Conway Christopher M, Karpicke Jennifer, Pisoni David B
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, 1101 East 10th Street, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.
J Deaf Stud Deaf Educ. 2007 Summer;12(3):317-34. doi: 10.1093/deafed/enm019. Epub 2007 Jun 4.
Spoken language consists of a complex, sequentially arrayed signal that contains patterns that can be described in terms of statistical relations among language units. Previous research has suggested that a domain-general ability to learn structured sequential patterns may underlie language acquisition. To test this prediction, we examined the extent to which implicit sequence learning of probabilistically structured patterns in hearing adults is correlated with a spoken sentence perception task under degraded listening conditions. Performance on the sentence perception task was found to be correlated with implicit sequence learning, but only when the sequences were composed of stimuli that were easy to encode verbally. Implicit learning of phonological sequences thus appears to underlie spoken language processing and may indicate a hitherto unexplored cognitive factor that may account for the enormous variability in language outcomes in deaf children with cochlear implants. The present findings highlight the importance of investigating individual differences in specific cognitive abilities as a way to understand and explain language in deaf learners and, in particular, variability in language outcomes following cochlear implantation.
口语由一个复杂的、按顺序排列的信号组成，该信号包含可以根据语言单位之间的统计关系来描述的模式。先前的研究表明，学习结构化序列模式的一般领域能力可能是语言习得的基础。为了检验这一预测，我们研究了听力正常的成年人对概率性结构化模式的内隐序列学习在多大程度上与在听力条件退化情况下的口语句子感知任务相关。结果发现，句子感知任务的表现与内隐序列学习相关，但仅当序列由易于口头编码的刺激组成时才相关。因此，语音序列的内隐学习似乎是口语处理的基础，并且可能表明一个迄今为止尚未探索的认知因素，该因素可能解释了接受人工耳蜗植入的聋儿在语言结果上的巨大差异。本研究结果强调了调查特定认知能力的个体差异作为理解和解释聋人学习者语言的一种方式的重要性，特别是人工耳蜗植入后语言结果的变异性。
