Data from: Utterance-final position and pitch marking aid word learning in school-age children

We investigated the effects of word order and prosody on word learning in school-age children. Third graders viewed photographs belonging to one of three semantic categories while hearing four-word nonsense utterances containing a target word. In the control condition, all words had the same pitch and, across trials, the position of the target word was varied systematically within each utterance. The only cue to word–meaning mapping was the co-occurrence of target words and referents. This cue was present in all conditions. In the Utterance-final condition, the target word always occurred in utterance-final position, and at the same fundamental frequency as all the other words of the utterance. In the Pitch peak condition, the position of the target word was varied systematically within each utterance across trials, and produced with pitch contrasts typical of infant-directed speech (IDS). In the Pitch peak + Utterance-final condition, the target word always occurred in utterance-final position, and was marked with a pitch contrast typical of IDS. Word learning occurred in all conditions except the control condition. Moreover, learning performance was significantly higher than that observed with simple co-occurrence (control condition) only for the Pitch peak + Utterance-final condition. We conclude that, for school-age children, the combination of words' utterance-final alignment and pitch enhancement boosts word learning.

本研究探究了词序与韵律对学龄儿童词汇学习的影响。实验过程中，三年级学生在聆听包含目标词的四词无意义语句的同时，观看隶属于三个语义类别之一的图片。在控制条件下，所有单词的音调均保持一致，且在各试次中，目标词在语句内的位置会被系统地调整。唯一用于建立词-义映射的线索为目标词与指称对象的共现关系，该线索在所有实验条件中均存在。句尾条件下，目标词始终位于语句末尾位置，其基频与语句内其余所有单词完全相同。音峰条件下，各试次中目标词在语句内的位置会被系统地调整，且其发音带有婴儿导向言语（infant-directed speech, IDS）典型的音调对比特征。音峰+句尾条件下，目标词始终位于语句末尾位置，且带有婴儿导向言语典型的音调对比标记。除控制条件外，其余所有实验条件均观测到了词汇学习效应。此外，仅在音峰+句尾条件下，词汇学习表现显著高于仅依赖共现线索（即控制条件）时的观测结果。本研究得出结论：对于学龄儿童而言，将目标词置于语句末尾位置并辅以音调增强的组合方式，能够有效促进词汇学习。