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

描述(由申请者提供)：本申请旨在获取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，是将单词意义整合到文本理解中的能力。(2)儿童和成人在阅读过程中如何学习生词的意义，以及他们的理解技能是如何影响这种学习的。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)和理解之间的关系如何在学校期间发生变化。它的假设是，尽管技能会随着年龄的增长而发展，但从中学到成年，单词知识、新单词学习和理解之间的总体关系是不变的。为了达到这些目的，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，许多研究使用了事件相关电位(ERPs)测量，这是头皮表面对特定实验事件做出反应的电压漂移测量。例如，文本阅读过程中采集的事件相关电位显示出电压漂移，这表明读者能够将单词的意思与先前的文本相结合的程度。此外，这一指标对于高理解技能的读者来说比低理解技能的读者更有说服力。作为第二个例子，ERP措施可以产生新单词学习的指标。在学习了一个新单词的意义后，在观看这个新单词时记录的事件相关电位显示了学习经验和在意义判断任务中使用新学习的意义的具体标记。此外，生词产生的学习信号的健壮性与读者的理解技能有关。这项研究利用了这些观察结果，对儿童和成年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。这些研究旨在获得重要的结果，以增加对个人技能与逐字理解过程的关系的理解，以及通过阅读学习生词含义的能力。该项目的工作对国立卫生研究院与健康有关的广泛目标有影响，特别是在促进儿童心理、语言和教育发展的研究方面。这个项目将获得有关儿童和成人阅读理解的重要科学信息，特别是作为阅读技能组成部分的单词知识和学习新单词的重要性。该项目的工作对国立卫生研究院与健康有关的广泛目标有影响，特别是在促进儿童心理、语言和教育发展的研究方面。

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.