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Individual Differences in Comprehension across the Lifespan

整个生命周期理解力的个体差异

基本信息

批准号：
ES/S009752/1
负责人：
Jennifer Rodd
金额：
$ 74.03万
依托单位：
University College London
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2020
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2020 至无数据
项目状态：
未结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FS009752%2F1
关键词：
Individual Differences Comprehension across Lifespan

项目摘要

The ability to communicate using spoken language is a core human ability. Language provides the foundation for social and educational development and without strong language skills, people struggle to participate positively in society. Spoken language allows us to rapidly transfer ideas from the mind of the speaker to the mind of the listener. This transfer relies on the ability of the listener to quickly access the meaning of each word that they hear: they must make 'best guesses' about the intended meaning of each word. The ability to rapidly and accurately understand the meanings of spoken words is vital, not only for communication using spoken language, but also to provide the foundation for skilled reading comprehension.Accessing the meanings of words is made more difficult by the presence of 'lexical ambiguity': words that can refer to more than one concept. For example, when accessing the sentence "What an enormous trunk!" the listener must work out whether the speaker was referring to an elephant's nose, a large suitcase, a car's boot, or the main stem of a tree.The ability to accurately and rapidly disambiguate word meanings is vital for communication: approximately 80% of common words in English have multiple dictionary definitions. Take for example the first sentence of the text given to 11-year-old children across England as part of the national curriculum tests: "Dawn was casting spun-gold threads across a rosy sky over Sawubona game reserve". The words in this sentence have on average 8.8 dictionary definitions: children must, for example, work out that "Dawn" does not refer to a girl's name and that "game" does not refer to a competitive sport. In addition, "cast" and "threads" do not refer to physical actions or objects, but have more metaphorical interpretations.While many of us are able to accurately disambiguate most words without obvious effort, research has revealed large individual differences in this skill: some people are slower and more error prone and the same people also tend to perform poorly tests of comprehension more generally. This project aims to uncover the causes of these difficulties as a first step to identifying how best to help them in the classroom or clinic. This is important as poor language comprehension is associated with difficulty learning to read, with social and emotional unhappiness and with poor behaviour.The current research will develop novel child-friendly methods for assessing the ability to understand spoken sentences containing ambiguous words. We will use these methods to discover the factors that contribute to individual differences in the ability to understand words. We will test two types of explanation. The first sees linguistic factors as critical - qualitative or quantitative differences in the stored knowledge a person has about word meanings. The second type of explanation is that people differ in how flexible they can be in selecting and switching between alternative meanings, rather than their knowledge of the meanings themselves. We will use computational models and experimental methods to assess how these factors work together to bring about comprehension. Finally, we will move from the laboratory to the classroom to conduct an intervention study in primary age children to assess whether comprehension can be enhanced by playing word games while listening to carefully constructed stories.Answers to these questions are critical for efforts to improve comprehension skills in school aged children. The National Curriculum sees language and communication as essential for educational achievement, and considerable teaching time is devoted to improving performance in national tests. Unfortunately, evidence-based teaching strategies for improving comprehension are not well-developed, certainly in comparison with those in place for word reading. This research will provide the theoretical framework and empirical basis for larger scale interventions.

使用口语进行交流的能力是人类的核心能力。语言为社会和教育发展提供了基础，如果没有强大的语言技能，人们就很难积极参与社会。口语使我们能够迅速地将说话者的思想转移到听者的思想。这种转移依赖于听者快速理解他们听到的每个单词的意思的能力：他们必须对每个单词的意图做出“最佳猜测”。快速准确地理解口语单词的含义的能力是至关重要的，不仅对于使用口语进行交流，而且还为熟练的阅读理解提供基础。由于“词汇歧义”的存在，单词的含义变得更加困难：单词可以指一个以上的概念。例如，当访问句子“多么巨大的树干！“听者必须弄清楚说话者指的是大象的鼻子、大行李箱、汽车的靴子还是树的主干。准确而快速地消除词义歧义的能力对于交流至关重要：大约80%的英语常用词有多个词典定义。举个例子，作为全国课程测试的一部分，给英格兰各地11岁儿童的课文的第一句话是：“黎明在萨乌布纳禁猎区的玫瑰色天空上投下纺金线”。这句话中的单词平均有8.8个字典定义：例如，孩子们必须弄清楚“Dawn”并不是指女孩的名字，“game”也不是指竞技运动。此外，“cast”和“threads”并不是指物理动作或物体，而是有更多的隐喻解释。虽然我们中的许多人能够准确地消除大多数单词的歧义，而不需要明显的努力，但研究表明这种技能存在很大的个体差异：有些人速度较慢，更容易出错，而同样的人也往往在理解测试中表现不佳。该项目旨在揭示这些困难的原因，作为确定如何在课堂或诊所中最好地帮助他们的第一步。这一点很重要，因为语言理解能力差与学习阅读困难、社交和情感不愉快以及不良行为有关。目前的研究将开发新的儿童友好方法，用于评估理解包含歧义单词的口语句子的能力。我们将使用这些方法来发现导致理解单词能力个体差异的因素。我们将测试两种类型的解释。第一种观点认为语言因素至关重要--一个人所储存的关于词义的知识存在质的或量的差异。第二种解释是，人们的差异在于他们在选择和转换替代含义时的灵活性，而不是他们对含义本身的知识。我们将使用计算模型和实验方法来评估这些因素如何共同作用，以实现理解。最后，我们将从实验室走向课堂，对小学儿童进行一项干预研究，以评估在听精心构思的故事的同时玩文字游戏是否能提高理解能力。这些问题的答案对于提高学龄儿童的理解能力至关重要。国家课程将语言和交流视为教育成就的关键，大量的教学时间用于提高国家考试的成绩。不幸的是，以证据为基础的教学策略，以提高理解并没有得到很好的发展，当然与那些在地方的文字阅读。本研究将为更大规模的干预提供理论框架和实证依据。

项目成果

期刊论文数量（10）

专著数量（0）

科研奖励数量（0）

会议论文数量（0）

专利数量（0）

Contextual diversity during word learning through reading benefits generalisation of learned meanings to new contexts.

DOI：
10.1177/17470218221126976
发表时间：
2023-07
期刊：
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
影响因子：
1.7
作者：
Norman, Rebecca;Hulme, Rachael C.;Sarantopoulos, Christina;Chandran, Varsha;Shen, Hantong;Rodd, Jennifer M.;Joseph, Holly;Taylor, J. S. H.
通讯作者：
Taylor, J. S. H.

Diversity of narrative context disrupts the early stage of learning the meanings of novel words.

DOI：
10.3758/s13423-023-02316-z
发表时间：
2023-12
期刊：
Psychonomic bulletin & review
影响因子：
3.5
作者：
Hulme RC;Begum A;Nation K;Rodd JM
通讯作者：
Rodd JM

Causal Contributions of the Domain-General (Multiple Demand) and the Language-Selective Brain Networks to Perceptual and Semantic Challenges in Speech Comprehension.

领域将军（多重需求）和语言选择性大脑网络的因果贡献对语音理解中的知觉和语义挑战。

DOI：
10.1162/nol_a_00081
发表时间：
2022
期刊：
NEUROBIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE
影响因子：
3.2
作者：
MacGregor, Lucy J.;Gilbert, Rebecca A.;Balewski, Zuzanna;Mitchell, Daniel J.;Erzinclioglu, Sharon W.;Rodd, Jennifer M.;Duncan, John;Fedorenko, Evelina;Davis, Matthew H.
通讯作者：
Davis, Matthew H.

Learning about the meanings of ambiguous words: evidence from a word-meaning priming paradigm with short narratives.