Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YF, UK.
Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YF, UK.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2019 Jun;182:61-85. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.01.011. Epub 2019 Feb 23.
We assessed 3- to 6-year-old children's production of two-clause sentences linked by before or after. In two experiments, children viewed an animated sequence of two actions and were asked to describe the order of events in specific target sentence structures. We manipulated whether the target sentence structure matched the chronological order of events (e.g., "He finished his homework, before he played in the garden" [chronological order]) or not (e.g., "Before he played in the garden, he finished his homework" [reverse order]). Children produced fewer accurate target sentences when the presentation order of the two clauses did not match the chronological order of events, specifically for target sentences linked by after. Independent measures of vocabulary and memory both were related to performance, but vocabulary was the stronger predictor. We conclude that developmental improvements in children's ability to produce two-clause sentences linked by a sequential temporal connective are driven primarily by language ability rather than memory capacity per se. This work also highlights the advantages of using both sentence repetition (Experiment 1) and blocked elicited production (Experiment 2) paradigms to elicit sentence production in young children.
我们评估了 3 至 6 岁儿童使用 before 或 after 连接的两语句式的生成能力。在两个实验中，儿童观看了两个动作的动画序列，并被要求用特定的目标句式描述事件的顺序。我们操纵了目标句式是否与事件的时间顺序相匹配（例如，“他完成了家庭作业，然后才去花园玩”[时间顺序]）或不匹配（例如，“他先去花园玩，然后才完成家庭作业”[颠倒顺序]）。当两个从句的呈现顺序与事件的时间顺序不匹配时，儿童产生的准确目标句较少，特别是对于用 after 连接的目标句。词汇和记忆的独立测量都与表现相关，但词汇是更强的预测因素。我们得出结论，儿童使用连接顺序时间连接词的两语句式生成能力的发展提高主要是由语言能力驱动的，而不是记忆能力本身。这项工作还强调了使用句子重复（实验 1）和阻塞诱发产生（实验 2）范式来诱发幼儿产生句子的优势。
