理解空间关系：灵活的婴儿，有语言能力的成年人。

Understanding spatial relations: flexible infants, lexical adults.

作者信息

McDonough Laraine, Choi Soonja, Mandler Jean M

机构信息

Department of Psychology, Brooklyn College, The City University of New York Graduate Center, 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11210, USA.

出版信息

Cogn Psychol. 2003 May;46(3):229-59. doi: 10.1016/s0010-0285(02)00514-5.

DOI:10.1016/s0010-0285(02)00514-5

PMID:12694694

Abstract

Concepts of containment, support, and degree of fit were investigated using nonverbal, preferential-looking tasks with 9- to 14-month-old infants and adults who were fluent in either English or Korean. Two contrasts were tested: tight containment vs. loose support (grammaticized as 'in' and 'on' in English by spatial prepositions and 'kkita' and 'nohta' in Korean by spatial verbs) and tight containment vs. loose containment (both grammaticized as 'in' in English but separately as 'kkita' and 'nehta' in Korean). Infants categorized both contrasts, suggesting conceptual readiness for learning such spatial semantics in either language. English-speaking adults categorized tight containment vs. loose support, but not tight vs. loose containment. However, Korean-speaking adults were successful at this latter contrast, which is lexicalized in their language. The adult data suggest that some spatial relations that are salient during the preverbal stage become less salient if language does not systematically encode them.

摘要

使用非语言的、偏好注视任务，对9至14个月大的婴儿以及精通英语或韩语的成年人进行研究，以探究包容、支撑和契合度的概念。测试了两种对比：紧密包容与松散支撑（在英语中通过空间介词“in”和“on”进行语法化，在韩语中通过空间动词“kkita”和“nohta”进行语法化）以及紧密包容与松散包容（在英语中两者都通过“in”进行语法化，但在韩语中分别为“kkita”和“nehta”）。婴儿对这两种对比都进行了分类，表明他们在概念上已准备好学习两种语言中的此类空间语义。说英语的成年人对紧密包容与松散支撑进行了分类，但对紧密与松散包容未进行分类。然而，说韩语的成年人在这后一种对比中取得了成功，这在他们的语言中是词汇化的。成人的数据表明，如果语言没有对某些在前语言阶段很突出的空间关系进行系统编码，那么这些关系就会变得不那么突出。