Department of Psychology and Delta Center, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2011;6(12):e28095. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0028095. Epub 2011 Dec 14.
Humans and objects, and thus social interactions about objects, exist within space. Words direct listeners' attention to specific regions of space. Thus, a strong correspondence exists between where one looks, one's bodily orientation, and what one sees. This leads to further correspondence with what one remembers. Here, we present data suggesting that children use associations between space and objects and space and words to link words and objects--space binds labels to their referents. We tested this claim in four experiments, showing that the spatial consistency of where objects are presented affects children's word learning. Next, we demonstrate that a process model that grounds word learning in the known neural dynamics of spatial attention, spatial memory, and associative learning can capture the suite of results reported here. This model also predicts that space is special, a prediction supported in a fifth experiment that shows children do not use color as a cue to bind words and objects. In a final experiment, we ask whether spatial consistency affects word learning in naturalistic word learning contexts. Children of parents who spontaneously keep objects in a consistent spatial location during naming interactions learn words more effectively. Together, the model and data show that space is a powerful tool that can effectively ground word learning in social contexts.
人和物体，以及关于物体的社会互动，都存在于空间中。词语引导听众将注意力集中到空间的特定区域。因此，一个人的目光、身体方向和所见之间存在很强的对应关系。这进一步导致了与记忆内容的对应。在这里，我们提供的数据表明，儿童利用空间与物体以及空间与词语之间的联系来将词语和物体联系起来——空间将标签与它们的指涉物联系起来。我们在四个实验中检验了这一说法，表明物体呈现位置的空间一致性会影响儿童的词汇学习。接下来，我们展示了一个将词汇学习建立在已知的空间注意、空间记忆和联想学习的神经动力学基础上的过程模型，可以捕捉到这里报告的一系列结果。该模型还预测了空间的特殊性，在第五个实验中支持了这一预测，该实验表明儿童不会使用颜色作为线索将词语和物体联系起来。在最后的实验中，我们询问空间一致性是否会影响自然词汇学习环境中的词汇学习。在命名互动中，父母自发地将物体保持在一致空间位置的孩子，学习单词的效果更好。模型和数据共同表明，空间是一种强大的工具，可以有效地将词汇学习建立在社会环境中。
