Borovsky Arielle, Ellis Erica M, Evans Julia L, Elman Jeffrey L
Florida State University.
California State University, Los Angeles.
Child Dev. 2016 Nov;87(6):1893-1908. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12554. Epub 2016 Jun 15.
Although the size of a child's vocabulary associates with language-processing skills, little is understood regarding how this relation emerges. This investigation asks whether and how the structure of vocabulary knowledge affects language processing in English-learning 24-month-old children (N = 32; 18 F, 14 M). Parental vocabulary report was used to calculate semantic density in several early-acquired semantic categories. Performance on two language-processing tasks (lexical recognition and sentence processing) was compared as a function of semantic density. In both tasks, real-time comprehension was facilitated for higher density items, whereas lower density items experienced more interference. The findings indicate that language-processing skills develop heterogeneously and are influenced by the semantic network surrounding a known word.
尽管儿童词汇量的大小与语言处理能力相关，但对于这种关系是如何形成的却知之甚少。本研究探讨了词汇知识结构是否以及如何影响24个月大的英语学习儿童（N = 32；18名女性，14名男性）的语言处理能力。通过家长的词汇报告来计算几个早期习得语义类别的语义密度。将两项语言处理任务（词汇识别和句子处理）的表现作为语义密度的函数进行比较。在这两项任务中，高密度词汇的实时理解更容易，而低密度词汇则受到更多干扰。研究结果表明，语言处理能力的发展是不均衡的，并且受到已知单词周围语义网络的影响。
