Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Infancy. 2021 Nov;26(6):1076-1096. doi: 10.1111/infa.12434. Epub 2021 Sep 9.
The goal of this study was to investigate lexical-semantic processing at an early phase of language development. Adults often communicate with children using infant-directed speech that typically involves lexical and syntactic modifications such as onomatopoeias (Soderstrom, 2007). Here, we asked how and when children start to show an advantage for processing conventional linguistic forms, such as common nouns, and consequently decreasing sensitivity to onomatopoeias. We recorded event-related brain potentials in children of two age groups (16-21 months and 24-31 months) and in an adult control group during the presentation of four conditions in which either common nouns or onomatopoeias were presented auditorily followed by a picture of an either congruent or incongruent object. We focused on the N400 effect, a more negative ERP response to incongruent compared with congruent semantic relations. The younger children showed an N400 effect only for onomatopoeic words, while the older children showed an N400 effect only for common nouns. The adults showed N400 effects for onomatopoeia and nouns. These different N400 effects suggest that onomatopoeia and common nouns are differently organized in children's semantic memory and that the acquisition of linguistic abilities affects and modifies semantic processing of different lexical information.
本研究旨在探究语言发展早期的词汇语义加工过程。成人通常使用儿童导向语言与儿童交流，这种语言通常涉及词汇和句法的变化，例如拟声词（Soderstrom，2007）。在这里，我们探讨了儿童何时以及如何开始表现出对常规语言形式（如普通名词）的处理优势，从而降低对拟声词的敏感性。我们在两个年龄组（16-21 个月和 24-31 个月）的儿童以及成人对照组中记录了事件相关脑电位，在四个条件下呈现听觉呈现普通名词或拟声词，然后呈现一个与对象一致或不一致的图片。我们关注 N400 效应，即与语义一致的刺激相比，与语义不一致的刺激引发的更负的 ERP 反应。年幼的儿童仅在听到拟声词时表现出 N400 效应，而年长的儿童仅在听到普通名词时表现出 N400 效应。成年人在听到拟声词和名词时都表现出 N400 效应。这些不同的 N400 效应表明，拟声词和普通名词在儿童的语义记忆中组织方式不同，语言能力的获得会影响和改变不同词汇信息的语义处理。
