Basic mechanisms of language's effect on attention and learning

描述(申请人提供)：我们在任何时刻关注的东西决定了我们在那个时刻学到了什么，这也取决于我们过去的学习。这项授权调查了单词、感知线索和类别组织如何形成一个关联系统，根据上下文提示注意力，使其精确地调整到上下文，从而限制和推动未来的学习。尽管旧的观点认为联想学习是对个人配对的简单计数，但更先进的理论认为，人们学习重叠的联想系统，(1)导致对注意力的系统影响，(2)根据背景调整学习，以及(3)产生更高顺序(几乎类似规则)的关联。这项资助试图在单词学习环境中对这些过程进行机械性的理解。24至48个月大的儿童将参加这些实验，其中包括人工语言学习、训练任务，以及学习两种不同语言(英语和日语)、具有不同关联系统的儿童的比较。了解语境引导注意力的基本过程，以及语言如何以及为什么可能成为引起注意力的特别有力的线索，是理解语言延迟对认知发展的连锁后果以及发明新的方法来调整注意力的第一步，当学习者不容易获得语言时。公共卫生相关性：我们在任何时刻关注的事情决定了我们在那个时刻学到了什么。我们所关注的也取决于我们过去所学到的东西。因此，学习--和发展--建立在自身的基础上。因此，注意力学习提供了一个例子，说明基本过程中的发育延迟可能会产生滚雪球般的有害后果。理解注意学习的基本机制也应该为我们开发新的干预和治疗程序提供原则性的理由。注意力(和注意力学习)与发育障碍有关，包括广泛性发育迟缓、自闭症谱系障碍、ADHD等。这项赠款建议在语言学习的背景下，典型地研究发育中的儿童的注意力学习，但其发现对更广泛的注意力学习以及语言学习的发展迟缓具有更广泛的影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): What we attend to at any moment determines what we learn at that moment, and this also depends on our past learning. This grant investigates how words, perceptual cues, and category organizations form a system of associations that contextually cue attention, making it exquisitely tuned to context and thus constraining and propelling future learning. Although old views characterized associative learning as simple counting of individual pairings, more advanced theories suggest that people learn systems of overlapping associations that (1) lead to systematic effects on attention, (2) tune learning to the context, and (3) give rise to higher-order (almost rule-like) correlations. This grant seeks a mechanistic understanding of these processes in word learning context. Twenty- four to 48-months-old children will participate in the experiments containing artificial language learning, training tasks, and the comparison of children learning two different languages (English and Japanese), with different systems of correlations. Understanding the basic processes through which context guides attention and how and why language might be a particularly potent cue to attention is a first step toward understanding the cascading consequences of language delay on cognitive development and the invention of new methods for tuning attention when language is not easily available to the learner. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: What we attend to at any moment determines what we learn at that moment. What we attend to is also dependent on what we have learned in the past. Thus, learning --and development -- builds on itself. Attentional learning thus provides one example of how developmental delays in a basic process might create snowballing detrimental consequences. Understanding basic mechanisms of attentional learning should also provide us with principled reasons for developing new intervention and therapeutic procedures. Attention (and attentional learning) has been implicated in developmental disorders including pervasive developmental delay, autism spectrum disorders, ADHD, among others. This grant proposes to examine attentional learning in the context of language learning, in typically developing children, but its findings broader implications for attentional learning more generally and also developmental delays in language learning.