Disentangling the roles of age and knowledge in early language acquisition: A fine-grained analysis of the vocabularies of infant and child language learners

IF 3 2区 心理学 Q1 PSYCHOLOGY Cognitive Psychology Pub Date : 2024-08-03 DOI:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101681
Joseph R. Coffey, Jesse Snedeker
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Abstract

The words that children learn change over time in predictable ways. The first words that infants acquire are generally ones that are both frequent and highly imageable. Older infants also learn words that are more abstract and some that are less common. It is unclear whether this pattern is attributable to maturational factors (i.e., younger children lack sufficiently developed cognitive faculties needed to learn abstract words) or linguistic factors (i.e., younger children lack sufficient knowledge of their language to use grammatical or contextual cues needed to figure out the meaning of more abstract words). The present study explores this question by comparing vocabulary acquisition in 53 preschool-aged children (M = 51 months, range = 30–76 months) who were adopted from China and Eastern Europe after two and half years of age and 53 vocabulary-matched infant controls born and raised in English speaking families in North America (M = 24 months, range = 16–33 months). Vocabulary was assessed using the MB-CDI Words and Sentences form, word frequency was estimated from the CHILDES database, and imageability was measured using adult ratings of how easily words could be pictured mentally. Both groups were more likely to know words that were both highly frequent and imageable (resulting in an over-additive interaction). Knowledge of a word was also independently affected by the syntactic category that it belongs to. Adopted preschoolers’ vocabulary was slightly less affected by imageability. These findings were replicated in a comparison with a larger sample of vocabulary-matched controls drawn from the MB-CDI norming study (M = 22 months, range = 16–30 months; 33 girls). These results suggest that the patterns of acquisition in children’s early vocabulary are primarily driven by the accrual of linguistic knowledge, but that vocabulary may also be affected by differences in early life experiences or conceptual knowledge.

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厘清年龄和知识在早期语言习得中的作用:对婴儿和儿童语言学习者词汇的精细分析。
随着时间的推移,儿童学习的单词会发生可预测的变化。婴儿最先学会的单词一般都是频率高、形象性强的单词。大一点的婴儿也会学习更抽象的词和一些不太常见的词。目前还不清楚这种模式是由于成熟因素(即年龄较小的婴儿缺乏学习抽象词所需的足够发达的认知能力)还是语言因素(即年龄较小的婴儿缺乏足够的语言知识,无法利用语法或上下文线索来弄清较抽象词的含义)造成的。本研究通过比较 53 名两岁半后从中国和东欧收养的学龄前儿童(男=51 个月,女=30-76 个月)和 53 名在北美英语家庭出生并长大、词汇量相匹配的婴儿对照组(男=24 个月,女=16-33 个月)的词汇量掌握情况来探讨这一问题。词汇量使用 MB-CDI 单词和句子表格进行评估,单词频率根据 CHILDES 数据库进行估算,形象性则使用成人对单词在头脑中的容易想象程度进行的评分进行测量。两组受试者都更有可能认识词频高且形象性强的单词(产生了超加成的交互作用)。对单词的认识还受其所属句法类别的独立影响。被收养的学龄前儿童的词汇量受形象性的影响稍小。这些结果在与来自 MB-CDI 标准研究(中=22 个月,大=16-30 个月;33 个女孩)的更大样本词汇匹配对照组的比较中得到了验证。这些结果表明,儿童早期词汇的习得模式主要受语言知识积累的驱动,但词汇量也可能受到早期生活经验或概念知识差异的影响。
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来源期刊
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive Psychology 医学-心理学
CiteScore
5.40
自引率
3.80%
发文量
29
审稿时长
50 days
期刊介绍: Cognitive Psychology is concerned with advances in the study of attention, memory, language processing, perception, problem solving, and thinking. Cognitive Psychology specializes in extensive articles that have a major impact on cognitive theory and provide new theoretical advances. Research Areas include: • Artificial intelligence • Developmental psychology • Linguistics • Neurophysiology • Social psychology.
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