Bigot Violette, Trueswell John, Carvalho Alex de
Laboratoire de Psychologie du Développement et de l'Éducation de l'Enfant - LaPsyDÉ, La Sorbonne, Department of Psychology, CNRS, Université Paris Cité.
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania.
Cogn Sci. 2025 Jul;49(7):e70089. doi: 10.1111/cogs.70089.
Five-to-six-year-olds' abilities to detect and solve ambiguities in spoken language have been found to be a predictor of their later reading abilities in first-to-third grade. However, the origins of this relationship remain unclear. Success in ambiguity detection may be reflective of overall language attainment, which varies with socioeconomic status (SES) and is known to predict reading. Yet, it is also possible that children's ability to detect ambiguity is explained by domain-general cognitive control skills, which can also vary with SES and predict literacy attainment. In this cross-sectional study, we examined within the same children the contributions of overall language knowledge, SES, and cognitive control skills to their ability to detect ambiguities in speech. Five-to-six-year-old French-learning preschoolers (n = 38) performed three different tasks: ambiguity detection, a cognitive control (Flanker/No-Go) task, and standard assessments of vocabulary and oral language comprehension in French (BSEDS). Years of maternal education after the end of high school were used as a proxy of family SES. Individual differences in the ability to detect ambiguity were strongly related to children's cognitive control abilities, as indexed by congruency effects in the Flanker task. No relations with SES or language assessment were observed. These results lend support to the idea that children's reading development may hinge upon their ability to deal effectively with temporary lexical, syntactic, and semantic ambiguities that pervade real-time sentence interpretation and that their ability to deal with representational conflict in speech is reflective of their domain-general cognitive control skills.
研究发现，5到6岁儿童在口语中检测和解决歧义的能力是其在一年级到三年级后期阅读能力的一个预测指标。然而，这种关系的起源尚不清楚。歧义检测的成功可能反映了整体语言水平，而整体语言水平会因社会经济地位（SES）而有所不同，并且已知它可以预测阅读能力。然而，儿童检测歧义的能力也有可能是由一般领域的认知控制技能来解释的，这种技能也会因SES而有所不同，并能预测识字水平。在这项横断面研究中，我们在同一批儿童中考察了整体语言知识、SES和认知控制技能对他们在言语中检测歧义能力的贡献。5到6岁学习法语的学龄前儿童（n = 38）完成了三项不同的任务：歧义检测、一项认知控制（侧翼/停止信号）任务，以及法语词汇和口语理解的标准评估（BSEDS）。高中毕业后母亲受教育的年限被用作家庭SES的一个指标。歧义检测能力的个体差异与儿童的认知控制能力密切相关，侧翼任务中的一致性效应可作为指标。未观察到与SES或语言评估的关系。这些结果支持了这样一种观点，即儿童的阅读发展可能取决于他们有效处理实时句子解释中普遍存在的临时词汇、句法和语义歧义的能力，并且他们处理言语中表征冲突的能力反映了他们一般领域的认知控制技能。
