Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom.
School of Education, University of Exeter, Exeter EX1 2LU, United Kingdom.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2024 Jul 1;156(1):638-654. doi: 10.1121/10.0027916.
This experimental study investigated whether infants use iconicity in speech and gesture cues to interpret word meanings. Specifically, we tested infants' sensitivity to size sound symbolism and iconic gesture cues and asked whether combining these cues in a multimodal fashion would enhance infants' sensitivity in a superadditive manner. Thirty-six 14-17-month-old infants participated in a preferential looking task in which they heard a spoken nonword (e.g., "zudzud") while observing a small and large object (e.g., a small and large square). All infants were presented with an iconic cue for object size (small or large) (1) in the pitch of the spoken non-word (high vs low), (2) in gesture (small or large), or (3) congruently in pitch and gesture (e.g., a high pitch and small gesture indicating a small square). Infants did not show a preference for congruently sized objects in any iconic cue condition. Bayes factor analyses showed moderate to strong support for the null hypotheses. In conclusion, 14-17-month-old infants did not use iconic pitch cues, iconic gesture cues, or iconic multimodal cues (pitch and gesture) to associate speech sounds with their referents. These findings challenge theories that emphasize the role of iconicity in early language development.
本实验研究探讨了婴儿是否会利用言语和手势线索中的象似性来理解单词的含义。具体来说，我们测试了婴儿对大小语音象似性和象似手势线索的敏感性，并询问了以多模态方式结合这些线索是否会以超相加的方式增强婴儿的敏感性。36 名 14-17 个月大的婴儿参加了偏好注视任务，他们在听到一个非言语词（例如“zudzud”）的同时观察一个小的和一个大的物体（例如一个小的和一个大的正方形）。所有婴儿都呈现了对象大小的象似性线索（小或大）（1）在非言语词的音高中（高或低），（2）在手势中（小或大），或（3）在音高和手势中一致（例如，一个高音和一个小手势表示一个小正方形）。在任何象似性线索条件下，婴儿都没有表现出对大小一致的物体的偏好。贝叶斯因子分析显示，对零假设的支持从中等到强烈。总之，14-17 个月大的婴儿没有使用象似音高线索、象似手势线索或象似多模态线索（音高和手势）将语音与它们的指称物联系起来。这些发现挑战了强调象似性在早期语言发展中作用的理论。
