Winter Rebecca E, Stoeger Heidrun, Suggate Sebastian P
Department of Educational Sciences, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2021 May 12;12:666200. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.666200. eCollection 2021.
Children's fine motor skills (FMS) link to cognitive development, however, research on their involvement in language processing, also with adults, is scarce. Lexical items are processed differently depending on the degree of sensorimotor information inherent in the words' meanings, such as whether these imply a body-object interaction (BOI) or a body-part association (i.e., hand, arm, mouth, foot). Accordingly, three studies examined whether lexical processing was affected by FMS, BOIness, and body-part associations in children (study 1, = 77) and adults (study 2, = 80; study 3, = 71). Analyses showed a differential link between FMS and lexical processing as a function of age. Whereas response latencies indicated that children's FMS were associated with "hand" words, adults' FMS linked to the broader concept of BOI. Findings have implications for shared activation theories positing that FMS support lexical processing.
儿童的精细运动技能（FMS）与认知发展相关，然而，关于其在语言处理中的作用，包括与成人的比较，研究却很少。词汇项目的处理方式因词意中固有的感觉运动信息程度而异，比如这些词是否暗示身体与物体的相互作用（BOI）或身体部位的关联（即手、手臂、嘴、脚）。因此，三项研究考察了儿童（研究1，n = 77）和成人（研究2，n = 80；研究3，n = 71）的词汇处理是否受到FMS、BOI程度和身体部位关联的影响。分析表明，FMS与词汇处理之间的联系因年龄而异。反应潜伏期表明，儿童的FMS与“手”相关词汇有关，而成人的FMS与更广泛的BOI概念相关。这些发现对认为FMS支持词汇处理的共享激活理论具有启示意义。
