Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2011 May 11;6(5):e19348. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0019348.
Network analysis has demonstrated that systems ranging from social networks to electric power grids often involve a small world structure-with local clustering but global ac cess. Critically, small world structure has also been shown to characterize adult human semantic networks. Moreover, the connectivity pattern of these mature networks is consistent with lexical growth processes in which children add new words to their vocabulary based on the structure of the language-learning environment. However, thus far, there is no direct evidence that a child's individual semantic network structure is associated with their early language learning. Here we show that, while typically developing children's early networks show small world structure as early as 15 months and with as few as 55 words, children with language delay (late talkers) have this structure to a smaller degree. This implicates a maladaptive bias in word acquisition for late talkers, potentially indicating a preference for "oddball" words. The findings provide the first evidence of a link between small-world connectivity and lexical development in individual children.
网络分析表明，从社交网络到电网的系统通常涉及小世界结构——具有局部聚类但全局可访问性。关键的是，小世界结构也被证明是成人语义网络的特征。此外，这些成熟网络的连接模式与词汇增长过程一致，即儿童根据语言学习环境的结构向词汇中添加新单词。然而，到目前为止，还没有直接的证据表明儿童的个体语义网络结构与他们的早期语言学习有关。在这里，我们表明，尽管在典型发育的儿童中，他们的早期网络早在 15 个月大时就表现出小世界结构，而且只使用了 55 个单词，但语言延迟（晚说话者）的儿童的这种结构程度较小。这意味着晚说话者在单词习得方面存在适应性偏差，可能表明他们更喜欢“古怪”的单词。这些发现提供了个体儿童小世界连接性和词汇发展之间联系的第一个证据。
