Werker J F, Tees R C
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Annu Rev Psychol. 1999;50:509-35. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.50.1.509.
To comprehend and produce language, we must be able to recognize the sound patterns of our language and the rules for how these sounds "map on" to meaning. Human infants are born with a remarkable array of perceptual sensitivities that allow them to detect the basic properties that are common to the world's languages. During the first year of life, these sensitivities undergo modification reflecting an exquisite tuning to just that phonological information that is needed to map sound to meaning in the native language. We review this transition from language-general to language-specific perceptual sensitivity that occurs during the first year of life and consider whether the changes propel the child into word learning. To account for the broad-based initial sensitivities and subsequent reorganizations, we offer an integrated transactional framework based on the notion of a specialized perceptual-motor system that has evolved to serve human speech, but which functions in concert with other developing abilities. In so doing, we highlight the links between infant speech perception, babbling, and word learning.
为了理解和生成语言，我们必须能够识别我们语言的声音模式以及这些声音如何“映射”到意义的规则。人类婴儿天生具有一系列非凡的感知敏感性，这使他们能够检测出世界各种语言共有的基本属性。在生命的第一年，这些敏感性会发生变化，反映出对母语中声音映射到意义所需的语音信息进行了精细调整。我们回顾了在生命第一年发生的从通用语言感知敏感性到特定语言感知敏感性的转变，并思考这些变化是否推动儿童进入单词学习阶段。为了解释广泛的初始敏感性和随后的重组，我们基于一个专门的感知运动系统的概念提供了一个综合的交互框架，该系统已经进化到服务于人类语言，但与其他发展能力协同发挥作用。在此过程中，我们强调了婴儿语音感知、咿呀学语和单词学习之间的联系。
