Yurovsky Daniel, Case Sarah, Frank Michael C
1 Department of Psychology, University of Chicago.
2 Department of Psychology, Stanford University.
Psychol Sci. 2017 Jan;28(1):132-140. doi: 10.1177/0956797616668557. Epub 2016 Nov 12.
Because linguistic communication is inherently noisy and uncertain, adult language comprehenders integrate bottom-up cues from speech perception with top-down expectations about what speakers are likely to say. Further, in line with the predictions of ideal-observer models, past results have shown that adult comprehenders flexibly adapt how much they rely on these two kinds of cues in proportion to their changing reliability. Do children also show evidence of flexible, expectation-based language comprehension? We presented preschoolers with ambiguous utterances that could be interpreted in two different ways, depending on whether the children privileged perceptual input or top-down expectations. Across three experiments, we manipulated the reliability of both their perceptual input and their expectations about the speaker's intended meaning. As predicted by noisy-channel models of speech processing, results showed that 4- and 5-year-old-but perhaps not younger-children flexibly adjusted their interpretations as cues changed in reliability.
由于语言交流本质上存在噪音且具有不确定性，成年语言理解者会将来自语音感知的自下而上的线索与对说话者可能会说内容的自上而下的预期相结合。此外，与理想观察者模型的预测一致，过去的研究结果表明，成年理解者会根据这两种线索可靠性的变化，灵活调整对它们的依赖程度。儿童是否也表现出基于预期的灵活语言理解能力呢？我们向学龄前儿童呈现了模棱两可的话语，这些话语可以有两种不同的解释，这取决于儿童是优先考虑感知输入还是自上而下的预期。在三个实验中，我们操纵了他们感知输入的可靠性以及他们对说话者意图意义的预期。正如语音处理的噪声通道模型所预测的那样，结果表明，4岁和5岁的儿童——但可能更小的儿童并非如此——会随着线索可靠性的变化灵活调整他们的解释。
