Psychology of Language Research Group, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany; Leibniz ScienceCampus "Primate Cognition", 37077 Göttingen, Germany; Center for Brain and Cognition, Department of Technology, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 08005 Barcelona, Spain.
Laboratorio de Psicolingüística, Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Copilco Universidad, Coyoacan 04510, Ciudad de México, México.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2021 May;205:105071. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2020.105071. Epub 2021 Jan 30.
Studies on lexical development in young children often suggest that the organization of the early lexicon may vary with age and increasing vocabulary size. In the current study, we explicitly examined this suggestion in further detail using a longitudinal study of the development of phonological and semantic priming effects in the same group of toddlers at three different ages. In particular, our longitudinal design allows us to disentangle effects of increasing age and vocabulary size on priming and the extent to which vocabulary size may predict later priming effects. We tested phonological and semantic priming effects in monolingual German infants at 18, 21, and 24 months of age. We used the intermodal preferential looking paradigm combined with eye tracking to measure the influence of phonologically and semantic related/unrelated primes on target recognition. We found that phonological priming effects were predicted by participants' current vocabulary size even after controlling for participants' age and participants' early vocabulary size. Semantic priming effects were, in contrast, not predicted by vocabulary size. Finally, we also found a relationship between early phonological priming effects and later semantic priming effects as well as between early semantic priming effects and later phonological priming effects, potentially suggesting (limited) consistency in lexical structure across development. Taken together, these results highlight the important role of vocabulary size in the development of priming effects in early childhood.
儿童词汇发展的研究通常表明，早期词汇的组织可能会随着年龄的增长和词汇量的增加而变化。在目前的研究中，我们使用同一年龄组的幼儿在三个不同年龄阶段的纵向研究，更详细地考察了这一建议。具体来说，我们的纵向设计允许我们区分年龄和词汇量增加对启动的影响，以及词汇量在多大程度上可以预测后期的启动效应。我们在 18、21 和 24 个月大的单语德国婴儿中测试了语音和语义启动效应。我们使用了多模态偏好注视范式结合眼动追踪来测量语音和语义相关/不相关启动对目标识别的影响。我们发现，即使在控制了参与者的年龄和早期词汇量后，参与者当前的词汇量也可以预测语音启动效应。相比之下，语义启动效应不受词汇量的影响。最后，我们还发现早期语音启动效应与后期语义启动效应之间以及早期语义启动效应与后期语音启动效应之间存在关系，这可能表明（有限的）词汇结构在发展过程中的一致性。总之，这些结果强调了词汇量在幼儿期启动效应发展中的重要作用。
