One frog, two frog, red frog, blue frog: Factors affecting children's syntactic choices in production and comprehension
One frog, two frog, red frog, blue frog: Factors affecting children's syntactic choices in production and comprehension
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DOI：
10.1023/a:1026468209238
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发表时间：
2000-11-01
影响因子：
2
通讯作者：
Trueswell, JC
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hurewitz, F;Brown-Schmidt, S;Trueswell, JC
本文报道了两个实验，研究了儿童在语言产生和理解中进行句法选择时使用参考语境的能力。在最近的听觉理解在线研究中。希尔，塞克里娜。和Logrip（1999）研究了儿童和成人解决涉及介词短语的暂时句法歧义的能力(例如……“把餐巾上的青蛙放进……”)。尽管成人和年龄较大的儿童使用参考语境来指导他们的初始分析（在一只青蛙的语境中追求目的解释，在两只青蛙的语境中追求修辞语解释），但4至5岁儿童的初始和最终分析是目的分析，与语境无关。目前的研究调查了这些差异是归因于理解过程本身还是其他来源，例如儿童如何感知场景和参考情境的可能差异。在两个实验中。研究人员给孩子们布置了一个语言生成任务，目的是激发和锻炼孩子们通过限制性修饰来引用一组成员的能力。研究结果表明，在回答关于一组成员的问题时（例如，“哪只青蛙去了鱿鱼夫人的家？”）4 ~ 5岁的孩子经常会产生带有限制性介词修饰语的确定NP(例如……“餐巾上的那个”)。然而，这些孩子在理解过程中仍然错误地分析了指令，表现出对限制性修饰的强烈回避。实验2表明，区分两种指称的平台显著性的提高提高了整体性能，但仍然显示出生产和理解之间的强烈不对称。实验2中也记录了眼球运动，揭示了与Trueswell等人类似的在线解析模式：对目标分析的初始偏好和对早期参考承诺的修改失败。这些实验表明，儿童-成人在解析偏好上的差异部分源于理解过程本身的发展变化，而不是由于对场景的参考属性普遍不敏感。这些发现与在理解过程中揭示输入结构的概率模型是一致的，在这个模型中，首先学习更可靠的语言和话语相关线索，然后逐渐发展考虑其他更不确定（或更难学习）线索的能力。
Two experiments are reported which examine children's ability to use referential context when making syntactic choices in language production and comprehension. In a recent on-line study of auditory comprehension. Trueswell Sekerina, Hill. and Logrip (1999) examined children's and adults' abilities to resolve temporary syntactic ambiguities involving prepositional phrases(e.g.. "Put the frog on the napkin into..."). Although adults and older children used the referential context to guide their initial analysis (pursuing a destination interpretation in a one-frog context and a modifier interpretation in a two-frog context), 4 to 5-year olds' initial and ultimate analysis was one of destination, regardless of context. The present studies examined whether these differences were attributable to the comprehension process itself or to other sources, such as possible differences in how children perceive the scene and referential situation. In both experiments. children were given a language generation task designed to elicit and rest children's ability to refer to a member of a set through restrictive modification This task was immediately followed by the "put" comprehension task. The findings showed that, in response to a question about a member of a set (e.g., "Which frog went to Mrs. Squid's house?"), 4- to 5-year-olds frequently produced a definite NP with a restrictive prepositional modifier (e.g.. "The one on the napkin "). These same children, however continued to misanalyze put instructions showing a strong avoidance of restrictive modification during comprehension. Experiment 2 showed that an increase in the salience of the platforms that distinguished the two referents increased overall performance, but still showed the strong asymmetry between production and comprehension. Eye movements were also recorded in Experiment 2, revealing on-line parsing patterns similar to Trueswell et al.: an initial preference for a destination analysis and a failure to revise early referential commitments. These experiments indicate that child-adult differences in parsing preferences arise, in parr, from developmental changes in the comprehension process itself and not from a general insensitivity to referential properties of the scene. The findings are consistent with a probabilistic model for uncovering the structure of the input during comprehension, in which more reliable linguistic and discourse-related cues are learned first, followed by a gradually developing ability to take into account other more uncertain (or more difficult to learn) cues to structure.