Cowan N
Department of Psychology, University of Missouri, Columbia 65211.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 1991 Sep;77(2):121-35. doi: 10.1016/0001-6918(91)90027-w.
First and second language acquisition both require that speech be segmented into familiar, multiphonemic units (e.g., words and common phrases). The present research examines one segmentation cue that is of considerable theoretical interest: the repetition of fixed sequences of speech. On each trial, subjects heard repetitions ('pre-exposures') of two artificially-constructed, multisyllabic patterns that shared an embedded segment 1 or 2 syllables long (e.g., 2 shared syllables: [ga-li-SE] and [li-SE-stu]). There were 2 and 6, 4 and 4, or 6 and 2 repetitions of the two patterns, randomly ordered. Subjects were then to indicate the groupings they perceived within a subsequent, longer sequence containing both of the pre-exposed patterns (e.g., [ga-li-SE-stu]). Responses varied systematically with the size of the embedded segment, the repetition frequencies of the two pre-exposed patterns, and the serial position of each pre-exposure. The results illustrate how investigations of the processing of speech patterns may contribute to an understanding of some elementary aspects of language learning.
第一语言和第二语言的习得都要求将言语分割成熟悉的、多音素的单元（如单词和常用短语）。本研究考察了一个具有相当理论意义的分割线索：言语固定序列的重复。在每次试验中，受试者会听到两个人为构建的多音节模式的重复（“预暴露”），这两个模式共享一个1或2个音节长的嵌入片段（例如，2个共享音节：[ga-li-SE]和[li-SE-stu]）。这两个模式分别有2次和6次、4次和4次或6次和2次重复，顺序随机。然后，受试者要指出他们在随后包含两个预暴露模式的更长序列（例如，[ga-li-SE-stu]）中所感知到的分组。反应随嵌入片段的大小、两个预暴露模式的重复频率以及每次预暴露的序列位置而系统地变化。结果说明了对言语模式处理的研究如何有助于理解语言学习的一些基本方面。
