Developmental Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Potsdam, 14476 Potsdam, Germany.
Division of Human Communication, Development and Hearing, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2019 Jul;183:134-145. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.01.023. Epub 2019 Mar 11.
The current study tests the hypothesis that shy children's reduced word learning is partly due to an effect of shyness on attention during object labeling. A sample of 20- and 26-month-old children (N = 32) took part in a looking-while-listening task in which they saw sets of familiar and novel objects while hearing familiar or novel labels. Overall, children increased attention to familiar objects when hearing their labels, and they divided their attention equally between the target and competitors when hearing novel labels. Critically, shyness reduced attention to the target object regardless of whether the heard label was novel or familiar. When children's retention of the novel word-object mappings was tested after a delay, it was found that children who showed increased attention to novel objects during labeling showed better retention. Taken together, these findings suggest that shyer children perform less well than their less shy peers on measures of word learning because their attention to the target object is dampened. Thus, this work presents evidence that shyness modulates the low-level processes of visual attention that unfold during word learning.
本研究检验了这样一个假设，即害羞儿童的词汇学习减少部分是由于害羞对物体命名过程中注意力的影响。研究选取了 20 个月大和 26 个月大的儿童（N=32），让他们在听的同时进行观察任务，观察一组熟悉和陌生的物体，同时听到熟悉或陌生的标签。总的来说，当孩子们听到熟悉的物体的标签时，他们会增加对熟悉物体的注意力，当听到陌生的标签时，他们会平等地分配注意力给目标和竞争者。关键的是，无论听到的标签是熟悉的还是陌生的，害羞都会减少对目标物体的注意力。当对延迟后的新单词-物体映射进行儿童保留测试时，发现那些在命名过程中对新物体注意力增加的儿童表现出更好的保留效果。总的来说，这些发现表明，害羞的儿童在词汇学习的衡量标准上表现不如不害羞的儿童，因为他们对目标物体的注意力被削弱了。因此，这项工作提供了证据表明，害羞会调节在词汇学习过程中展开的低水平视觉注意力过程。
