Identifying the role of sensorimotor feedback as a mechanism for language learning in the first three years of life

3岁前的语言能力预示着孩子以后的学业成就。这为缩小富裕家庭和贫穷家庭孩子之间的成就差距提供了一个重要的机会：通过找到扩大孩子词汇量的方法，低收入家庭的孩子可能会有更好的生活机会。这导致了对词汇发展研究的重视，该研究表明，儿童早期的语言环境与他们后来的词汇之间存在着明显的联系。然而，干预措施表明，这个问题并不容易解决；到了第二年，语言环境的积极改变对孩子的词汇没有任何明显的影响。到1岁时，孩子未来的语言技能可能已经奠定了基础；为了解决单词差距问题，需要将注意力转移到生命第一年的发音发展上。这项研究提出了一个新颖的观点，强调在婴儿开始说话之前，这段时间是学习的关键窗口期。这是由于感觉运动反馈的作用：婴儿发声时同时发生的感觉事件网络，包括本体感觉、肌肉功能和听觉输入。这些感觉运动事件或映射可能提供丰富的学习机会，在理解婴儿如何学习说话方面具有尚未开发的潜力。这项研究提出了一个新的框架，通过关注感觉运动反馈来理解语言发展，这可能是孩子在家里听到的语言和他们学龄时的词汇之间缺失的一个关键环节。自然主义和实验数据的结合将提出一种新的观点，即感觉运动反馈与1)早期环境和2)后来的词汇有关，利用语音学和发展心理学的先进方法，提出一个新的框架来理解婴儿如何学习，并随后解决成就差距。

Language abilities by age 3 predict a child's later academic achievements. This offers an important opportunity to narrow theachievement gap between children from richer and poorer homes: by finding ways to expand a child's vocabulary, those from lower-incomehomes may have better life chances. This has led to an emphasis on vocabulary development research, which shows a clearlink between a child's early language environment and their later vocabulary. However, interventions reveal that this problem is noteasy to resolve; by the second year, positive changes to the linguistic environment do not have any clear effects on a child'svocabulary. By age 1, the foundation may already have been set for a child's future language skills; to address the word gap problem afocus-shift is required towards vocal development during the first year of life. The proposed research offers a novel perspective thatemphasises this period as a crucial window for learning even before an infant has begun to speak. This is due to the role ofsensorimotor feedback: a network of simultaneous sensory events that occur when infants vocalize, including proprioception,muscular function, and auditory input. These sensorimotor events, or mappings, may offer a rich learning opportunity that has as-yetuntapped potential in understanding how infants learn to talk. This research presents a new framework for understanding languagedevelopment through a focus on sensorimotor feedback, which may be a key missing link between the language a child hears in thehome and their vocabulary by school-age. A combination of naturalistic and experimental data will present a novel view ofsensorimotor feedback in relation to 1) the early environment and 2) later vocabulary, drawing on advanced methods in phoneticsand developmental psychology to propose a new framework for understanding how infants learn and, subsequently, addressing theachievement gap.