Children's Research Initiative: Infant Perception Of Referencing Through Dynamic Gestures During Early Lexical Development

AbstractCollaborative Proposal：在早期词汇发展过程中，婴儿通过动态手势感知参照Patricia Zukow-Goldring，南加州大学本提案的主要目标是测试基于感知的理论的假设，以确定婴儿最初是如何学习理解单词的意思的。这种方法的基础是仔细的，纵向观察的英语和西班牙语的照顾者的做法，在生态有效的环境中，往往不承认，但在确定的假设值得测试不可或缺的一步。这些照顾者在婴儿学习单词的早期阶段与婴儿互动时，会模仿他们所说的话和所做的事，以标记单词与它们所代表的内容之间的对应关系。本研究的目的是通过一系列的实验研究来确定这些知觉信息与婴儿早期词汇学习中关键的涌现能力之间的关系。这些研究将检验这样一个假设，即看护者在手势和言语中呈现的感知结构或信息类型通过使词语与其所指对象之间的联系在感知上可及且易于注意来吸引注意力。本研究将探讨婴儿早期词汇学习的一系列典型语义功能，包括名词（物体）、动词（物体运动）和形容词（物体属性）。西班牙语家庭的样本将由母亲获得高中文凭或大学教育的婴儿组成。这样的样本将把这一理论的普遍性扩展到通常讲英语的中产阶级人口之外。协助该项目的学生应该获得对心理学科学方法的赞赏，并对研究生学习产生更大的兴趣。对于拉丁美洲学生助理，这项建议提供了额外的机会，以贡献自己的文化知识和母语的专业知识，以实现这项研究。这项研究的发现将对语言发展理论产生重要的影响，并为实践者提供巨大的潜力。更好地了解儿童如何学习单词指的是正在发生的事件的各个方面，可以作为改进教学方法和提高早期教育环境中学生理解力的基础。不仅第一语言和第二语言学习者可能会受益，语言延迟和感知障碍的儿童也会受益。

AbstractCollaborative Proposal: Infant Perception of Referencing through Dynamic Gestures During Early Lexical DevelopmentPatricia Zukow-Goldring, University of Southern CaliforniaThe main objective of this proposal is to test hypotheses from a perceptually-based theory to determine how infants initially learn to understand what words mean. Underlying this approach is careful, longitudinal observation of both English- and Spanish-speaking caregiver practices in ecologically valid environments, an often unacknowledged but indispensable step in determining hypotheses worthy of testing. These caregivers pattern what they say and do to mark the correspondence between words and what they represent as they interact with their infants during very early stages of word learning. The goal of this investigation is to pinpoint the relation between this perceptual information and the infants' emergent abilities crucial to early word learning through a set of experimental studies. These studies will test the hypothesis that the types of perceptual structure or information that caregivers present in gesture and speech attract attention by making the link between a word and its referent perceptually accessible and easy to notice. This research will examine a set of semantic functions typical of infants' earliest word learning that includes nouns (objects), verbs (object motions), and adjectives (object attributes). The sample of Spanish-speaking families will be comprised of infants whose mothers have received a high school diploma or a college education. Such a sample will extend the generality of this theory beyond the usual English-speaking, middle-class population. Students assisting with the project should gain an appreciation of a scientific approach to psychology and a greater interest in pursuing graduate studies. For the Latino student-assistants, this proposal offers the additional opportunity to contribute their cultural knowledge and native language expertise to the realization of this research. Findings from this research would have important implications for theories of language development as well as great potential for practitioners. A better understanding of how children learn that words refer to aspects of ongoing events can serve as a basis for refining teaching methods and enhancing student comprehension in early educational settings. Not only first and second-language learners might benefit, but language-delayed and perceptually impaired children as well.