Qi Zhenghan, Love Jessica, Fisher Cynthia, Brown-Schmidt Sarah
Department of Psychology.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2020 Oct;46(10):1922-1947. doi: 10.1037/xlm0000886. Epub 2020 Jun 25.
Classic studies reveal two striking differences between preschoolers and adults in online sentence comprehension. Adults (a) recruit referential context cues to guide syntactic parsing, interpreting an ambiguous phrase as a modifier if a modifier is needed to single out the intended referent among multiple options, and (b) use late-arriving information to recover from misinterpretation. Five-year-olds fail on both counts, appearing insensitive to the referential context and often failing to recover from parsing errors (Trueswell, Sekerina, Hill, & Logrip, 1999). But other findings suggest that 5-year-olds show rather than absent sensitivity to the referential context, and that individual differences in executive functioning predict children's ability to recover from garden-path errors. In 2 experiments, we built on these findings, focusing on whether children recruit referential-context cues if given time to do so. Children heard temporarily ambiguous instructions (e.g., ), while we monitored their eye-gaze and actions. We used a slow speech rate, and manipulated referential context between rather than within subjects, to give children time to bring referential context cues into play. Across experiments, eye-movement and action analyses revealed emerging sensitivity to the referential context. Moreover, error rates and eye-movement patterns indicating failures to revise were predicted by individual differences in executive function (scores in Simon Says and Flanker tasks). These data suggest that children, like adults, use referential context information in syntactic processing under some circumstances; the findings are also consistent with a role for domain-general executive function in resolution of syntactic ambiguity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
经典研究揭示了学龄前儿童和成年人在在线句子理解方面存在两个显著差异。成年人：（a）利用指称语境线索来指导句法解析，如果需要一个修饰语来从多个选项中挑选出预期的指称对象，就将一个歧义短语解释为修饰语；（b）利用后期到达的信息从错误解释中恢复过来。五岁的儿童在这两方面都表现不佳，似乎对指称语境不敏感，并且常常无法从解析错误中恢复过来（Trueswell、Sekerina、Hill和Logrip，1999）。但其他研究结果表明，五岁儿童对指称语境表现出了一定的敏感性而非完全没有敏感性，并且执行功能的个体差异预测了儿童从花园路径错误中恢复的能力。在两项实验中，我们基于这些研究结果，重点关注如果给儿童时间，他们是否会利用指称语境线索。儿童听到临时歧义指令（例如……），同时我们监测他们的目光注视和行为。我们使用较慢的语速，并在受试者之间而非受试者内部操纵指称语境，以便给儿童时间让指称语境线索发挥作用。在各项实验中，眼动和行为分析揭示了对指称语境逐渐出现的敏感性。此外，执行功能的个体差异（西蒙说和侧翼任务中的得分）预测了错误率和表明未能修正的眼动模式。这些数据表明，儿童在某些情况下与成年人一样，在句法处理中会利用指称语境信息；这些发现也与领域一般性执行功能在句法歧义解决中的作用相一致。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2020美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
