Knowledge of natural language quantifiers (like all, some, many) correlates with number acquisition (i.e., counting abilities). At the same time, number acquisition and approximate number skills are closely linked. These findings raise the question whether quantifier comprehension is exclusively related to exact number skills like counting or whether the relationship also extends to approximate number skills. To find out, we tested 3- to 6-year-old German speaking children on a quantifier comprehension task and on two counting tasks (‘how-many task’, ‘give-a-number task’). Additionally, we assessed children’s approximate number skills (ANS acuity) in a non-symbolic number comparison task. Quantifier comprehension was found to correlate with exact number skills even when age was controlled for. However, no significant correlation between quantifier comprehension and ANS acuity was obtained. Our findings support the notion of two distinct number systems: Only exact number skills appear to benefit from quantifier comprehension, whereas approximate number skills do not.

Speakers commonly produce active sentences when asked to describe visual scenes depicting an agent acting on a patient. However, when the patient is in the center of attention (e.g., by means of a visual cue preceding the patient), speakers are more likely to produce passive constructions. To elucidate the impact of cue type and individual variation, we asked German-speaking participants to describe transitive event scenes. Participants were presented with one of three different cue types: a short attentional cue preceding the patient, a long attentional cue, or a pre-view of the patient (referential cue). We found that different cue types differently modulated speakers’ propensity to produce passives. Critically, referential cueing was more effective than attentional cueing in increasing German speakers’ rate of passive production, contra to what has previously been demonstrated for English speakers. At the same time, we observed quite substantial individual variation in speakers’ aptitude to produce passives.

While effects of animacy and attention have been studied quite extensively in adult speakers, less is known about their role in child language production. In the present study we fill this gap by testing German-speaking preschool children in two language production tasks using eye-tracking. We find that animacy does neither affect the production of transitive sentences nor the production of conjoined noun phrases. By contrast, we find significant effects of attentional orienting. Children were more likely to first fixate an entity when it had been preceded by a visual cue and was hence in their focus of attention. While this held true across tasks, attentional orienting only affected children's production of conjoined noun phrases but not the production of transitive sentences. Effects of attentional orienting therefore seem conditioned by language production affordances. In sum, our findings provide new evidence that animacy and attention play different roles in children's language production.

When interpreting our perceptual world, information from multiple perceptual modalities is often associated. Suchcrossmodal associations can arise from innate structural connections in the brain, statistical correlations in the environment, orthrough language. In a large group of participants across a wide age range and language background, we tested crossmodalassociations between pitch and 7 dimensions in comparison modalities. We found evidence supporting the existence of all 7types of associations, but the strength of association varied by dimension. Pitch-angularity and pitch-weight judgments werethe most robust associations. In general, strength of associations increased with age, with significant associations occurring inthe oldest age group (age 19+), consistent with experiential accounts of crossmodal associations.