Dept. of Psychology and the Delta Center, University of Iowa, Iowa City, 52242, United States.
Cogn Psychol. 2010 Feb;60(1):1-39. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2009.06.003.
Thirty years of research has uncovered the broad principles that characterize spoken word processing across listeners. However, there have been few systematic investigations of individual differences. Such an investigation could help refine models of word recognition by indicating which processing parameters are likely to vary, and could also have important implications for work on language impairment. The present study begins to fill this gap by relating individual differences in overall language ability to variation in online word recognition processes. Using the visual world paradigm, we evaluated online spoken word recognition in adolescents who varied in both basic language abilities and non-verbal cognitive abilities. Eye movements to target, cohort and rhyme objects were monitored during spoken word recognition, as an index of lexical activation. Adolescents with poor language skills showed fewer looks to the target and more fixations to the cohort and rhyme competitors. These results were compared to a number of variants of the TRACE model (McClelland & Elman, 1986) that were constructed to test a range of theoretical approaches to language impairment: impairments at sensory and phonological levels; vocabulary size, and generalized slowing. None of the existing approaches were strongly supported, and variation in lexical decay offered the best fit. Thus, basic word recognition processes like lexical decay may offer a new way to characterize processing differences in language impairment.
三十年来的研究揭示了口语处理在不同听众中的广泛特征。然而，对个体差异的系统研究却很少。这样的研究可以通过指出哪些处理参数可能会发生变化，从而帮助完善单词识别模型，并且对于语言障碍的研究也具有重要意义。本研究通过将整体语言能力的个体差异与在线单词识别过程的变化联系起来，开始填补这一空白。我们使用视觉世界范式，评估了在基本语言能力和非言语认知能力方面存在差异的青少年的在线口语单词识别。在口语单词识别过程中，监测了对目标、类别和押韵对象的眼动，作为词汇激活的指标。语言能力较差的青少年对目标的注视次数较少，对类别和押韵竞争者的注视次数较多。将这些结果与 TRACE 模型的许多变体进行了比较（McClelland & Elman，1986），这些变体旨在测试一系列语言障碍的理论方法：感觉和语音水平的障碍；词汇量大小和普遍的减速。没有一种现有方法得到强有力的支持，词汇衰减的变化提供了最佳拟合。因此，基本的单词识别过程（如词汇衰减）可能为描述语言障碍中的处理差异提供了一种新方法。
