Lorusso Maria Luisa, Pigazzini Laura, Zampini Laura, Burigo Michele, Caccia Martina, Milani Anna, Molteni Massimo
Scientific Institute IRCCS E. Medea, Via Don Luigi Monza 20, 23842 Bosisio Parini, LC, Italy.
Children (Basel). 2025 May 31;12(6):722. doi: 10.3390/children12060722.
BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Verbs are considered to be more abstract than nouns, as they represent actions, states, and events, which are less tangible, more flexible in their meaning and thus less univocally specified. It has been suggested that children acquire abstract concepts based on their linguistic contexts of use, making use of semantic and syntactic cues. By contrast, according to theories of embodied cognition, conceptual knowledge is based on physical and perceptual interaction with the world. The present study investigates whether the verbal and the visual modality produce similar or different results in the processes of construction and reactivation of novel verbs, corresponding to new compositional abstract concepts, in children of different ages. In Experiment 1, the acquisition of the concept was determined based on the quality of verbal explanation; in Experiment 2, participants were asked to decide whether a visual representation fitted the concept or not. Thus, response modality could be either explicit or implicit, and either congruent or incongruent with respect to learning modality.
In Experiment 1, 100 children from grade 1 to 5 were asked to explain the meaning of verbs introduced via verbal or visual instances. In Experiment 2, 15 children aged 8 to 10 had to judge pictures as (not) being examples of previously verbally or visually presented novel verbs.
The results of Experiment 1 show more accurate explanations after verbal presentation across all grades. In Experiment 2, verbal presentation was no longer associated with more accurate matching responses, but rather with slower decision times.
Modality congruence, explicitness and linguistic (semantic and syntactic) factors were all shown to play a role, which is discussed in a developmental perspective.
背景/目的：动词被认为比名词更抽象，因为它们代表动作、状态和事件，这些更难以捉摸，含义更灵活，因此定义也更不明确。有人提出，儿童基于其语言使用环境来获取抽象概念，利用语义和句法线索。相比之下，根据具身认知理论，概念知识基于与世界的物理和感知互动。本研究调查在构建和重新激活对应于新的组合抽象概念的新动词过程中，不同年龄段儿童的言语和视觉模态是否会产生相似或不同的结果。在实验1中，根据言语解释的质量来确定概念的习得情况；在实验2中，要求参与者判断视觉表征是否符合该概念。因此，反应模态可以是明确的或隐含的，并且在学习模态方面可以是一致的或不一致的。
在实验1中，要求100名一年级至五年级的儿童解释通过言语或视觉示例引入的动词的含义。在实验2中，15名8至10岁的儿童必须判断图片是否为先前通过言语或视觉呈现的新动词的示例。
实验1的结果表明，在所有年级中，言语呈现后解释更准确。在实验2中，言语呈现不再与更准确的匹配反应相关，而是与更长的决策时间相关。
模态一致性、明确性和语言（语义和句法）因素均显示发挥了作用，本文从发展的角度对此进行了讨论。
