Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Use of Social-Pragmatic Cues in Word-Learning by Monolingual and Bilingual Children

该项目将调查学龄前单语和双语儿童如何学习新单词。在美国，最大的双语人口由西班牙裔背景的人组成，他们既会说英语，也会说西班牙语。西班牙裔儿童的教育成果落后于他们的非西班牙裔同龄人。这种成绩差距早在3岁时就开始了，一直持续到中学阶段。词汇知识是影响学习成绩的最重要因素之一，但我们对儿童学习单词的实际过程知之甚少。单语和双语儿童往往来自不同的学习环境，无论是在社会上还是在语言上，他们在学习单词时可能依赖于不同的策略。因此，研究不同学习环境的儿童是如何学习的是至关重要的。这项研究将有助于制定成功的教育策略和干预技术，为幼儿双语儿童设计，可能缩小成绩差距。此外，这些发现将对父母、教师和临床医生提出建议，建议如何最好地使所有儿童能够学习。从理论上讲，该项目将加强对语言学习机制以及经验如何塑造语言学习机制的理解。研究表明，婴儿和儿童在语言学习过程中利用社交语用线索。然而，之前的工作主要是测试说英语的单语儿童。然而，由于双语和单语儿童占据了截然不同的社会语言环境，他们可能会以不同的方式利用这些线索。在两个实验中，研究人员将考察语言和非语言社交语用线索在4-5岁说英语的单语儿童和西班牙语-英语双语儿童新词学习中的使用情况。在所有实验中，将在实验室环境中使用视觉世界眼球跟踪范式来评估学习。在实验一中，研究人员将考察目光凝视(社交语用非语言提示)和说话人可靠性(社交语用言语提示)对双语和单语儿童单词学习的影响。这将使研究人员能够确定在单词学习过程中，单语儿童和双语儿童是否对言语和非言语社交线索具有不同的敏感性。该研究项目还将调查多个线索对单词学习的影响。在自然的学习环境中，孩子们通常会被呈现不止一条线索来帮助他们学习单词。例如，除了社交语用线索外，孩子们也很容易使用语言线索来支持他们的单词学习。虽然一些关于单语儿童的研究已经专门研究了社会线索和语言线索之间的相互作用，但多个线索的存在如何影响双语儿童的单词学习还不清楚。因此，在实验2中，研究人员将考察相互排他性(一种语言线索)和目光凝视对单语和双语儿童单词学习的综合影响。这些发现将揭示儿童在单词学习过程中如何一起使用语言和非语言线索，以及单语儿童和双语儿童对这些线索的权重是否有所不同。

The project will investigate how pre-school monolingual and bilingual children learn new words. In the United States, the largest bilingual population consists of individuals from Hispanic backgrounds who speak both English and Spanish. The educational outcomes of Hispanic children lag behind those of their non-Hispanic peers. This achievement gap starts as early as the age of 3 years and persists well into the middle-school years. One of the most significant predictors of academic outcomes is vocabulary knowledge, yet we know very little about the process by which children actually learn words. Monolingual and bilingual children tend to come from distinctive learning environments, both socially and linguistically, and it is possible that they rely on different strategies when learning words. Hence, it is crucial to investigate how learning occurs in children who do not share the same learning environment. This research will help develop successful educational strategies and intervention techniques designed for young bilingual children, with the potential of narrowing the achievement gap. Furthermore, the findings will be useful to parents, teachers, and clinicians in suggesting how best to enable learning in all children. Theoretically, the project will enhance the understanding of language learning mechanisms and how they might be shaped by experience.Research suggests that infants and children exploit social-pragmatic cues during language learning. However, prior work has primarily tested English-speaking monolingual children. Yet, because bilingual and monolingual children occupy distinct socio-linguistic environments, they may exploit such cues differently. In two experiments, the investigators will examine the use of verbal and non-verbal social-pragmatic cues in novel word learning in 4-5 year old English-speaking monolingual children and Spanish-English bilingual children. In all experiments, a visual world eye-tracking paradigm will be employed in a laboratory setting to assess learning. In Experiment 1, the investigators will examine the impact of eye-gaze (a social-pragmatic non-verbal cue) and speaker reliability (a social-pragmatic verbal cue) on word learning in bilingual and monolingual children. This will allow researchers to identify whether monolingual and bilingual children are differentially sensitive to verbal and non-verbal social cues during word- learning. The research project will also investigate the impact of multiple cues on word-learning. In natural learning environments, children are typically presented with more than one cue to help them learn words. For instance, along with social-pragmatic cues, children also readily use linguistic cues to support their word learning. While some studies in monolingual children have specifically investigated the interplay between social and linguistic cues, it remains unclear how the presence of multiple cues influences word learning in bilingual children. Thus, in Experiment 2, the researchers will examine the combined impact of mutual exclusivity (a linguistic cue) and eye-gaze on word-learning in monolingual and bilingual children. The findings will shed light on how linguistic and non-linguistic cues are utilized together by children during word-learning, and whether these cues are weighed differently by monolingual and bilingual children.