ERP and Behavior in Comprehension: Word-to-Text Integration and Word Learning

描述（由申请人提供）：此应用旨在获得单词知识在理解技能中的作用的证据。其研究旨在确定单词知识-理解环节的两个组成部分：(1)单词知识对儿童和成人理解过程的影响，更具体地说，是对文本理解中单词词义整合能力的影响。(2)儿童和成人在阅读过程中如何学习新单词的含义，以及这种学习如何受到他们的理解能力的影响。在追求这两个目标的过程中，该项目探讨了单词知识（和单词学习）和理解之间的关系在学校教育中是如何变化的。它的假设是，尽管技能发展发生在各个年龄段，但单词知识、新词学习和理解之间的一般关系从中学到青年期是不变的。实现这些目标的研究方法需要在逐字阅读和单词学习过程中进行细致的测量。为此，许多研究使用事件相关电位（ERPs）测量，这是头皮表面响应特定实验事件的电压变化测量。例如，在文本阅读过程中采集的erp显示电压变化，这表明读者能够多么容易地将单词的含义与先前的文本结合起来。此外，这一指标在理解能力高的读者身上比在理解能力低的读者身上表现得更为明显。第二个例子是，ERP测量可以产生新词学习的指标。在学习了一个新单词的意思后，观察这个单词时记录的erp显示了学习经历和在意义判断任务中使用新学到的意思的特定标记。此外，新词产生的学习信号的鲁棒性与读者的理解能力有关。这项研究利用了对儿童和成人进行的一系列研究的观察结果，对儿童和成人的词汇知识和理解能力进行了评估，并将其与实验结果联系起来。这些研究的目的是获得重要的结果，这些结果将增加对个人技能与逐字理解过程以及通过阅读学习新单词含义的能力之间的关系的理解。该项目的工作对国家卫生研究院广泛的与健康有关的目标具有影响，特别是对儿童的心理、语言和教育发展的研究作出贡献。本项目将获得关于儿童和成人阅读理解的重要科学信息，特别是单词知识和学习新单词作为阅读技能组成部分的重要性。该项目的工作对国家卫生研究院广泛的与健康有关的目标具有影响，特别是对儿童的心理、语言和教育发展的研究作出贡献。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application aims to acquire evidence on the role of word knowledge in comprehension skill. Its research aims to identify two components of the word knowledge -comprehension link: (1) the consequences of word knowledge for children's and adults' comprehension processes and, more specifically, the ability to integrate word meanings in text comprehension. (2) How children and adults learn the meanings of new words during reading and how this learning is affected by their comprehension skill. In pursuing these two aims, the project addresses how the relationship between word knowledge (and word learning) and comprehension change across schooling. Its hypothesis is that, despite the skill development that occurs across ages, the general relationship among word knowledge, new word learning, and comprehension is unchanging from middle school to young adulthood. The research methods for these aims require fine-grain measures taken during word-by-word reading and word learning. For this purpose, much of the research used event related potentials (ERPs) measures, which are voltage shifts measure on the scalp surface in response to specific experimental events. For example, ERPs taken during text reading reveal voltage shifts that indicate how readily the reader is able to integrate the meaning of the word with the prior text. This indicator, furthermore, appears more robustly for readers of high comprehension skill than for readers of low comprehension skill. As a second example, ERP measures can produce indicators of new word learning. After learning the meaning of a new word, ERPs recorded when the new word is viewed show specific markers of the learning experience and of the use of the newly learned meaning in a meaning judgment task. Further, the robustness of the learning signal produced by the new word is related to the comprehension skill of the reader. The research takes advantage of these observations in a series of studies with both children and adults, whose word knowledge and comprehension skill are assessed and related to outcomes of the experiments. The studies are designed to gain important results that will increase understanding of how individual skill is related to processes of word-by-word comprehension and the ability to learn the meanings of new words through reading. The work of the project has implications for the broad health-related goals of NIH, especially in contributing to research on the psychological, language and educational development of children. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE This project will obtain important scientific information on children's and adults' reading comprehension, especially the importance of word knowledge and learning new words as components of reading skill. The work of the project has implications for the broad health-related goals of NIH, especially in contributing to research on the psychological, language and educational development of children.