Basic mechanisms of language's effect on attention and learning

描述（由申请人提供）：我们在任何时刻所做的事情决定了我们在那一刻所学到的东西，这也取决于我们过去的学习。这项资助研究了词汇、感知线索和类别组织如何形成一个关联系统，在语境中提示注意力，使其精确地调整到语境中，从而限制和推动未来的学习。虽然旧的观点将联想学习描述为对个体配对的简单计数，但更先进的理论表明，人们学习重叠联想系统，这些系统(1)导致对注意力的系统性影响，(2)使学习适应环境，(3)产生高阶（几乎类似规则的）相关性。这项资助旨在寻求对单词学习背景下这些过程的机械理解。24至48个月大的孩子将参与实验，包括人工语言学习、训练任务，以及学习两种不同语言（英语和日语）的孩子的比较，这些语言具有不同的相关性系统。理解上下文引导注意力的基本过程，以及语言如何以及为什么可能是一个特别有效的注意力提示，是理解语言延迟对认知发展的级联后果的第一步，也是在学习者不容易获得语言时发明调整注意力的新方法的第一步。公共卫生相关性：我们在任何时候关注的事情决定了我们在那个时候学到的东西。我们关注什么也取决于我们过去学过什么。因此，学习和发展是建立在自身的基础上的。因此，注意学习提供了一个例子，说明在一个基本过程中，发育迟缓可能会产生滚雪球般的有害后果。理解注意力学习的基本机制也应该为我们开发新的干预和治疗方法提供原则性的理由。注意力（和注意力学习）与发育障碍有关，包括广泛性发育迟缓、自闭症谱系障碍、多动症等。这项资助计划在语言学习的背景下，对典型发育中的儿童进行注意力学习的研究，但其研究结果对更普遍的注意力学习和语言学习的发育迟缓有着更广泛的影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): What we attend to at any moment determines what we learn at that moment, and this also depends on our past learning. This grant investigates how words, perceptual cues, and category organizations form a system of associations that contextually cue attention, making it exquisitely tuned to context and thus constraining and propelling future learning. Although old views characterized associative learning as simple counting of individual pairings, more advanced theories suggest that people learn systems of overlapping associations that (1) lead to systematic effects on attention, (2) tune learning to the context, and (3) give rise to higher-order (almost rule-like) correlations. This grant seeks a mechanistic understanding of these processes in word learning context. Twenty- four to 48-months-old children will participate in the experiments containing artificial language learning, training tasks, and the comparison of children learning two different languages (English and Japanese), with different systems of correlations. Understanding the basic processes through which context guides attention and how and why language might be a particularly potent cue to attention is a first step toward understanding the cascading consequences of language delay on cognitive development and the invention of new methods for tuning attention when language is not easily available to the learner. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: What we attend to at any moment determines what we learn at that moment. What we attend to is also dependent on what we have learned in the past. Thus, learning --and development -- builds on itself. Attentional learning thus provides one example of how developmental delays in a basic process might create snowballing detrimental consequences. Understanding basic mechanisms of attentional learning should also provide us with principled reasons for developing new intervention and therapeutic procedures. Attention (and attentional learning) has been implicated in developmental disorders including pervasive developmental delay, autism spectrum disorders, ADHD, among others. This grant proposes to examine attentional learning in the context of language learning, in typically developing children, but its findings broader implications for attentional learning more generally and also developmental delays in language learning.