Carvalho Paulo F, Vales Catarina, Fausey Caitlin M, Smith Linda B
Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2018 Apr;168:1-18. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2017.12.002. Epub 2017 Dec 26.
Known words can guide visual attention, affecting how information is sampled. How do novel words, those that do not provide any top-down information, affect preschoolers' visual sampling in a conceptual task? We proposed that novel names can also change visual sampling by influencing how long children look. We investigated this possibility by analyzing how children sample visual information when they hear a sentence with a novel name versus without a novel name. Children completed a match-to-sample task while their moment-to-moment eye movements were recorded using eye-tracking technology. Our analyses were designed to provide specific information on the properties of visual sampling that novel names may change. Overall, we found that novel words prolonged the duration of each sampling event but did not affect sampling allocation (which objects children looked at) or sampling organization (how children transitioned from one object to the next). These results demonstrate that novel words change one important dynamic property of gaze: Novel words can entrain the cognitive system toward longer periods of sustained attention early in development.
已知词汇能够引导视觉注意力，影响信息的获取方式。那么新出现的词汇，即那些不提供任何自上而下信息的词汇，在概念任务中是如何影响学龄前儿童的视觉信息获取的呢？我们提出，新名称也可以通过影响儿童注视的时长来改变视觉信息获取。我们通过分析儿童在听到含有新名称的句子和不含新名称的句子时如何获取视觉信息来探究这种可能性。使用眼动追踪技术记录儿童瞬间的眼动情况，同时他们完成一个样本匹配任务。我们的分析旨在提供关于新名称可能改变的视觉信息获取特性的具体信息。总体而言，我们发现新词汇延长了每个信息获取事件的持续时间，但不影响信息获取分配（儿童注视哪些物体）或信息获取组织（儿童如何从一个物体转移到下一个物体）。这些结果表明，新词汇改变了注视的一个重要动态特性：新词汇能够在发育早期使认知系统趋向于更长时间的持续注意力。
