Collaborative Research: The Origins of Word Learning

协作研究：单词学习的起源

• 批准号: 9615391
• 负责人: Roberta Golinkoff
• 金额: $ 19.12万
• 依托单位: University of Delaware
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1996
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1996-08-01 至 1999-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9615391&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Origins; Word; Learning

9615391 GOLINKOFF Before children can tie their shoes they have learned thousands of words. Yet little is known about the process of early word learning, partly because of the methodological barriers researchers have faced in attempting to work with preverbal and barely verbal children. This research will use two new methods to investigate how young children (approximately 10-24 months of age) learn the words of their native language. The particular focus will be on how children learn object names since, around the world, object names predominate in children's earliest vocabularies. Previous research has suggested that children are guided by a set of six principles in learning new words, principles which narrow the range of choices which children must consider for what a new word might mean. These principles are organized into two "tiers," with the first tier present by the end of the first year of life. The three principles in the first tier are (1) "reference," or the idea that a word can "map to" or become linked to an object in the world, (2) "extendibility," the fact that a word does not just name the original object but a class of objects (e.g., "dog" does not just label Fido, the family dog, but all dogs), and (3) "object scope," the assumption that a new word labels an object (as opposed to say, an action) and that it labels the whole object (versus just an interesting part of the object). The eleven experiments in this project are designed to understand how children derive these three principles of the first tier. In all the experiments, children will be taught the names of novel objects under various conditions in order to probe the processes by which they learn new words. Since young children do not often talk on command, in all the experiments, children will be asked to show their word learning facility through their language comprehension instead of through language production. The research will seek to answer three questions. The firs t is the question of emergence, i.e., when does each principle appear and does each principle have both a mature and an immature form? The second is the question of mechanism, i.e., what mechanisms are responsible for the appearance of each principle and do children of different ages rely on different cues as they deploy these principles for word learning? The finally question is that of language specificity, i.e., do words have some special status for children (the way they do for adults) or are they treated just the same as other environmental sounds? For example, does an object's name come to stand for the child's concept of that object, in a way different from, say, the sound that the object makes? Answers to these questions will illuminate the mysterious process by which word learning occurs as well as advance knowledge of cognitive development in general. Furthermore, as we succeed in lessening the mystery of word learning, we will be in a far better position to use our knowledge of the word learning process to aid those children who are having difficulty with that process. ***

9615391戈林科夫 在孩子们会系鞋带之前，他们已经学会了成千上万的单词。 然而，人们对早期单词学习的过程知之甚少，部分原因是研究人员在试图与前语言儿童和几乎不会语言的儿童合作时遇到了方法上的障碍。 这项研究将使用两种新的方法来研究幼儿（大约10-24个月大）如何学习母语单词。 特别关注的是儿童如何学习物体名称，因为在世界各地，物体名称在儿童最早的词汇中占主导地位。 以前的研究表明，儿童在学习新单词时受到一套六项原则的指导，这些原则缩小了儿童必须考虑的选择范围。 这些原则被组织成两个“层次”，第一层次在生命的第一年结束时出现。 第一层中的三个原则是（1）“引用”，或者一个词可以“映射”或链接到世界上的一个对象的想法，（2）“可扩展性”，一个词不仅命名原始对象，而且命名一类对象（例如，“dog”并不只是指Fido，即家里的狗，而是指所有的狗）;（3）“对象范围”，即假设一个新词是指一个对象（而不是一个动作），它是指整个对象（而不是对象中有趣的部分）。 本项目中的11个实验旨在了解儿童如何推导出第一层的这三个原则。 在所有的实验中，孩子们将在各种条件下学习新物体的名称，以探索他们学习新单词的过程。 由于幼儿不经常在命令下说话，在所有的实验中，儿童将被要求通过他们的语言理解而不是通过语言生产来展示他们的单词学习能力。 这项研究将试图回答三个问题。 第一个问题是涌现问题，即，每一个原则是什么时候出现的，每一个原则是否都有成熟和不成熟的形式？ 第二个是机制问题，是什么机制导致了每一个原则的出现？不同年龄的孩子在运用这些原则学习单词时，是否依赖于不同的线索？ 最后一个问题是语言的特殊性，即，词语对儿童来说是否有某种特殊的地位（就像对成人一样），或者它们与其他环境声音一样被对待？ 例如，一个物体的名字是否代表了孩子对这个物体的概念，与这个物体发出的声音不同？ 这些问题的答案将阐明单词学习发生的神秘过程，以及一般认知发展的先进知识。 此外，当我们成功地减少单词学习的神秘性时，我们将处于一个更好的位置，利用我们对单词学习过程的知识来帮助那些在这个过程中有困难的孩子。 ***