Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada.
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2019 Sep;185:128-147. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.04.021. Epub 2019 May 24.
Young language learners acquire their first language(s) from the speech they are exposed to in their environment. For at least some children (e.g., those in daycare), this environmental speech includes a large quantity of speech from other children. Yet, we know little about how young learners process this type of speech and its status as a source of input. Across two experiments, we assessed 21- to 23-month-olds' processing of a child's speech using the preferential looking paradigm. We found that toddlers processed the child speaker's productions as well as those of an adult and with the same level of sensitivity to phonetic detail previously shown for adult speakers. Although the amount of experience toddlers had interacting with other children outside the home had little influence on their processing of familiar words, only toddlers with high levels of experience with other children outside the home showed a disambiguation response after hearing novel labels. Whether this is truly due to the number or variety of other child speakers or to other correlated aspects of toddlers' language environments is unclear and remain intriguing questions for future research. Overall, these findings demonstrate that child speech may represent useful input for young language learners.
年轻的语言学习者通过他们在环境中接触到的言语来习得他们的第一语言或多种语言。对于至少一些儿童（例如，在日托中心的儿童）来说，这种环境中的言语包括大量来自其他儿童的言语。然而，我们对年轻学习者如何处理这种类型的言语以及它作为输入来源的地位知之甚少。在两项实验中，我们使用偏好注视范式评估了 21 至 23 个月大的婴儿对儿童言语的处理能力。我们发现，幼儿像处理成人言语一样处理儿童说话者的言语，并且对语音细节的敏感性与之前对成人说话者的敏感性相同。尽管幼儿在家外与其他儿童互动的经验量对他们熟悉单词的处理影响不大，但只有在家外与其他儿童有较高互动经验的幼儿在听到新标签后才会做出区分反应。这是否真的是因为其他儿童说话者的数量或种类，还是因为幼儿语言环境的其他相关方面，目前尚不清楚，这仍是未来研究中令人着迷的问题。总的来说，这些发现表明，儿童言语可能是年轻语言学习者有用的输入。
