Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Use of Social-Pragmatic Cues in Word-Learning by Monolingual and Bilingual Children

博士论文研究：单语和双语儿童在单词学习中使用社会语用线索

• 批准号: 1749371
• 负责人: Margarita Kaushanskaya
• 金额: $ 1.84万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-02-15 至 2019-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1749371&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Use; Social

The project will investigate how pre-school monolingual and bilingual children learn new words. In the United States, the largest bilingual population consists of individuals from Hispanic backgrounds who speak both English and Spanish. The educational outcomes of Hispanic children lag behind those of their non-Hispanic peers. This achievement gap starts as early as the age of 3 years and persists well into the middle-school years. One of the most significant predictors of academic outcomes is vocabulary knowledge, yet we know very little about the process by which children actually learn words. Monolingual and bilingual children tend to come from distinctive learning environments, both socially and linguistically, and it is possible that they rely on different strategies when learning words. Hence, it is crucial to investigate how learning occurs in children who do not share the same learning environment. This research will help develop successful educational strategies and intervention techniques designed for young bilingual children, with the potential of narrowing the achievement gap. Furthermore, the findings will be useful to parents, teachers, and clinicians in suggesting how best to enable learning in all children. Theoretically, the project will enhance the understanding of language learning mechanisms and how they might be shaped by experience.Research suggests that infants and children exploit social-pragmatic cues during language learning. However, prior work has primarily tested English-speaking monolingual children. Yet, because bilingual and monolingual children occupy distinct socio-linguistic environments, they may exploit such cues differently. In two experiments, the investigators will examine the use of verbal and non-verbal social-pragmatic cues in novel word learning in 4-5 year old English-speaking monolingual children and Spanish-English bilingual children. In all experiments, a visual world eye-tracking paradigm will be employed in a laboratory setting to assess learning. In Experiment 1, the investigators will examine the impact of eye-gaze (a social-pragmatic non-verbal cue) and speaker reliability (a social-pragmatic verbal cue) on word learning in bilingual and monolingual children. This will allow researchers to identify whether monolingual and bilingual children are differentially sensitive to verbal and non-verbal social cues during word- learning. The research project will also investigate the impact of multiple cues on word-learning. In natural learning environments, children are typically presented with more than one cue to help them learn words. For instance, along with social-pragmatic cues, children also readily use linguistic cues to support their word learning. While some studies in monolingual children have specifically investigated the interplay between social and linguistic cues, it remains unclear how the presence of multiple cues influences word learning in bilingual children. Thus, in Experiment 2, the researchers will examine the combined impact of mutual exclusivity (a linguistic cue) and eye-gaze on word-learning in monolingual and bilingual children. The findings will shed light on how linguistic and non-linguistic cues are utilized together by children during word-learning, and whether these cues are weighed differently by monolingual and bilingual children.

该项目将调查学前单语和双语儿童如何学习新单词。在美国，最大的双语人口由西班牙裔背景的人组成，他们会说英语和西班牙语。西班牙裔儿童的教育成果落后于非西班牙裔同龄人。这种成绩差距早在3岁时就开始了，并一直持续到中学。学习成绩最重要的预测因素之一是词汇知识，但我们对儿童实际学习单词的过程知之甚少。单语儿童和双语儿童往往来自不同的学习环境，无论是社会还是语言，他们在学习单词时可能依赖不同的策略。因此，至关重要的是要研究如何学习发生在儿童谁不共享相同的学习环境。这项研究将有助于制定成功的教育策略和干预技术，旨在为幼儿双语儿童，缩小成就差距的潜力。此外，研究结果将有助于家长，教师和临床医生建议如何最好地使所有儿童的学习。从理论上讲，该项目将加强对语言学习机制的理解，以及它们如何被经验塑造。研究表明，婴儿和儿童在语言学习过程中利用社会语用线索。然而，以前的工作主要是测试说英语的单语儿童。然而，由于双语和单语儿童占据不同的社会语言环境，他们可能会利用这些线索不同。在两个实验中，研究者将考察4-5岁英语单语儿童和西班牙语-英语双语儿童在新词学习中使用言语和非言语社会语用线索的情况。在所有实验中，将在实验室环境中采用视觉世界眼动追踪范式来评估学习。在实验1中，研究者将考察眼睛注视（一种社会语用非语言线索）和说话人可靠性（一种社会语用语言线索）对双语和单语儿童词汇学习的影响。这将使研究人员能够确定单语和双语儿童在单词学习过程中对语言和非语言社会线索的敏感性是否不同。该研究项目还将调查多种线索对单词学习的影响。在自然的学习环境中，孩子们通常会得到不止一个线索来帮助他们学习单词。例如，沿着社会语用线索，儿童也很容易使用语言线索，以支持他们的单词学习。虽然一些单语儿童的研究已经专门调查了社会和语言线索之间的相互作用，但仍不清楚多种线索的存在如何影响双语儿童的单词学习。因此，在实验2中，研究人员将研究互斥性（一种语言线索）和眼睛注视对单语和双语儿童单词学习的综合影响。研究结果将揭示语言和非语言线索是如何一起使用的儿童在单词学习，以及这些线索是否被不同的单语和双语儿童的权重。