Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2023 May;229:105621. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2022.105621. Epub 2023 Jan 21.
In the current study, we examined the separate and combined effects of exemplar and speaker variability on monolingual and bilingual children's cross-situational word learning performance. Results revealed that children's word learning performance did not differ when the input varied in a single dimension (i.e., exemplars or speakers) compared with a condition with no variability independent of their linguistic background. However, when performance in conditions that varied in a single dimension (i.e., exemplars or speakers) was compared with a condition that varied in multiple dimensions (i.e., exemplars and speakers), bilingual word learning advantages were observed; bilinguals were more likely to learn word-referent associations than monolinguals. Together, results suggest that children can learn and generalize word-referent associations from input that varies in exemplars and speakers and that bilingualism may bolster learning under conditions of increased input variability.
在当前的研究中，我们考察了范例和说话人变异性对单语和双语儿童跨情境词汇学习表现的单独和共同影响。结果表明，与输入在单一维度（即范例或说话人）上变化而不依赖于其语言背景的条件相比，当输入在单一维度（即范例或说话人）上变化时，儿童的词汇学习表现没有差异。然而，当比较在单一维度（即范例或说话人）上变化的条件与在多个维度（即范例和说话人）上变化的条件时，观察到了双语词汇学习优势；双语者比单语者更有可能学习单词-指称关联。总之，结果表明，儿童可以从范例和说话人变化的输入中学习和泛化单词-指称关联，并且双语可能会在输入变异性增加的情况下促进学习。
