Iconicity affects children's comprehension of complex sentences: The role of semantics, clause order, input and individual differences
Iconicity affects children's comprehension of complex sentences: The role of semantics, clause order, input and individual differences
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DOI：
10.1016/j.cognition.2017.10.015
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发表时间：
2018-02-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
Lieven, Elena V. M.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
de Ruiter, Laura E.;Theakston, Anna L.;Lieven, Elena V. M.
含有状语从句的复句在三岁左右的儿童言语中出现，但儿童在上学期间很难很好地理解这些句子。到目前为止，这些困难的原因还不清楚，很大程度上是因为以前的研究往往只关注状语从句的子类型，或者只测试了有限的理论模型。在这篇文章中，我们提供了迄今为止最全面的实验研究。我们在四个不同的状语从句(之前、之后、因为、如果)上对四岁儿童、五岁儿童和成年人进行了测试，以评估四种不同的理论模型(语义、句法、频率和容量约束)。71名儿童和10名成人(作为对照)完成了一项强制选择、图片选择理解测试，提供了准确性和反应时间数据。孩子们还完成了一系列测试，以评估他们的语言和一般认知能力。我们发现，儿童的理解受到语义因素的强烈影响-事件到语言映射的象似性-他们的反应时间受到连接词所表达的关系类型(时间与因果)的影响。输入频率(基于频率的帐户)、子句顺序(语法帐户)或工作记忆(容量受限帐户)都不能很好地适应数据。因此，我们的发现有助于开发更复杂的句子处理模型。我们的结论是，这样的模型还必须考虑到儿童正在形成的语言理解如何与其他认知领域的发展相互作用，例如他们构建心理模型和灵活推理的能力。
Complex sentences involving adverbial clauses appear in children's speech at about three years of age yet children have difficulty comprehending these sentences well into the school years. To date, the reasons for these difficulties are unclear, largely because previous studies have tended to focus on only sub-types of adverbial clauses, or have tested only limited theoretical models. In this paper, we provide the most comprehensive experimental study to date. We tested four-year-olds, five-year-olds and adults on four different adverbial clauses (before, after, because, if) to evaluate four different theoretical models (semantic, syntactic, frequency-based and capacity-constrained). 71 children and 10 adults (as controls) completed a forced-choice, picture-selection comprehension test, providing accuracy and response time data. Children also completed a battery of tests to assess their linguistic and general cognitive abilities. We found that children's comprehension was strongly influenced by semantic factors - the iconicity of the event-to-language mappings - and that their response times were influenced by the type of relation expressed by the connective (temporal vs. causal). Neither input frequency (frequency-based account), nor clause order (syntax account) or working memory (capacity-constrained account) provided a good fit to the data. Our findings thus contribute to the development of more sophisticated models of sentence processing. We conclude that such models must also take into account how children's emerging linguistic understanding interacts with developments in other cognitive domains such as their ability to construct mental models and reason flexibly about them.