Syntactic processing across socioeconomic status: Linking input to comprehension

跨社会经济地位的句法处理：将输入与理解联系起来

• 批准号: 1844194
• 负责人: Yi Ting Huang
• 金额: $ 63.21万
• 依托单位: University of Maryland, College Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-09-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1844194&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Syntactic; processing; across; socioeconomic; status

Across socioeconomic status (SES), parental input varies in quantity and quality, and this impacts children's early language abilities and later academic performance. While these relationships are firmly established, their mechanisms are not well understood. Aggregated measures of input (e.g., total words) and outcomes (e.g., vocabulary size) track the consequences of multiple years of learning, but this ignores how children acquire language knowledge through iterative encounters with sentences. To observe this process directly, the present project combines high-density input recordings, eye-tracking methods, and computational modeling to isolate the cues that children use to interpret sentences and how strategies vary with input differences. At a scientific level, this research provides a framework for comparing systematic variation across social groups. While existing models of acquisition assume that the convenience sample (i.e., higher-SES children) offers a suitable proxy of learning in all children, this project tests an alternative hypothesis that SES-related differences in input affect what information children attend to when listening to sentences. Isolating between-child differences in comprehension will reveal strategies that learners must acquire to interpret new sentences. At a societal level, learning and communication depend on accurately interpreting sentences. Describing children's comprehension strategies enables better predictions of future outcomes and offers methods for targeting multiple pathways by which early language can affect academic performance. This framework will benefit other populations whose input differs from mainstream peers, e.g., dual language learners, cochlear implant users.To understand the sentence-level processes that mediate between parental input and language outcomes, the present project examines how language experience influences comprehension strategies in 5- and 6-year-olds from varying SES backgrounds. This project tests the hypothesis that input properties regulate what cues are informative for interpreting sentence meanings. For higher-SES groups, greater input quantity supports learning of fine-grained word properties, and increased word diversity enhances the need to access detailed patterns when interpreting sentences. For lower-SES groups, however, decreased quantity and diversity make coarse-grained patterns more useful, both because they require less input to learn and imply similar meanings when words occur in canonical sentence frames. This project measures word-specific and sentence-frame patterns in parental input using high-density recordings of utterances, and distinguishes children's sentence interpretations using eye-tracking experiments. Computational models combine these data to derive child-specific estimates of reliance on fine-grained word knowledge versus coarse-grained frame knowledge during comprehension.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在社会经济地位（SES）中，父母的投入在数量和质量上各不相同，这会影响儿童的早期语言能力和后来的学习成绩。虽然这些关系已经牢固确立，但其机制尚不清楚。输入的汇总度量（例如，单词总数）和结果（例如，词汇量）跟踪多年学习的结果，但这忽略了儿童如何通过反复接触句子来获得语言知识。为了直接观察这一过程，本项目结合了高密度输入记录，眼动跟踪方法和计算建模，以隔离儿童用于解释句子的线索以及策略如何随输入差异而变化。在科学层面上，这项研究提供了一个框架，用于比较不同社会群体的系统性差异。虽然现有的获取模型假设便利样本（即，高SES儿童）提供了一个合适的代理的学习在所有的儿童，这个项目测试的替代假设，SES相关的差异，输入影响什么样的信息时，儿童注意听句子。隔离儿童之间的理解差异将揭示学习者必须掌握的策略来解释新的句子。在社会层面上，学习和交流取决于准确地解释句子。描述儿童的理解策略可以更好地预测未来的结果，并提供针对多种途径的方法，早期语言可以影响学习成绩。这一框架将使其他群体受益，他们的投入不同于主流同行，例如，双语学习者，人工耳蜗使用者。为了了解父母输入和语言结果之间的中介过程，本项目探讨了语言经验如何影响来自不同SES背景的5- 6岁儿童的理解策略。这个项目测试的假设，输入属性调节什么线索是信息解释句子的含义。对于较高的SES组，更大的输入量支持细粒度的单词属性的学习，增加单词的多样性增强了在解释句子时访问详细模式的需要。然而，对于社会经济地位较低的群体来说，数量和多样性的减少使得粗粒度模式更有用，这既是因为它们需要更少的输入来学习，也是因为当单词出现在规范的句子框架中时，它们意味着相似的含义。本研究利用高密度的话语录音来测量父母输入中的特定单词和重复框架模式，并利用眼动追踪实验来区分儿童的句子解释。计算模型结合联合收割机这些数据，以获得儿童特定的估计依赖细粒度的文字知识与粗粒度的框架知识在comprehensions.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准的支持。

项目成果

Who “it” is influences what “it” does: Discourse effects on children's syntactic parsing

“它”是谁影响“它”做什么：话语对儿童句法分析的影响

• DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13076
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Cognitive Science
• 影响因子: 2.5
• 作者: Huang, Yi Ting;Ovans, Zoe
• 通讯作者: Ovans, Zoe

Some concrete steps for journal editorial boards: A commentary on Kidd and Garcia (2022)

期刊编辑委员会的一些具体步骤：基德和加西亚的评论（2022）

• DOI: 10.1177/01427237221096083
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: First Language
• 影响因子: 1.9
• 作者: Arunachalam, Sudha;Deen, Kamil Ud;Huang, Yi Ting;Lidz, Jeffrey;Miller, Karen;Ota, Mitsuhiko;Szendroi, Kriszta
• 通讯作者: Szendroi, Kriszta

Decontextualized Utterances Contain More Typical and Stuttering-Like Disfluencies in Preschoolers Who Do and Do Not Stutter

在口吃和不口吃的学龄前儿童中，脱离语境的话语包含更多典型的、类似口吃的不流利现象

• DOI: 10.1044/2023_jslhr-23-00173
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: and Hearing Research
• 作者: Oppenheimer, Kathleen E.;Lee, Jessica;Huang, Yi Ting;Bernstein Ratner, Nan
• 通讯作者: Bernstein Ratner, Nan

The (Un)Surprising Kindergarten Path

令人惊讶的幼儿园之路

• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society
• 作者: Ovans, Z.;Huang, Y.;Feldman, N.
• 通讯作者: Feldman, N.

Evaluating “Meaningful Differences” in Learning and Communication Across SES Backgrounds

评估不同 SES 背景的学习和沟通中的“有意义的差异”

• DOI: 10.1146/annurev-linguistics-030521-045816
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Annual Review of Linguistics
• 影响因子: 3.2
• 作者: Huang, Yi Ting;Byrd, Arynn S.;Asmah, Rhosean;Domanski, Sophie
• 通讯作者: Domanski, Sophie