Markson L, Bloom P
Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson 85721, USA.
Nature. 1997 Feb 27;385(6619):813-5. doi: 10.1038/385813a0.
Children can learn aspects of the meaning of a new word on the basis of only a few incidental exposures and can retain this knowledge for a long period-a process dubbed 'fast mapping". It is often maintained that fast mapping is the result of a dedicated language mechanism, but it is possible that this same capacity might apply in domains other than language learning. Here we present two experiments in which three- and four-year-old children and adults were taught a novel name and a novel fact about an object, and were tested on their retention immediately, after a 1-week delay or after a 1-month delay. Our findings show that fast mapping is not limited to word learning, suggesting that the capacity to learn and retain new words is the result of learning and memory abilities that are not specific to language.
儿童仅通过几次偶然接触就能学习一个新单词的部分含义，并能长时间记住这些知识——这一过程被称为“快速映射”。人们通常认为快速映射是一种专门的语言机制的结果，但同样的能力也可能适用于语言学习之外的领域。在此，我们展示了两个实验，在实验中，向三岁、四岁儿童及成人教授一个关于某物体的新名称和一个新事实，并在立即、延迟1周或延迟1个月后对他们的记忆情况进行测试。我们的研究结果表明，快速映射并不局限于单词学习，这表明学习和记忆新单词的能力是学习和记忆能力的结果，而并非语言所特有的。
