Auditory constraints on infant language learning

婴儿语言学习的听觉限制

• 批准号: 7600444
• 负责人: Jessica S Hay
• 金额: $ 2.24万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-04-01 至 2009-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7600444
• 关键词: Address; Adult; Affect; Area; Attention; Auditory; Auditory system; Categories; Child; Clinical; Cochlear Implants; Critiques; Cues; Discrimination; Disease; Elements; Exposure to; Future; Goals; Grouping; Human Characteristics; Impairment; Infant; Intervention; Language; Language Development; Learning; Linguistics; Loudness; Machine Learning; Methods; Pattern; Phonetics; Population; Procedures; Process; Research; Research Personnel; Risk; Role; Signal Transduction; Specificity; Speech; Speech Perception; Speech Sound; Stimulus; Structure; Testing; Toddler; age effect; experience; natural language; phonology; programs; research study; sound; statistics; theories

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of the current research is to investigate auditory constraints on general learning mechanisms (GLMs) underlying infant language acquisition. There have been numerous demonstrations of the importance of GLMs in word segmentation, and more recently this approach has been extended to phoneme acquisition. The primary critique of GLMs is that they are too computationally powerful. Without constraints, it would be difficult to extract only meaningful regularities, making the task of language acquisition a potentially intractable problem. Auditory constraints may provide a good framework on which GLMs can operate, facilitating the task of language acquisition. The first Specific Aim of the research proposed in this application is to examine the relationships between auditory sensitivities and distributional learning during phoneme acquisition. 7.5-month-old infants will be exposed to either a unimodal or a bimodal distribution of speech sounds. A habituation procedure will be used to test the hypothesis that the presence of a region of increased auditory sensitivity at a category boundary will facilitate phoneme acquisition. The second Specific Aim is to investigate the relationship between rhythmic grouping biases and statistical learning during word segmentation from fluent speech. Following familiarization to an artificial language that contains both statistical and rhythmic cues to words boundaries, 6.5- and 8.5-month-old infants are expected to mis-segment the statistical words in the language if the statistics and the perceived rhythmic grouping are inconsistent. Age effects are expected only if linguistic experience is necessary for auditory rhythmic grouping biases to emerge. The third Specific Aim is to assess the domain generality of the mechanisms described in the first and second aims. Non-speech stimuli will be used to assess the generality of distributional and statistical learning in the same types of category learning and segmentation tasks. The goal of this research is to understand how the auditory system of a typically developing infant structures language learning. In some atypical populations, it is unclear whether language acquisition is delayed because the auditory system is compromised or because the mechanisms responsible for learning are compromised. Future studies will use these tasks to assess learning in atypical language learners (e.g., young children with phonological disorders, toddlers with cochlear implants, infants at risk for language impairments), with the eventual goal of developing new interventions for use in clinical populations.

描述(由申请者提供)：本研究的目标是调查婴儿语言习得的一般学习机制(GLMS)的听觉制约。已经有许多关于GLMS在分词中的重要性的证明，最近这种方法已经扩展到音素习得。对GLMS的主要批评是它们的计算能力太强。如果没有约束，只提取有意义的规则将是困难的，这使得语言习得任务成为一个潜在的棘手问题。听觉限制可能为GLMS提供了一个良好的框架，有助于语言习得任务的完成。本申请中提出的研究的第一个具体目标是考察音素习得过程中听觉敏感度和分布学习之间的关系。7.5个月大的婴儿将接触到语音的单峰或双峰分布。习惯化程序将被用来检验这一假设，即类别边界上听觉敏感度增加的区域的存在将促进音素习得。第二个具体目标是研究流利语音分词过程中韵律分组偏向与统计学习的关系。在熟悉了一种人工语言后，如果统计数据和感知的节奏分组不一致，6.5个月和8.5个月大的婴儿可能会错误地分割语言中的统计单词。只有当语言经验是听觉节律分组偏见出现所必需的时候，年龄效应才被预期。第三个具体目标是评估第一个和第二个目标中描述的机制的领域一般性。在相同类型的类别学习和分割任务中，非语音刺激将被用来评估分布学习和统计学习的普遍性。这项研究的目的是了解一个典型发育中的婴儿的听觉系统是如何构建语言学习的。在一些非典型人群中，尚不清楚语言习得延迟是因为听觉系统受损，还是因为负责学习的机制受损。未来的研究将使用这些任务来评估非典型语言学习者(例如，患有语音障碍的幼儿、植入人工耳蜗的幼儿、有语言障碍风险的婴儿)的学习情况，最终目标是开发新的干预措施，用于临床人群。