CAREER: Discovering the Underpinnings of Statistical Language Learning in Infants

在发育和认知科学中，一个长期存在的问题是婴儿如何学习母语。众所周知，与婴儿交谈和阅读可以帮助他们理解他们所听到的快速变化的语音，并产生更好的语言效果。众所周知，婴儿善于发现他们听到的语言中的统计规律，比如特定的声音是如何组合在一起形成单词的。熟悉统计规律有助于婴儿掌握语言结构的关键方面，例如在口语句子中找到单个单词，学习这些单词的含义，以及发现语法模式。然而，对支持婴儿使用统计规律的学习机制知之甚少。这项研究将测试婴儿的统计学习能力是如何由他们的语言输入和处理语言的能力决定的。与婴儿交谈通常是关于此时此地的，所以语言学习包括将婴儿听到的语言与视觉世界联系起来。这项拟议的研究将研究婴儿提取听觉和视觉信息的能力的发展如何与统计学习相关，以及这些能力是否能预测婴儿何时达到语言里程碑，如单词学习的开始和在自己的讲话中组合单词。在语言上有困难的婴幼儿很容易出现长期的语言和学业上的困难。研究婴儿从语言中提取模式和学习的能力将有助于早期识别有语言迟缓风险的婴儿，这对有效的语言干预至关重要。兰尼博士还将与一家当地组织合作，该组织致力于提高人们对与儿童交谈对其语言发展重要性的认识。这种伙伴关系将允许在拟议的研究中纳入有发展语言迟缓风险的婴儿，并将提供分享知识和影响当地社区的机会。

A longstanding question in the developmental and cognitive sciences concerns how infants learn their native language. It is known that talking and reading to infants helps them to make sense of the rapidly changing speech sounds that they are hearing, and results in better language outcomes. It is also known that infants are good at detecting statistical regularities in the language they hear, such as how particular sounds occur together to form words. Becoming familiar with statistical regularities helps infants acquire key aspects of language structure, such as finding individual words within spoken sentences, learning the meanings of those words, and discovering grammatical patterns. However, very little is known about the learning mechanisms that support infants' use of statistical regularities. This research will test how infants' statistical learning ability is determined by their language input and their ability to process that language. Talk to infants is typically about the here-and-now, so language learning involves connecting the speech infants hear with the visual world. The proposed research will examine how developments in infants' ability to extract auditory and visual information are related to statistical learning, and whether these abilities predict when infants will reach language milestones such as the onset of word learning and combining words in their own speech. Infants and toddlers who struggle with language are vulnerable to long-term language and academic difficulties. This research investigating infants' ability to extract patterns and learn from speech will promote early identification of infants at risk for language delays, which is crucial to effective language interventions. Dr. Lany will also work with a local organization focused on increasing awareness of the importance of talking to children for their language development. This partnership will allow for the inclusion of infants at risk for developing language delays in the proposed studies, and will provide an opportunity to share knowledge and to impact the local community.