Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA.
Dev Sci. 2011 Sep;14(5):1207-19. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2011.01073.x.
Infants can use statistical regularities to form rudimentary word categories (e.g. noun, verb), and to learn the meanings common to words from those categories. Using an artificial language methodology, we probed the mechanisms by which two types of statistical cues (distributional and phonological regularities) affect word learning. Because linking distributional cues vs. phonological information to semantics make different computational demands on learners, we also tested whether their use is related to language proficiency. We found that 22-month-old infants with smaller vocabularies generalized using phonological cues; however, infants with larger vocabularies showed the opposite pattern of results, generalizing based on distributional cues. These findings suggest that both phonological and distributional cues marking word categories promote early word learning. Moreover, while correlations between these cues are important to forming word categories, we found infants' weighting of these cues in subsequent word-learning tasks changes over the course of early language development.
婴儿可以利用统计规律形成基本的单词类别（如名词、动词），并从这些类别中学习常见单词的含义。我们使用人工语言方法探究了两种类型的统计线索（分布规律和语音规律）如何影响单词学习。由于将分布规律线索与语音信息与语义联系起来会对学习者提出不同的计算要求，我们还测试了它们的使用是否与语言能力有关。我们发现，词汇量较小的 22 个月大的婴儿使用语音线索进行泛化；然而，词汇量较大的婴儿则表现出相反的结果，根据分布规律进行泛化。这些发现表明，语音和分布规律这两种标记单词类别的线索都促进了早期的单词学习。此外，虽然这些线索之间的相关性对于形成单词类别很重要，但我们发现，在早期语言发展过程中，婴儿在后续单词学习任务中对这些线索的重视程度会发生变化。
