Lukyanenko Cynthia, Fisher Cynthia
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States.
Cognition. 2016 Jan;146:349-70. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2015.10.012. Epub 2015 Nov 9.
We tested toddlers' and adults' predictive use of English subject-verb agreement. Participants saw pairs of pictures differing in number and kind (e.g., one apple, two cookies), and heard sentences with a target noun naming one of the pictures. The target noun was the subject of a preceding agreeing verb in informative trials (e.g., Wherearethe good cookies?), but not in uninformative trials (Do you see the good cookies?). In Experiment 1, 3-year-olds and adults were faster and more likely to shift their gaze from distractor to target upon hearing an informative agreeing verb. In Experiment 2, 2.5-year-olds were faster to shift their gaze from distractor to target in response to the noun in informative trials, and were more likely to be fixating the target already at noun onset. Thus, toddlers used agreeing verbs to predict number features of an upcoming noun. These data provide strong new evidence for the broad scope of predictive processing in online language comprehension.
我们测试了幼儿和成年人对英语主谓一致的预测性运用。参与者观看了在数量和种类上不同的图片对（例如，一个苹果、两块饼干），并听到含有一个指代其中一张图片的目标名词的句子。在信息性试验中，目标名词是前面一致动词的主语（例如，“Where are the good cookies?”），但在非信息性试验中不是（“Do you see the good cookies?”）。在实验1中，3岁儿童和成年人在听到信息性一致动词时，更快且更有可能将目光从干扰物转向目标。在实验2中，2.5岁儿童在信息性试验中，对名词做出反应时更快地将目光从干扰物转向目标，并且更有可能在名词出现时就已经注视着目标。因此，幼儿使用一致动词来预测即将出现的名词的数量特征。这些数据为在线语言理解中预测性处理的广泛范围提供了强有力的新证据。
