At 6-9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns
At 6-9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1113380109
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发表时间：
2012-02-28
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Swingley, Daniel
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Bergelson, Elika;Swingley, Daniel
人们普遍认为，婴儿开始学习母语不是通过学习单词，而是通过发现语音信号的特征：辅音、元音和这些声音的组合。学习理解单词，而不仅仅是感知它们的声音，据说是在9到15个月大的时候，当婴儿发展出解释他人目标和意图的能力时。在这里，我们证明了这种关于人类语言学习发展顺序的共识是有缺陷的：事实上，婴儿从6个月开始就已经知道几个常用单词的含义。我们给6- 9个月大的婴儿看一组图片，让他们的父母在每组图片中说出一个名字。在整个年龄范围内，婴儿将目光指向命名的图片，表明他们对口语的理解。因为这些单词不是在实验室里训练的，结果表明，即使是年幼的婴儿也能通过日常语言经验来学习普通单词。这一令人惊讶的成就表明，与普遍的看法相反，婴儿在6个月时已经可以掌握成人的指称意图，或者婴儿在这种能力出现之前就可以学习单词。对词义的过早发现表明了一种观点，即在语言习得开始时，学习词汇和学习口语的语音结构是齐头并进的。
It is widely accepted that infants begin learning their native language not by learning words, but by discovering features of the speech signal: consonants, vowels, and combinations of these sounds. Learning to understand words, as opposed to just perceiving their sounds, is said to come later, between 9 and 15 mo of age, when infants develop a capacity for interpreting others' goals and intentions. Here, we demonstrate that this consensus about the developmental sequence of human language learning is flawed: in fact, infants already know the meanings of several common words from the age of 6 mo onward. We presented 6- to 9-mo-old infants with sets of pictures to view while their parent named a picture in each set. Over this entire age range, infants directed their gaze to the named pictures, indicating their understanding of spoken words. Because the words were not trained in the laboratory, the results show that even young infants learn ordinary words through daily experience with language. This surprising accomplishment indicates that, contrary to prevailing beliefs, either infants can already grasp the referential intentions of adults at 6 mo or infants can learn words before this ability emerges. The precocious discovery of word meanings suggests a perspective in which learning vocabulary and learning the sound structure of spoken language go hand in hand as language acquisition begins.