate tasks, where the goal was to describe target pictures among similar others, we assessed mothers' descriptions targeted for their children and children's descriptions targeted for the experimenter. Our results revealed that children provided more accurate initial descriptions and needed fewer attempts to describe pictures if their mothers described pictures in fewer attempts and provided clear initial descriptions when talking with their children. These findings suggest that children's referential descriptions and communicative competence benefit from hearing clear referential descriptions provided by their caregivers.
Citation Count: 1
Relations Among Self-Reported Maternal Stress, Smartphone Use, and Mother-Child Interactions
(Springer, 2022) Uzundag, Berna A.; Oranc, Cansu; Kessafoglu, Dilara; Altundal, Merve Nur
A growing body of research indicates that parents' smartphone use is associated with interruptions in parent-child interactions and lower levels of parental responsiveness, which may adversely affect children's cognitive and socioemotional development. Studies suggest that parent-child interactions are more frequently interrupted by the use of screen-based devices if parents experience more stress specifically resulting from the demands of parenting, yet there are unexamined questions. Is parents' general daily stress related to technology-based interruptions in parent-child interactions? If so, does parents' use of mobile technology mediate this relationship? In this first study testing the mediating role of parental use of mobile phones between parental stress and technology-based interruptions in parent-child interactions, we collected data from 604 mothers of children younger than age six with an online survey. Results showed that controlling for child age, family income, mothers' employment status, household size, and maternal and paternal education, more stressed mothers reported using their mobile phones more problematically (e.g., not being able to resist checking messages), which was linked to more frequent perceived interruptions in the interactions with their children. Our results suggest that using mobile phones may serve as an outlet for stressed parents and is related to disruptions in the flow of parent-child interactions.
Citation Count: 0
The role of perceived social support in mitigating the impact of parenting stress on children's effortful control
(Sage Publications Ltd, 2024) Yildiz, Ezgi; Uzundag, Berna A.
Effortful control, the ability to suppress a dominant response over a subdominant one, is a fundamental aspect of self-regulation. It has been observed that higher levels of parenting stress are associated with lower levels of effortful control in children. Perceived social support, an important factor in reducing parenting stress, may act as a buffer against the negative effects of parenting stress on children's effortful control skills. To investigate this assumption, we collected data from 199 mothers in Turkiye, who had children between the ages of 3 and 6 years. Mothers reported on their parenting stress levels, perceived social support, and their children's effortful control. Our results revealed that perceived social support moderated the relationship between parenting stress and children's effortful control after controlling for socioeconomic status. Moreover, the buffering effect of perceived social support became stronger as the level of social support increased, subsequently weakening the relationship between parenting stress and children's effortful control. These findings suggest that parental perceived social support plays a pivotal role in mitigating the adverse effects of parenting stress on healthy child development. These cross-sectional findings warrant a longitudinal investigation into the interrelations among parenting stress, perceived social support, and children's effortful control.
Citation Count: 1
Screen Media Exposure in Early Childhood and Its Relation to Children's Self-Regulation
(Wiley-Hindawi, 2022) Uzundag, Berna A.; Altundal, Merve Nur; Kessafoglu, Dilara
Self-regulation, the ability to control thoughts, emotions, and behavior for goal-directed activities, shows rapid development in infancy, toddlerhood, and preschool periods. Early self-regulatory skills predict later academic achievement and socioemotional adjustment. An increasing number of studies suggest that screen media use may have negative effects on children's developing self-regulatory skills. In this systematic review, we summarized and integrated the findings of the studies investigating the relationship between young children's screen media use and their self-regulation. We searched the ERIC, PsycINFO, PubMed, and Web of Science databases and identified 39 relevant articles with 45 studies. We found that screen time in infancy is negatively associated with self-regulation, but findings were more inconsistent for later ages suggesting that screen time does not adequately capture the extent of children's screen media use. The findings further indicated that background TV is negatively related to children's self-regulation, and watching fantastical content seems to have immediate negative effects on children's self-regulatory skills. We suggest that future studies should take the content and context of children's screen media use into account and also focus on parent- and home-related factors such as parental behaviors that foster the development of self-regulatory skills.
Citation Count: 3
Young minds' quest for regularity: Evidence from the Turkish causative
(Cambridge Univ Press, 2022) Nakipoglu, Mine; Uzundag, Berna A.; Sarigul, Ozge
Children's remarkable ability to generalize beyond the input and the resulting overregularizations/ irregularizations provide a platform for a discussion of whether morphology learning uses analogy-based, rule-based, or statistical learning procedures. The present study, testing 115 children (aged 3 to 10) on an elicited production task, investigated the acquisition of the irregular distribution in the Turkish causative. Results showed that in early acquisition, to pin down the four causative suffixes, children engaged in comparisons between analogous exemplars. Thereafter to tackle the irregularity in two of the suffixes, children entertained competing hypotheses that yielded overregularizations and irregularizations. Overregularizations were instances of abstraction across the input based on type frequency; irregularizations were attempts to default to erroneous micro-generalizations. Negative correlation between errors and verb frequency suggested that recovery from errors was sensitive to token frequency. The overgeneralize-then-recover pattern that emerged in the acquisition of causative supported an integrated account of the roles of analogy, abstraction, and frequency in morphology learning.