Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
Dev Sci. 2024 Sep;27(5):e13508. doi: 10.1111/desc.13508. Epub 2024 Apr 14.
To learn the meaning of a new word, or to recognize the meaning of a known one, both children and adults benefit from surrounding words, or the sentential context. Most of the evidence from children is based on their accuracy and efficiency when listening to speech in their familiar native accent: they successfully use the words they know to identify other words' referents. Here, we assess how accurately and efficiently 4-year-old children use sentential context to identify referents of known and novel nouns in unfamiliar-accented speech, as compared to familiar-accented speech. In a looking-while-listening task, children showed considerable success in processing unfamiliar-accented speech. Children robustly mapped known nouns produced in an unfamiliar accent to their target referents rather than novel competitors, and they used informative surrounding verbs (e.g., "You can eat the dax") to identify the referents of both known and novel nouns-although there was a processing cost for unfamiliar-accented speech in some cases. This demonstrates that 4-year-olds successfully and rapidly process unfamiliar-accented speech by recruiting the same strategies available to them in familiar-accented speech, revealing impressive flexibility in word recognition and word learning across diverse linguistic environments. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: We examined 4-year-old children's accuracy and processing efficiency in comprehending known and novel nouns embedded in sentences produced in familiar-accented or unfamiliar-accented speech. Children showed limited processing costs for unfamiliar-accented speech and mapped known words to their referents even when these were produced in unfamiliar-accented speech. Children used known verbs to predict the referents of upcoming nouns in both familiar- and unfamiliar-accented speech, but processing costs were evident for unfamiliar-accented speech. Thus, the strategies that support children's word comprehension and word learning in familiar-accented speech are available to them in unfamiliar accents as well.
要学习一个新单词的意思，或者要识别一个已知单词的意思，儿童和成人都受益于周围的单词或句子语境。大多数来自儿童的证据都基于他们在听熟悉的母语口音的演讲时的准确性和效率：他们成功地使用他们所知道的单词来识别其他单词的指代对象。在这里，我们评估 4 岁儿童在使用句子语境识别陌生口音中已知和新名词的指代对象时的准确性和效率，与熟悉口音相比。在听看任务中，儿童在处理陌生口音方面表现出相当大的成功。儿童将在陌生口音中产生的已知名词有力地映射到其目标指代对象上，而不是新的竞争者，并且他们使用信息丰富的周围动词（例如，“你可以吃 dax”）来识别已知和新名词的指代对象-尽管在某些情况下，陌生口音的处理存在成本。这表明 4 岁儿童通过利用熟悉口音中提供的相同策略，成功且快速地处理陌生口音的演讲，在不同语言环境中表现出令人印象深刻的词汇识别和词汇学习灵活性。研究亮点：我们检查了 4 岁儿童在理解嵌入在熟悉口音或陌生口音演讲中的已知和新名词的准确性和处理效率。儿童对陌生口音的演讲表现出有限的处理成本，并且即使在陌生口音中，他们也将已知单词映射到其指代对象上。儿童使用已知动词来预测在熟悉和陌生口音的演讲中即将出现的名词的指代对象，但在陌生口音的演讲中存在处理成本。因此，支持儿童在熟悉口音的演讲中理解和学习单词的策略也适用于他们在陌生口音中。
