Mosteller Sara, Wijeakumar Sobanawartiny, Wass Sam
School of Psychology, University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom.
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
Imaging Neurosci (Camb). 2025 Jan 2;3. doi: 10.1162/imag_a_00407. eCollection 2025.
Early language acquisition relies on the successful communication of specific word meanings when speaking or encoding labels. Here, we tested for evidence of this communication within the parallel functional neural activation that occurred for adults and children as unfamiliar objects were labelled by the caregiver. Measuring event-related hemodynamic responses with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) simultaneously recorded from both individuals, we compared cortical responses that were time-locked to spontaneous instances of object labelling during openly structured interactions. Most notably, children's responses differed between words learned and not learned in the right posterior temporal cortex, with relatively greater positive activation when children were not learning. The findings bear relevance to investigations of coordination between speakers and listeners during word-learning interactions.
早期语言习得依赖于在说话或编码标签时成功传达特定的词义。在此，我们测试了在照顾者为成人和儿童标记不熟悉物体时所发生的平行功能性神经激活中这种交流的证据。我们使用功能性近红外光谱技术（fNIRS）同时记录两人的与事件相关的血液动力学反应，比较了在开放式结构化互动中与物体标记的自发实例时间锁定的皮层反应。最值得注意的是，儿童在右后颞叶皮层中对已学单词和未学单词的反应有所不同，当儿童没有学习时，激活相对更积极。这些发现与单词学习互动中说话者和倾听者之间的协调研究相关。
