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

合作建议：婴儿在早期词汇发展过程中通过动态手势来感知指称。南加州大学的Patricia Zukow-Goldring该建议的主要目的是检验基于知觉理论的假设，以确定婴儿最初是如何学习理解单词的含义的。这种方法的基础是对英语和西班牙语照顾者在生态有效环境中的实践进行仔细、纵向的观察，这是确定值得检验的假设的一个通常不被承认但不可或缺的步骤。这些照顾者在单词学习的早期阶段与他们的婴儿互动时，通过他们的言行来标记单词和他们所代表的东西之间的对应关系。本研究的目的是通过一系列的实验研究来明确这一知觉信息与幼儿词汇学习中至关重要的涌现能力之间的关系。这些研究将检验这样一种假设，即照顾者在手势和言语中呈现的感知结构或信息的类型通过使单词与其所指对象之间的联系易于感知和容易注意来吸引人们的注意。这项研究将考察婴儿早期单词学习的一组典型的语义功能，包括名词(对象)、动词(对象动作)和形容词(对象属性)。西班牙语家庭的样本将由母亲接受过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说英语的中产阶级人群之外。协助这个项目的学生应该欣赏心理学的科学方法，并对攻读研究生课程产生更大的兴趣。对于拉丁裔学生助理来说，这项提议提供了额外的机会，为实现这项研究贡献他们的文化知识和母语专业知识。这项研究的发现将对语言发展理论产生重要的影响，同时也将为语言实践者带来巨大的潜力。更好地理解儿童如何学习单词是指正在进行的事件的各个方面，可以作为改进早期教育环境中的教学方法和提高学生理解力的基础。不仅第一语言和第二语言学习者可能受益，语言迟缓和知觉受损的儿童也可能受益。

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.