Can infants learn phonology in the lab? A meta-analytic answer
Can infants learn phonology in the lab? A meta-analytic answer
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DOI：
10.1016/j.cognition.2017.09.016
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发表时间：
2018-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
Cristia, Alejandrina
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Cristia, Alejandrina
学习语言的婴儿面临的两项关键任务是在音系学层面上：确定哪些声音在母语清单中具有对比性，以及确定它们可能的音节位置和允许的组合(发音)。2002-2003年间，两个关于婴儿如何学习声音的理论建议(Maye，Werker，&Gerken，2002)和另一个关于语音发音的理论(Chambers，Onishi，&Fisher，2003)在《认知》杂志上被提出，每个建议都由两个实验室实验支持，其中一组婴儿被短暂地暴露在一组假词中，随后测试了看似合理的语音概括。这两篇论文受到了科学界的广泛关注，并引发了一系列后续工作。在心理科学可复制性问题的背景下，本研究使用元分析方法对实验室中已有的婴儿语音学习的经验证据进行了评估。研究发现，当紧密的方法复制整合在一起时，两个开创性的发现(关于学习声音和学习语音)都站不住脚，尽管不那么接近的方法复制确实提供了一些证据，有利于健全的学习工作。对这部文学作品的作者和读者的启示也被引出。人们希望探索更多的语音学习机制，并希望未来的婴儿实验室工作采用依赖于实验暴露和测量的婴儿行为之间受限和明确联系的范例。
Two of the key tasks facing the language-learning infant lie at the level of phonology: establishing which sounds are contrastive in the native inventory, and determining what their possible syllabic positions and permissible combinations (phonotactics) are. In 2002-2003, two theoretical proposals, one bearing on how infants can learn sounds (Maye, Werker, & Gerken, 2002) and the other on phonotactics (Chambers, Onishi, & Fisher, 2003), were put forward on the pages of Cognition, each supported by two laboratory experiments, wherein a group of infants was briefly exposed to a set of pseudo-words, and plausible phonological generalizations were tested subsequently. These two papers have received considerable attention from the general scientific community, and inspired a flurry of follow-up work. In the context of questions regarding the replicability of psychological science, the present work uses a meta-analytic approach to appraise extant empirical evidence for infant phonological learning in the laboratory. It is found that neither seminal finding (on learning sounds and learning phonotactics) holds up when close methodological replications are integrated, although less close methodological replications do provide some evidence in favor of the sound learning strand of work. Implications for authors and readers of this literature are drawn out. It would be desirable that additional mechanisms for phonological learning be explored, and that future infant laboratory work employ paradigms that rely on constrained and unambiguous links between experimental exposure and measured infant behavior.