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

描述（由申请人提供）：本申请旨在获得关于单词知识在理解技能中的作用的证据。它的研究旨在确定单词知识-理解联系的两个组成部分：（1）单词知识对儿童和成人理解过程的影响，更具体地说，是在文本理解中整合单词意义的能力。(2)儿童和成人如何在阅读过程中学习新单词的含义，以及这种学习如何受到他们的理解技能的影响。在追求这两个目标，该项目解决了如何在学校教育的单词知识（和单词学习）和理解之间的关系的变化。它的假设是，尽管技能发展发生在不同年龄段，但单词知识，新单词学习和理解之间的一般关系从中学到青年时期是不变的。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采取细粒度的措施。为此，许多研究使用事件相关电位（ERP）测量，这是响应特定实验事件的头皮表面上的电压偏移测量。例如，在文本阅读过程中获取的ERP揭示了电压变化，表明读者能够将单词的含义与先前的文本整合在一起。此外，这一指标对于高理解技能的读者比对于低理解技能的读者显得更稳健。作为第二个例子，ERP措施可以产生新词学习的指标。在学习了一个新单词的含义后，当看到这个新单词时记录的ERPs显示了学习经验的特定标记，以及在意义判断任务中使用新学到的意义的特定标记。此外，由新词产生的学习信号的鲁棒性与读者的理解技能有关。本研究利用这些观察结果，对儿童和成人进行了一系列研究，评估了他们的词汇知识和理解技能，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，这将增加对个人技能如何与逐字理解过程以及通过阅读学习新单词含义的能力的理解。该项目的工作对国家卫生研究所与健康有关的广泛目标具有影响，特别是有助于研究儿童的心理、语言和教育发展。公共卫生相关性本项目将获得有关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所与健康有关的广泛目标具有影响，特别是有助于研究儿童的心理、语言和教育发展。

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.