Generic Language in Development

人类知识的中心形式是一般知识，即关于类别的一般信息，从动物到数字，从天体到机器，从经济系统到社会制度。人类进步的标志是对广泛适用于同一类别内不同情况的理解原则的探索。向儿童表达一般知识的一个基本手段是通过语言，特别是通用名词短语(例如，“昆虫是六条腿的”)。先前的研究表明，通用名词短语经常出现在父母对孩子的言语中，在不同的文化和语言环境中使用(美国，中国，秘鲁)，由接触最少语言输入的儿童(不接触手语的聋哑儿童)产生，被学龄前儿童正确理解，并被儿童储存在长期记忆中。这些组成部分都表明，仿制药是重要的、有意义的、很早就获得的，并有可能影响儿童的世界知识。然而，前人关于类属语言的研究没有回答两个主要问题：(1)类属语言是影响和指导儿童的概念，还是仅仅反映了儿童的概念？(2)类属语言在儿童时期是通过什么过程获得的？该项目将对这两个核心问题进行调查。一项深入的训练研究将在不同的措辞条件下教给幼儿一个新的概念，以绘制通用词和标签对儿童分类推理的影响。此外，一系列实验将测试关于学习仿制药的过程的相互矛盾的说法。这些研究将利用实验研究和自然语言分析，为2至5岁儿童的概念和语言之间的联系提供集中和准确的证据。该项目将通过提供急需的信息，说明父母和教师使用的语言(通用语言与特定语言)如何影响儿童获取和概括新信息，从而促进更有效的学习策略。这些发现将有助于我们更好地了解儿童是如何学习语言的，并对科学教育具有启示意义。此外，了解儿童如何以及何时在类别内形成概括，有助于形成刻板印象，以及儿童如何理解人类多样性。最后，这项工作将使整个社会受益，使科学家、教育工作者和家长了解儿童的早期认知过程以及语言对这些过程的影响。了解这些基本过程是如何在正常发育的儿童身上展开的，也为最终理解它们如何出错提供了一个框架，例如，在有特定语言障碍的儿童中。

A central form of human knowledge is generic knowledge, that is, general information about categories, from animals to numbers, from celestial objects to machines, from economic systems to social systems. Human progress is marked by a search for understanding principles that apply broadly across varying instances within a category. A fundamental means of expressing general knowledge to children is via language, and in particular generic noun phrases (e.g., "Insects are 6-legged"). Prior work has demonstrated that generic noun phrases are frequent in parental speech to children, used in diverse cultural and linguistic contexts (U.S., China, Peru), produced by children exposed to minimal linguistic input (deaf children not exposed to sign language), understood appropriately by preschool-aged children, and stored by children in long-term memory. These component pieces all suggest that generics are important, meaningful, acquired early, and have the potential to influence children's world knowledge. However, prior work on generics leaves two major questions unanswered: (1) Does generic language affect and guide children's concepts, or does generic language merely reflect children's concepts? (2) What is the process by which generic language is acquired in childhood? The project will investigate both these core issues. An in-depth training study will teach young children a new concept under varied wording conditions to chart the effects of generics and labeling on children's categorical reasoning. Furthermore, a set of experiments will test competing claims regarding the process by which generics are learned. These studies will make use of experimental research and naturalistic language analyses to provide converging and precise evidence regarding the links among concepts and language in children between 2 and 5 years of age.The project will promote more effective learning strategies by providing much-needed information on how the language that parents and teachers use (generic vs. specific) affects how children acquire and generalize new information. These findings will help us understand better how children learn language, and have implications for science education. Furthermore, understanding how and when children form generalizations within categories informs the development of stereotyping, as well as how children come to understand human diversity. Finally, the work will benefit society at large, by providing scientists, educators, and parents with an understanding of children's early cognitive processes and the effects of language on such processes. Understanding how these basic processes unfold in normally developing children also provides a framework for eventually understanding how they can go awry, for example, in children with specific language impairment.