North Park University-Psychology, 3225 W. Foster Avenue, Chicago, IL 60625, USA.
J Child Lang. 2011 Nov;38(5):1096-108. doi: 10.1017/S0305000910000619. Epub 2011 Feb 11.
By their second birthday, children are beginning to map meaning to form with relative ease. One challenge for these developing abilities is separating information relevant to word identity (i.e. phonemic information) from irrelevant information (e.g. voice and foreign accent). Nevertheless, little is known about toddlers' abilities to ignore irrelevant phonetic detail when faced with the demanding task of word learning. In an experiment with English-learning toddlers, we examined the impact of foreign accent on word learning. Findings revealed that while toddlers aged 2 ; 6 successfully generalized newly learned words spoken by a Spanish-accented speaker and a native English speaker, success of those aged 2 ; 0 was restricted. Specifically, toddlers aged 2 ; 0 failed to generalize words when trained by the native English speaker and tested by the Spanish-accented speaker. Data suggest that exposure to foreign accent in training may promote generalization of newly learned forms. These findings are considered in the context of developmental changes in early word representations.
到他们两岁生日时，儿童已经开始相对轻松地将意义映射到形式上。这些发展能力面临的一个挑战是将与单词身份相关的信息（即音位信息）与不相关的信息（例如声音和外国口音）区分开来。然而，对于幼儿在面临学习单词的艰巨任务时忽略不相关的语音细节的能力，人们知之甚少。在一项针对英语学习幼儿的实验中，我们研究了外国口音对单词学习的影响。研究结果表明，虽然 2 岁 6 个月的幼儿成功地将新学到的单词从说西班牙语口音的人和以英语为母语的人那里进行了概括，但 2 岁 0 个月的幼儿的概括能力受到限制。具体来说，当用以英语为母语的人进行训练并用西班牙语口音的人进行测试时，2 岁 0 个月的幼儿未能概括单词。数据表明，在训练中接触外国口音可能会促进新学习形式的概括。这些发现是在早期单词表示的发展变化的背景下考虑的。
