Harvard University, USA.
Yonsei University, South Korea.
Cognition. 2018 Jun;175:69-76. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.02.006. Epub 2018 Feb 22.
The present study examines how infants use their emergent perspective-taking and language comprehension abilities to make sense of interactions between two human agents. In the study, one agent (Agent1) could see only one of two identical balls on an apparatus because of a screen obstructing her view while the infant and another agent (Agent2) could see both balls. 19-month-old English-learning monolingual infants seemed to expect Agent2 to grasp the ball visible to Agent1 when she said to Agent2 "Give me the ball" but not when she said "Give me a ball." 14-month-olds appeared to accept that Agent2 could grasp either ball when Agent1 said "Give me the ball." Therefore, by 19 months of age, English-learning infants seem to attend to the specific linguistic units used, e.g., the definite article, to identify the referent of others' speech. Possible reasons in connection with language acquisition processes and/or environmental factors for the two age groups' respective failures with the definite and the indefinite articles are discussed.
本研究考察了婴儿如何利用他们刚刚出现的换位思考和语言理解能力来理解两个人类代理之间的互动。在研究中，一个代理（Agent1）因为一个屏幕挡住了她的视线，只能看到仪器上两个相同的球中的一个，而婴儿和另一个代理（Agent2）可以看到两个球。19 个月大的英语单语婴儿似乎期望当代理 2 听到她说“给我球”时，她能拿到代理 1 看到的球，但当她说“给我一个球”时，她就不能拿到。14 个月大的婴儿似乎接受了当代理 1 说“给我球”时，代理 2 可以拿到任意一个球。因此，19 个月大的英语学习婴儿似乎会注意到他人言语中使用的特定语言单位，例如定冠词，来确定他人言语的指涉对象。讨论了与语言习得过程和/或环境因素相关的两个年龄组在定冠词和不定冠词上的各自失败的可能原因。
