Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T1Z4, Canada.
Child Dev. 2012 Mar-Apr;83(2):543-53. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01715.x. Epub 2012 Jan 25.
Over their 1st year of life, infants'"universal" perception of the sounds of language narrows to encompass only those contrasts made in their native language (J. F. Werker & R. C. Tees, 1984). This research tested 40 infants in an eyetracking paradigm and showed that this pattern also holds for infants exposed to seen language-American Sign Language (ASL). Four-month-old, English-only, hearing infants discriminated an ASL handshape distinction, while 14-month-old hearing infants did not. Fourteen-month-old ASL-learning infants, however, did discriminate the handshape distinction, suggesting that, as in heard language, exposure to seen language is required for maintenance of visual language discrimination. Perceptual narrowing appears to be a ubiquitous learning mechanism that contributes to language acquisition.
在生命的第一年，婴儿“普遍”感知语言声音的能力会缩小，只包括他们母语中使用的那些对比（J. F. Werker 和 R. C. Tees，1984）。这项研究通过眼动追踪范式测试了 40 名婴儿，并表明这种模式也适用于接触过所见语言——美国手语（ASL）的婴儿。四个月大、只听英语的听力婴儿能够区分 ASL 的手形区别，而 14 个月大的听力婴儿则不能。然而，14 个月大的正在学习 ASL 的婴儿确实能够区分手形区别，这表明，就像在听到的语言中一样，接触到的所见语言对于维持视觉语言辨别能力是必要的。感知范围缩小似乎是一种普遍的学习机制，有助于语言习得。
