Jones Gary, Rowland Caroline F
Nottingham Trent University, UK.
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Netherlands; University of Liverpool, UK.
Cogn Psychol. 2017 Nov;98:1-21. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2017.07.002. Epub 2017 Aug 10.
Children who hear large amounts of diverse speech learn language more quickly than children who do not. However, high correlations between the amount and the diversity of the input in speech samples makes it difficult to isolate the influence of each. We overcame this problem by controlling the input to a computational model so that amount of exposure to linguistic input (quantity) and the quality of that input (lexical diversity) were independently manipulated. Sublexical, lexical, and multi-word knowledge were charted across development (Study 1), showing that while input quantity may be important early in learning, lexical diversity is ultimately more crucial, a prediction confirmed against children's data (Study 2). The model trained on a lexically diverse input also performed better on nonword repetition and sentence recall tests (Study 3) and was quicker to learn new words over time (Study 4). A language input that is rich in lexical diversity outperforms equivalent richness in quantity for learned sublexical and lexical knowledge, for well-established language tests, and for acquiring words that have never been encountered before.
接触大量多样语音的儿童比未接触的儿童学习语言更快。然而，语音样本中输入的数量和多样性之间的高度相关性使得难以分离各自的影响。我们通过控制计算模型的输入来克服这个问题，以便独立操纵语言输入的接触量（数量）和该输入的质量（词汇多样性）。跨发育过程绘制了亚词汇、词汇和多词知识（研究1），表明虽然输入数量在学习早期可能很重要，但词汇多样性最终更为关键，这一预测通过儿童数据得到证实（研究2）。在词汇多样的输入上训练的模型在非词重复和句子回忆测试中也表现更好（研究3），并且随着时间的推移学习新单词更快（研究4）。对于所学的亚词汇和词汇知识、成熟的语言测试以及获取以前从未遇到过的单词而言，富含词汇多样性的语言输入在数量上同等丰富的情况下表现更优。
