Kaduk Katharina, Bakker Marta, Juvrud Joshua, Gredebäck Gustaf, Westermann Gert, Lunn Judith, Reid Vincent M
Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YF, UK.
Uppsala Child and Baby Lab, Department of Psychology, 751 42 Uppsala, Sweden.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2016 Nov;151:96-108. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2016.02.003. Epub 2016 Mar 9.
The current study uses event-related potential methodologies to investigate how social-cognitive processes in preverbal infants relate to language performance. We assessed 9-month-olds' understanding of the semantic structure of actions via an N400 event-related potential (ERP) response to action sequences that contained expected and unexpected outcomes. At 9 and 18months of age, infants' language abilities were measured using the Swedish Early Communicative Development Inventory (SECDI). Here we show that 9-month-olds' understanding of the semantic structure of actions, evidenced in an N400 ERP response to action sequences with unexpected outcomes, is related to language comprehension scores at 9months and is related to language production scores at 18months of age. Infants who showed a selective N400 response to unexpected action outcomes are those who are classed as above mean in their language proficiency. The results provide evidence that language performance is related to the ability to detect and interpret human actions at 9months of age. This study suggests that some basic cognitive mechanisms are involved in the processing of sequential events that are shared between two conceptually different cognitive domains and that pre-linguistic social understanding skills and language proficiency are linked to one another.
当前的研究采用事件相关电位方法来探究前语言期婴儿的社会认知过程与语言表现之间的关系。我们通过对包含预期和意外结果的动作序列的N400事件相关电位（ERP）反应，评估了9个月大婴儿对动作语义结构的理解。在9个月和18个月大时，使用瑞典早期交流发展量表（SECDI）测量婴儿的语言能力。在此我们表明，9个月大婴儿对动作语义结构的理解（通过对具有意外结果的动作序列的N400 ERP反应得以证明）与9个月大时的语言理解得分相关，并且与18个月大时的语言表达得分相关。对意外动作结果表现出选择性N400反应的婴儿，其语言能力被归类为高于平均水平。这些结果提供了证据，表明语言表现与9个月大时检测和解释人类动作的能力相关。这项研究表明，一些基本认知机制参与了两个概念上不同的认知领域共有的序列事件的处理，并且前语言期的社会理解技能和语言能力是相互关联的。
