Perceptual anchoring as a stepping-stone into word learning: A combined brain-behavior approach

知觉锚定作为单词学习的垫脚石：大脑与行为相结合的方法

• 批准号: 321815895
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Claudia Männel
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Tagesklinik für kognitive Neurologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2015-12-31 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/321815895?language=en
• 关键词: Perceptual; anchoring; stepping; stone; into

This proposal aims to better understand children´s enormously efficient lexicon acquisition by evaluating perceptual anchoring as a facilitating learning mechanism. Perceptual anchoring is an essential mechanism in human perception that involves learning from repetitive contexts. When listeners process new information, they greatly benefit from repetition in the auditory environment, leading to the formation of internal references, against which new sounds can be classified. I propose perceptual anchoring as a stepping-stone into word learning: Repeated acoustic patterns (i.e., perceptual anchors) drive the establishment of sound-based lexical representations, which may in turn ease the acquisition of new words. Testing this hypothesis, I will first assess perceptual anchoring in the non-linguistic domain at 3-6 months. For the age of 6-14 months, I will then implement anchoring in linguistic processing, testing the learning transfer from the acoustic level into the phonological level, and from the phonological level into the lexical level. For example, in a familiarization-test paradigm, I will present syllables in a reference condition and a no-reference condition during familiarization. Subsequently, I will test recognition of pseudowords that contain the familiarized or novel syllables. If anchoring facilitates the phoneme-to-word transfer, I expect enhanced brain responses for pseudowords with familiarized versus novel syllables (recognition effect), with stronger responses for syllables familiarized under reference conditions (anchor effect). Since behavior is difficult to asses in infants, I will use neuroimaging methods that capture temporal and spatial characteristics of infants´ brain responses of anchoring and recognition. As an external validation, I will longitudinally relate these neural correlates to children´s later vocabulary skills. The current research proposal will illuminate the developmental course of perceptual anchoring as a potential mechanism in word learning and contribute to our understanding of children´s impressive mastery of language acquisition.

该提案旨在通过评估感知锚定作为一种促进学习机制，更好地理解儿童极其高效的词汇习得。知觉锚定是人类知觉的一个重要机制，涉及从重复的环境中学习。当听众处理新信息时，他们会从听觉环境中的重复中受益匪浅，从而形成内部参考，从而可以对新声音进行分类。我建议将感知锚定作为单词学习的踏脚石：重复的声学模式（即感知锚定）推动基于声音的词汇表征的建立，这反过来又可以简化新单词的习得。为了检验这个假设，我将首先评估 3-6 个月时非语言领域的知觉锚定。对于6-14个月大的孩子，我将在语言处理中实施锚定，测试从声学层面到语音层面、从语音层面到词汇层面的学习迁移。例如，在熟悉测试范例中，我将在熟悉期间在参考条件和无参考条件下呈现音节。随后，我将测试对包含熟悉或新音节的伪词的识别。如果锚定促进了音素到单词的转移，我预计与新音节相比，大脑对熟悉音节的伪词的反应会增强（识别效应），而对参考条件下熟悉的音节的反应会更强（锚定效应）。由于婴儿的行为很难评估，我将使用神经成像方法来捕获婴儿大脑锚定和识别反应的时间和空间特征。作为外部验证，我将纵向地将这些神经关联与孩子后来的词汇技能联系起来。当前的研究计划将阐明知觉锚定作为单词学习的潜在机制的发展过程，并有助于我们理解儿童对语言习得的令人印象深刻的掌握。