Rabinowitz M, Ornstein P A, Folds-Bennett T H, Schneider W
Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research, Munich, Germany.
J Exp Child Psychol. 1994 Jun;57(3):449-59. doi: 10.1006/jecp.1994.1021.
This study was designed to explore age constraints on speed of processing on a lexical decision task. In order to unconfound age and experience, the participants were presented with two lexical decision tasks, one in German (the native language) and one in English (the second language), as well as a symbol matching task. Three groups of subjects were formed: (1) 16-year-olds who had received formal instruction in English for 5 years, (2) 16-year-olds who had received only 1 year of instruction in English, and (3) 14-year-olds who had received 3 years of instruction in English. Inclusion of these three groups permitted the study of the effects of language experience in the absence of the usual age-experience confound. When the lexical decision task involved German words and nonwords, the older children responded more quickly than the younger subjects. However, when the stimulus items were English words and non-words, this age-related progression was disrupted and response speed was related to experience with English as a second language. These results suggest that experience is an important factor to consider when trying to account for lexical access times. Implications for understanding age-related differences are discussed.
本研究旨在探讨词汇判断任务中加工速度的年龄限制。为了区分年龄和经验的影响，研究人员让参与者完成两项词汇判断任务，一项用德语（母语），一项用英语（第二语言），同时还有一项符号匹配任务。研究人员将参与者分为三组：（1）接受过5年英语正规教育的16岁青少年；（2）只接受过1年英语教育的16岁青少年；（3）接受过3年英语教育的14岁青少年。纳入这三组人员可以在不存在常见的年龄与经验混淆因素的情况下研究语言经验的影响。当词汇判断任务涉及德语单词和非单词时，年龄较大的儿童比年龄较小的参与者反应更快。然而，当刺激项目是英语单词和非单词时，这种与年龄相关的进程被打乱，反应速度与作为第二语言的英语经验有关。这些结果表明，在试图解释词汇通达时间时，经验是一个需要考虑的重要因素。本文还讨论了这些结果对于理解年龄相关差异的意义。
