Scene Grammar Lab, Department of Psychology, Goethe University Frankfurt, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 6, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Center for Research on Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk (IDeA), 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Scene Grammar Lab, Department of Psychology, Goethe University Frankfurt, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 6, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany; Center for Research on Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk (IDeA), 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2020 Jun;194:104782. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104782. Epub 2020 Mar 13.
In our daily lives, we rely on expectations of where to find objects in a scene. Every morning without conscious reflection, we find the milk in the refrigerator. How do these schemata develop during childhood? In the current study, we investigated the behavioral responses of 72 2- to 4-year-olds in two tasks that measured scene knowledge either directly by asking them to furnish a dollhouse or indirectly by observing their eye movements in a violation paradigm using scene photographs. In addition, we collected language acquisition measures for each child to investigate possible relations between the development of scene knowledge and language abilities. Results for both explicit and implicit measures indicated an increase of performance with age in terms of correct object placement relative to corresponding rooms/locations and a difference in first-pass dwell times between consistent and inconsistent objects. The consistency effect in eye movements was associated with shorter processing times for consistent objects, reflecting stronger predictions for objects in their familiar context/location. A reduction of first-pass dwell times to consistent objects was also predicted by the dollhouse performance measure of scene knowledge. Although strong links to language development could not be found, first indications are discussed together with possible improvements of future studies investigating such a link. In sum, our results imply that scene-related predictions effectively can influence implicit and explicit behavior by 4 years of age at the latest, allowing optimized attention allocation in scenes.
在日常生活中，我们依赖于对场景中物体位置的预期。每天早上，我们在没有意识反思的情况下，在冰箱里找到牛奶。这些图式是如何在儿童时期发展的？在目前的研究中，我们调查了 72 名 2 至 4 岁儿童在两项任务中的行为反应，这两项任务通过直接要求他们布置一个玩具屋或通过在使用场景照片的违反范式中观察他们的眼球运动来间接测量场景知识。此外，我们为每个孩子收集了语言习得的测量值，以调查场景知识的发展和语言能力之间可能存在的关系。无论是显性还是隐性测量，结果都表明，相对于相应的房间/位置，正确的物体放置的表现随着年龄的增长而提高，并且在一致和不一致的物体之间存在首次注视时间的差异。眼球运动中的一致性效应与一致物体的处理时间较短有关，这反映了对熟悉环境/位置中的物体的更强预测。首次注视时间到一致物体的减少也可以通过场景知识的玩具屋表现来预测。尽管没有找到与语言发展的强烈联系，但本文讨论了可能的改进未来研究调查这种联系的可能性。总之，我们的研究结果表明，最晚到 4 岁，与场景相关的预测可以有效地影响内隐和外显行为，从而优化场景中的注意力分配。
