Communicative signals support abstract rule learning by 7-month-old infants.
Communicative signals support abstract rule learning by 7-month-old infants.
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DOI：
10.1038/srep25434
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发表时间：
2016-05-06
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Lew-Williams C
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ferguson B;Lew-Williams C
根据先前的研究，发现抽象规则（如自然语言中发现的规则）的机制可能会进化到适合语音。当婴儿听到语音时，他们可以学习控制其组合的规则，但当他们听到非语音（例如正弦波音调）时，他们就无法做到这一点。在这里，我们表明婴儿的规则学习与言语本身并不相关，而是通过交流信号更广泛地增强。在两个实验中，婴儿成功地从引入的音调中学习和概括规则，就好像它们可以用来交流一样。在两个对照实验中，婴儿在熟悉交流之外的语气时未能学到完全相同的规则。这些结果表明，婴儿对社会主体和交流的关注促进了人类学习的基本成就。
The mechanisms underlying the discovery of abstract rules like those found in natural language may be evolutionarily tuned to speech, according to previous research. When infants hear speech sounds, they can learn rules that govern their combination, but when they hear non-speech sounds such as sine-wave tones, they fail to do so. Here we show that infants’ rule learning is not tied to speech per se, but is instead enhanced more broadly by communicative signals. In two experiments, infants succeeded in learning and generalizing rules from tones that were introduced as if they could be used to communicate. In two control experiments, infants failed to learn the very same rules when familiarized to tones outside of a communicative exchange. These results reveal that infants’ attention to social agents and communication catalyzes a fundamental achievement of human learning.