Age and Group Differences in Language-Learning Biases

描述（由申请人提供）：本申请的目的是将两种人群中的语言学习困难联系起来：患有特殊语言障碍（SLI）的儿童和学习第二语言（L2）的成年人。通过对典型语言发展的研究，她对婴儿成为早熟语言学习者的原因提出了新的观点，并利用这一观点对儿童特殊语言障碍和成人第二语言学习中的学习困难做出了新的预测。申请人目前与LouAnn Gerken （Quam, Knight, & Gerken，正在审查中）的合作以及其他证据表明，婴儿在单词学习中非常愿意关注新的声学维度。她提出，这种开放的思想可能使婴儿特别擅长学习新的语言结构（参见Newport， 1991）。她已经确定了两个因素似乎有助于开放思想：外显学习机制的缓慢发展（Jones & Herbert, 2006; Richmond & Nelson, 2007）——这使婴儿倾向于依赖内隐学习——以及对哪些维度与区分母语声音有关的知识有限。这些见解对两种努力学习新语言结构的群体——成人二语学习者和患有特殊语言障碍的儿童——具有重要意义。对于成人二语学习者，我们预测阻滞

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The objective of this application is to link language-learning difficulties seen in two populations: children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and adults learning a second language (L2). Through the applicant's research on typical language development, she has developed a novel perspective about what makes infants precocious language learners, which she is using to make novel predictions about learning difficulties in childhood SLI and adult L2 learning. The applicant's current work with LouAnn Gerken (Quam, Knight, & Gerken, under review) and other evidence suggests that infants are surprisingly willing to attend to new acoustic dimensions in word learning. She proposes that this open-mindedness might make infants particularly good at learning new linguistic structure (see also Newport, 1991). She has identified two factors that seem to contribute to open-mindedness: slow development of explicit-learning mechanisms (Jones & Herbert, 2006; Richmond & Nelson, 2007)-which biases infants to rely on implicit learning-and limited knowledge of which dimensions are relevant for differentiating sounds in the native language. These insights have important implications for two groups who struggle to learn new linguistic structure: adult L2 learners and children with SLI. For adult L2 learners, we predict that blocking access to both explicit learning and native-language biases will facilitate learning of L2 categories. For typically developing 4- and 5-year-olds learning artificial sound categories, we predict a similar result. Both groups have intact implicit-learning abilities which are often overshadowed by their strong explicit skills, so blocking access to explicit skills should facilitae their implicit learning. However, predictions diverge for children with SLI, who have been argued to have weak implicit- learning skills (Lum, Conti-Ramsden, Page, & Ullman, 2011). Thus, these children should struggle to learn categories that are best learned implicitly. The mentored-phase training in language disorders at the University of Arizona will capitalize on an existing collaborative relationship between mentor Dr. Elena Plante (Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences; SLHS) and co-mentor Dr. LouAnn Gerken (Psychology) to provide the applicant with coursework and research skills pertinent to SLI. The mentored research will be advised by a team of mentors and advisors with the requisite expertise to train the applicant in SLI (Dr. Plante), connections between typical development and SLI (Drs. Gerken and Plante) implicit/explicit category learning (Dr. Todd Maddox, UT Austin), and language-specific skills and biases in sound-category learning (Dr. Lotto).