Identifying the role of sensorimotor feedback as a mechanism for language learning in the first three years of life

确定感觉运动反馈作为生命前三年语言学习机制的作用

• 批准号: EP/X042405/1
• 负责人: Catherine Laing
• 金额: $ 161.95万
• 依托单位: University of York
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FX042405%2F1
• 关键词: Identifying; role; sensorimotor; feedback; mechanism

Language abilities by age 3 predict a child's later academic achievements. This offers an important opportunity to narrow theachievement gap between children from richer and poorer homes: by finding ways to expand a child's vocabulary, those from lower-incomehomes may have better life chances. This has led to an emphasis on vocabulary development research, which shows a clearlink between a child's early language environment and their later vocabulary. However, interventions reveal that this problem is noteasy to resolve; by the second year, positive changes to the linguistic environment do not have any clear effects on a child'svocabulary. By age 1, the foundation may already have been set for a child's future language skills; to address the word gap problem afocus-shift is required towards vocal development during the first year of life. The proposed research offers a novel perspective thatemphasises this period as a crucial window for learning even before an infant has begun to speak. This is due to the role ofsensorimotor feedback: a network of simultaneous sensory events that occur when infants vocalize, including proprioception,muscular function, and auditory input. These sensorimotor events, or mappings, may offer a rich learning opportunity that has as-yetuntapped potential in understanding how infants learn to talk. This research presents a new framework for understanding languagedevelopment through a focus on sensorimotor feedback, which may be a key missing link between the language a child hears in thehome and their vocabulary by school-age. A combination of naturalistic and experimental data will present a novel view ofsensorimotor feedback in relation to 1) the early environment and 2) later vocabulary, drawing on advanced methods in phoneticsand developmental psychology to propose a new framework for understanding how infants learn and, subsequently, addressing theachievement gap.

3岁时的语言能力可以预测孩子以后的学业成绩。这为缩小来自富裕家庭和贫穷家庭的孩子之间的成就差距提供了一个重要的机会：通过寻找扩大孩子词汇量的方法，来自低收入家庭的孩子可能会有更好的生活机会。这导致了对词汇发展研究的重视，这表明儿童早期的语言环境和他们后来的词汇量之间存在明显的联系。然而，干预措施表明，这个问题是不容易解决的;到第二年，积极的变化，语言环境没有任何明显的影响，对儿童的词汇。到1岁时，孩子未来的语言技能可能已经奠定了基础;为了解决单词差距问题，需要在生命的第一年将重点转向发声发展。这项研究提供了一个新的视角，认为这一时期是婴儿开始说话之前学习的关键时期。这是由于感觉运动反馈的作用：当婴儿发声时，同时发生的感觉事件的网络，包括本体感觉，肌肉功能和听觉输入。这些感觉运动事件或映射可能提供了丰富的学习机会，在理解婴儿如何学习说话方面具有尚未开发的潜力。这项研究提出了一个新的框架，通过关注感觉运动反馈来理解语言发展，这可能是孩子在家里听到的语言和学龄前词汇之间缺失的关键环节。结合自然和实验数据将提出一个新的观点，感觉运动反馈与1）早期环境和2）以后的词汇，借鉴语音学和发展心理学的先进方法，提出一个新的框架来理解婴儿如何学习，并随后解决成就差距。