Early word learning in English- and Mandarin-acquiring infants

人类天生就具有构建复杂、灵活和创造性的概念和语言系统的能力。这个项目提供了一个窗口，通过它可以查看这两个独特的人类系统之间的联系-跨开发和跨语言。人类婴儿的一项基本发展任务是形成概念，捕捉他们遇到的物体和事件之间的共性和关系，并学习表达它们的单词。甚至在婴儿开始说话之前，这些发展任务就已经紧密相连。婴儿开始单词学习的任务时，有着广泛的、普遍的期望。这为更具体的期望的出现奠定了基础，将特定种类的单词联系起来（例如，名词，动词）到特定种类的含义（例如，基于对象和基于事件的共性）。这些更具体的期望在头两年以级联的方式出现，由婴儿的母语结构调整。过去的研究强调了婴儿广泛的早期期望和母语环境的塑造作用之间的重要相互作用。 目前项目的总体目标是集中在两种类型的证据-发展和跨语言-这将揭示单词和概念之间的联系如何展开。实验以婴儿二岁为研究对象，追踪婴儿在学习英语或普通话时对名词和动词两种词汇的习得。来自普通话的证据提供了一个明确的语言学对立面英语，并将从事，第一次，一个长期的争论，是否和如何婴儿的词汇和概念的发展是由语言的收购。研究结果将提供一个详细的分析婴儿的概念和单词学习的新兴能力。 该项目采用最先进的时间序列分析，将精确识别18个月和24个月大的婴儿在将新单词映射到意义的过程中如何部署他们的视觉注意力。该项目不仅将澄清特定年龄的婴儿是否能够成功地学习新的词义，而且还将揭示他们这样做的效率。这项研究将导致科学知识的根本性进步。它将重点关注英语和普通话，首次确定这些明显不同的环境语言对婴儿语言和概念发展的影响。此外，还有一个强有力的培训部分，旨在使代表性不足的群体的成员参与研究进程。通过阐明两种不同语言的发展模式和过程，该项目将提供一种手段，以更好地了解婴儿如何获得英语以外的语言学习单词和概念。这将推动国家努力促进美国越来越多来自非英语家庭环境的婴幼儿的积极发展成果。通过确定成功的单词学习所需的视觉和语言支持的种类，这项基础研究也可以作为一个跳板，为被诊断为语言延迟或障碍的婴幼儿制定有针对性的干预措施。量身定制的数量和种类的信息，以利用这些儿童的优势，可能会证明特别有效的治疗。

Humans are uniquely endowed with a natural capacity for building complex, flexible, and creative conceptual and linguistic systems. This project provides a window through which to view the link between these two uniquely human systems -- across development and across languages. An essential developmental task for human infants is to form concepts that capture the commonalities and relations among the objects and events they encounter, and to learn words to express them. Even before infants begin to speak, these developmental tasks are powerfully linked. Infants begin the task of word learning with a broad, universal expectation. This sets the stage for the emergence of more specific expectations, linking particular kinds of words (e.g., noun, verb) to particular kinds of meaning (e.g., object- and event-based commonalities). These more specific expectations emerge in a cascading fashion over the first two years, tuned by the structure of the infant's native language. Past research has underscored the vital interaction between infants' broad early expectations and the shaping role of their native language environment. The overarching goal of the current project is to concentrate on the two types of evidence -- developmental and cross-linguistic -- that will reveal how the links between words and concepts unfold. Focusing on the second year of life, the experiments trace the acquisition of two kinds of words -- nouns and verbs -- in infants acquiring either English or Mandarin. Evidence from Mandarin offers a clear linguistic counterpoint to English and will engage, for the first time, a long-standing debate concerning whether and how infants' lexical and conceptual development are shaped by the language being acquired. The results will provide a detailed analysis of infants' emerging capacities in concept and word learning. Recruiting state-of-the-art time-series analyses, the project will identify with precision how 18- and 24-month-old infants deploy their visual attention as they are engaged in the very process of mapping novel words to meaning. The project will also clarify not only whether infants at a particular age can successfully learn new word meanings, but will also shed light on the efficiency with which they do so. This research will lead to fundamental advancements in scientific knowledge. Focusing on English and Mandarin, it will identify, for the first time, the impact of these distinctly different ambient languages on infants' language and conceptual development. In addition, there is a strong training component aimed at bringing members of underrepresented groups into the research process. By illuminating developmental patterns and processes in two distinct languages, this project will provide a means to better understanding how infants acquiring languages other than English learn words and concepts. This will advance the nation's efforts to promote positive developmental outcomes for the ever-increasing number of infants and young children in the U.S. from non-English-speaking home environments. By identifying the kinds of visual and linguistic support required for successful word learning, this basic research may also serve as a springboard for developing targeted interventions for infants and young children diagnosed with language delay or impairments. Tailoring the amount and kind information to capitalize on these children's strengths may prove especially effective in treatment.