Department of Psychology, The University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Dev Sci. 2012 Sep;15(5):641-52. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.01157.x. Epub 2012 Jun 11.
As with all culturally relevant human behaviours, words are meaningful because they are shared by the members of a community. This research investigates whether 9-month-old infants understand this fundamental fact about language. Experiment 1 examined whether infants who are trained on, and subsequently habituated to, a new word-referent link expect the link to be consistent across a second speaker. Experiment 2 examined whether 9-month-old infants distinguish between behaviours that are shared across individuals (i.e. words) from those that are not (i.e. object preferences). The present findings indicate that infants as young as 9 months of age expect new word-referent links, but not object preferences, to be consistent across individuals. Thus, by 9 months, infants have identified at least one of the aspects of human behaviour that is shared across individuals within a community. The implications for children's acquisition of language and culture are discussed.
与所有具有文化相关性的人类行为一样，词语之所以有意义，是因为它们被一个社区的成员所共享。本研究旨在探讨 9 个月大的婴儿是否理解语言的这一基本事实。实验 1 考察了在新的单词-指涉物关联上接受训练并随后习惯的婴儿是否期望在第二个说话者身上保持关联的一致性。实验 2 检验了 9 个月大的婴儿是否能区分个人之间共享的行为（即单词）和不共享的行为（即物体偏好）。本研究结果表明，9 个月大的婴儿期望新的单词-指涉物关联，而不是物体偏好，在个人之间保持一致。因此，9 个月大的婴儿已经识别出人类行为的至少一个方面，即在一个社区内，个体之间是共享的。讨论了这对儿童语言和文化习得的影响。
