Department of Psychology, Princeton University, USA.
Department of Psychology, Princeton University, USA.
Cognition. 2018 Jul;176:215-219. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.03.006. Epub 2018 Mar 30.
Children who generate and update verbal predictions have larger vocabularies, suggesting that prediction may be a mechanism that supports language learning. We hypothesize that this relation is not confined to the domain of language, but instead signals a broader individual difference in information processing. To investigate this possibility, we tested infants (n = 50) in the early stages of vocabulary development (12-24 months) on their ability to generate and update nonverbal, visual predictions. In an eye-tracking task, a central fixation reliably preceded a peripheral target. Then, halfway through the experiment, the peripheral target began appearing on the opposite side. We assessed infants' proficiency in initiating anticipatory eye movements before and after the switch, and found that infants with larger vocabularies did not generate more predictions overall, but were more efficient in updating predictions to the new target side. These findings establish a link between nonverbal prediction and vocabulary in infancy, and suggest a promising means of addressing whether or not prediction abilities are causally related to language learning.
生成和更新口头预测的儿童词汇量更大，这表明预测可能是支持语言学习的一种机制。我们假设这种关系不仅限于语言领域，而是反映了信息处理方面更广泛的个体差异。为了探究这种可能性，我们对处于词汇发展早期阶段（12-24 个月）的婴儿（n=50）进行了测试，以评估他们生成和更新非语言、视觉预测的能力。在眼动追踪任务中，中央注视点可靠地先于周边目标出现。然后，在实验进行到一半时，周边目标开始出现在另一侧。我们评估了婴儿在转换前后开始进行预期眼动的熟练程度，发现词汇量较大的婴儿并没有总体上产生更多的预测，但是在更新预测到新目标侧时效率更高。这些发现为非语言预测和婴儿期词汇量之间建立了联系，并为确定预测能力是否与语言学习有因果关系提供了一种有前途的方法。
