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个人群中出现的语言学习困难联系起来：患有特定语言障碍（SLI）的儿童和学习第二语言（L2）的成年人。通过申请人对典型语言发展的研究，她开发了一种关于是什么使婴儿早熟语言学习者的新观点，她正在使用该观点对儿童SLI和成人L2学习中的学习困难进行新的预测。申请人目前与LouAnn Gerken（Quam，Knight和Gerken，正在审查）的工作和其他证据表明，婴儿在单词学习中非常愿意参加新的声学维度。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（另见纽波特，1991）。她已经确定了两个因素，似乎有助于开放的心态：外显学习机制的发展缓慢（琼斯和赫伯特，2006年;里士满和纳尔逊，2007年）-这使婴儿倾向于依赖内隐学习-以及有限的知识，哪些方面是相关的区别声音在母语。这些见解对两个努力学习新的语言结构的群体有重要的意义：成人L2学习者和SLI儿童。对于成年二语学习者，我们预测， 外显学习和母语偏好都有助于二语范畴的学习。对于典型的4岁和5岁的孩子学习人工声音类别，我们预测了类似的结果。两组人都有完整的内隐学习能力，但这些能力往往被他们强大的外显技能所掩盖，因此阻止他们获得外显技能应该有助于他们的内隐学习。然而，对于SLI儿童的预测存在分歧，他们被认为具有较弱的内隐学习技能（Lum，Conti-Ramsden，Page和Ullman，2011）。因此，这些孩子应该努力学习那些最好通过隐性学习的类别。亚利桑那大学语言障碍的指导阶段培训将利用导师Elena Plante博士（言语，语言和听力科学; SLHS）和共同导师LouAnn Gerken博士（心理学）之间现有的合作关系，为申请人提供与SLI相关的课程和研究技能。指导研究将由一个导师和顾问团队提供建议，他们具有必要的专业知识，可以在SLI（Plante博士），典型发展和SLI（Gerken和Plante博士）之间的联系，内隐/外显类别学习（UT Austin的托德马多克斯博士），以及特定语言技能和声音类别学习的偏见（Lotto博士）。

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).